Pope Benedict XVI has replaced an evangelizing Darwinist, Dr. George Coyne, as director the Vatican Observatory, according to Zenit News. A Jesuit with a doctorate in astronomy, Dr. Coyne in recent years made himself the public scourge of Darwin critics and scientific proponents of intelligent design. Increasingly his theology resembled that of “process theologians” who believe that God is still learning and could not have known what his world was becoming. While media tended to avoid the pro-design statements of the pope over the past year (see “Is the Pope Catholic?“), they frequently sited the hostile remarks of Dr. Coyne, sitting at his office at the University of Arizona, as supposedly representing those of “the Vatican.” That could not have Read More ›

One of the benefits of real intelligent design is encouragement of reverse engineering to understand how nature works and how to correct problems in nature (disease, for example)–and to provoke new inventions. (Spare us the argument that because you have a trick knee and an appendix you couldn’t have been designed. You should meet my old Taurus; it was designed, too, and it was still a rattletrap.) Some scientists seem to be making the design connection, as this AP story indicates, but as Bill Dembski “cattily” says, they don’t want to own up to what they are doing. Instead of worrying about a bogus “theological clash” with intelligent design scientists (whose theory definition the AP once again mangles), the folks Read More ›

This story from England is a month old, but took a while getting over the Pond to my in-box . Dennett and Dawkins say in public what Eugenie Scott says in private. Ruse may actually be sincere (though sincerely wrong), and not a ruse deviser at all. He was morally compromised some time ago when he took to quaffing beer with known “creationists in disguise” (as the ACLU’s favorite judge would call them). Ever since then Ruse has been incapable of sober materialist judgement. Recently in his Seattle debate with Steve Meyer, Peter Ward, too, criticized Dawkins, and with a bit of a snarl, I thought–all happily captured and preserved on tape. Dennett should rise again to the defense of Read More ›