Month: April 2009
Texas Hold ‘Em Part III: Calling Ronald Wetherington’s Bluffs About Human Evolution in His January Texas State Board of Education Testimony
As a final installment in my “Texas Hold ‘Em” series calling the bluffs of Texas evolutionists, I’d like to highlight one section from Discovery Institute’s rebuttal to Ronald Wetherington’s Testimony before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE). Wetherington, who is a professor of anthropology at SMU, testified extensively to the TSBOE about human evolution, his area of expertise. Wetherington stated regarding human origins that we have “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in the world. No gaps. No lack of transitional fossils. … So when people talk about the lack of transitional fossils or gaps in the fossil record, it absolutely is not true.” But a close look at the evidence, as reported in Read More ›
The Edge of Obfuscation: Darwinists Behind Closed Doors
Why is it that Darwinian rhetorical strategies often remind me of a Monty Python sketch? In this case, the one about the philosophy department at the University of Wollamaloo, where every faculty member is called Bruce and the departmental rules include “Rule two: No member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abbos [aboriginal Australians] in any way a’all — if there’s anyone watching.” So Michael Behe amusingly notes in his Amazon blog how public Darwinian responses to the main argument of his book The Edge of Evolution differ from responses in more technical forums. Or as Bruce might put it, Rule one: No member of the Darwin Lobby may admit that evolution poses seemingly unsolvable enigmas — if there’s Read More ›
Logic vs. Emotion: Discovery Institute Fellow William Lane Craig Debates Christopher Hitchens on “Does God Exist?”
On Saturday April 4th, I attended a debate between Discovery Institute fellow William Lane Craig and “new atheist” Christopher Hitchens on “Does God Exist?” As the debate venue was Biola University, the audience was partial towards Craig. But a sizeable number of Hitchens-fans turned out as well, though they probably weren’t energized by Hitchens’ admission during the debate that “there’s nothing new about the new atheists, it’s just that we’re recent.” Craig’s opening statement presented 5 arguments, but I will only recount two (maybe three) at present: the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Moral Argument. As it turns out, Darwinian evolution and the “cruelty” of biological processes played a major role in Hitchens’ arguments against the proposition that Read More ›
Texas Hold ‘Em Part II: Calling David Hillis’ Bluffs About the Tree of Life in His January Texas State Board of Education Testimony
David Klinghoffer has recently posted some excellent (and entertaining) summaries of the highlights of Discovery Institute’s responses to the testimony of evolutionist experts David Hillis and Ronald Wetherington before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE) on January 21, 2009. (See also Ralph Seelke’s response to Hillis.) One part of the response to self-proclaimed tree of life “expert” David Hillis that should not be missed is Discovery’s response to his bluffs and misrepresentations regarding the congruence of molecular and morphological phylogenies within the tree of life. Specifically, Hillis told the board that there is “overwhelming agreement correspondence as you go from protein to protein, DNA sequence to DNA sequence” when reconstructing evolutionary history using biological molecules. But anyone accurately testifying Read More ›
Michael Shermer on Evolution and Intelligent Design: “What a Disappointment”
[Note: For a more comprehensive rebuttal to critics of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] Dr. Caroline Crocker, whose story was told in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, sent me the following report on a recent lecture by Michael Shermer, who also appeared briefly in Expelled to say that scientists who doubt Darwin are not discriminated against in academia. Dr. Crocker and others of course are proof that he is wrong. I recently attended a lecture by Michael Shermer at the UCSD Biological Science Symposium (4/2/09). His title was, “Why Darwin Matters,” but his topic was mostly religion. He started by defining science as looking for natural explanations for natural phenomena and said that Read More ›