Month: August 2009
European scientists working in conjunction with Biologic Institute
The anti-ID crowd has an old canard about there being no serious scientists who doubt Darwin, let alone any that support intelligent design. And they like to say that there is no science being done by ID scientists. Both ideas are not just false, but absurdly so. Note this announcement of new scientific arrivals at Biologic Institute. Professor Matti Leisola, the Dean of Chemistry and Materials Science at Helsinki University of Technology in Finland; Colin Reeves, Professor of Operational Research in the School of Mathematical and Information Sciences at Coventry University; and Professor Stuart Burgess, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol.
Science Czar John Holdren is Unsure about Placing People Who Fund ‘Climate Change Denial’ on Trial for Crimes Against Humanity
In case you were wondering about that radicalism of Global Warming Climate Change fundamentalists, the President’s new science czar John Holdren made some recent assertions that should put your doubts to rest. In a July 2008 interview on the leftist television program Democracy Now!, Holdren reiterates conventional Malthusian alarmism, complete with a running video of wildfires, storms, and floods positioned over his left shoulder. He takes shots at global warming Climate Change ‘deniers’ (at about 3:20 into the video), attributing the success of skeptics to “the preoccupation of the media with balance and with controversy”.“Balance” and “controversy” are a bête-noire for climate alarmists. Further into the interview (at about 7:45 into the video), the moderator raises a question about the Read More ›
In John Holdren’s Own Words: the Inconvenient Truth About Population Control
In the growing public debate about coercive population control policies and Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren, it is important to read exactly what Holdren (and his co-authors Paul and Anna Ehrlich) wrote in their 1977 textbook Ecoscience. The question is this: were Holdren’s recommendations merely the academic exercise of listing other people’s recommendations (with disavowal or without any kind of endorsement), or did Holdren endorse any of these measures or counsel serious consideration of them. Here are the relevant pages of Holdren’s book; there is much more than I can deal with in this post, and I will be reviewing all of Holdren’s writings in Ecoscience in future posts, word for word. Let’s begin. Holdren bottom of first paragraph, p786): Read More ›
Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, and Books and Culture Promote Misconceptions About Intelligent Design, Falsifiability & Junk DNA
In the media, it’s not unusual for an interviewer and interviewee to hold similar views on whatever subject they are discussing. Radio show hosts and podcasters, for example, commonly interview friendly guests. But imagine if Paul Allen interviewed Bill Gates on the merits of Microsoft, and then published the interview as an independent journalistic article in Wired magazine. Not only would it would read like a paid advertisement, but critics would begin wondering if Wired was in business to promote Microsoft products. The Microsoft example is of course fictional, but something like it happened recently when Karl Giberson (executive vice president of the BioLogos Foundation) interviewed Francis Collins (the president of BioLogos), and then published the interview in Christianity Today‘s Read More ›
Jerry Coyne on Francis Collins: Christians Should Be Seen, but Not Heard
Atheist Jerry Coyne has been “chewing over” the President’s selection of Francis Collins as head of the National Institutes of Health. Collins, by consensus, is superbly qualified as a scientist and an administrator to run NIH. He’s a distinguished geneticist and directed the Human Genome Project. He’s also a Christian, and has no problem with publicly discussing his reasons and faith. For Coyne, that’s the rub. Coyne begins his post by wanting to “give the guy a break,” but his patience is quickly exhausted.Coyne: