Author: Jonathan Witt
Richard Dawkins’s Weasel Program Is Bad in Ways You Never Dreamed
His reductive approach causes him to miss a delicious irony.
Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science See Purpose as Best Explanation for Fine-Tuned Cosmic Habitat
In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most […]
Intellectual Insecurity at Iowa State?
Following his May 16 piece, Lawrence Selden has more incisive commentary on the Guillermo Gonzalez denial of tenure scandal at Iowa State University: Is the faculty at Iowa State University intellectually insecure? The statement of two years ago signed by 120 members of the faculty perhaps suggests that, especially when compared with the actions of […]
UV-Ray-Damage-Repairing Protein Evolution Proves Shy
Science Daily reports: Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the publication of several studies from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) in PLoS Biology detailing the discovery of millions of new genes, thousands of new protein families and specifically the characterization of thousands of new protein kinases from ocean […]
Hoyle Uses the Term “Intelligent Design” in a 1982 Work Making a Design Inference for the Origin of Life
[Edited] Bilbo of Telic Thoughts … [references] an early, notable use of the term “intelligent design,” this one by one of the 20th century’s leading scientists, agnostic Fred Hoyle: On January 12th, 1982, Sir Fred Hoyle delivered the Omni Lecture at the Royal Institution, London, entitled “Evolution from Space,” which was later reprinted in a […]
Dilbert Designer Looks at Intelligent Blobs and the Big Bang
Scott Adams of Dilbert fame asks: Suppose we found a blob on Mars that moved under its own power and wasn’t a carbon-based life form. How could we tell if it was intelligent? ….What if the blob authored a book? Don’t answer too quickly because it’s a trick question. Remember, a trillion monkeys with typewriters […]
Does George Smoot, Nobel Laureate, See Evidence of Design in the Cosmos?
The most recent Nobel prize for physics recently was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their contribution to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. Smoot is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. He has no ties that I’m aware of to the Intelligent Design community, and […]
From Darwin to Hitler: A Pathway to Horror (Updated)
Recently Edward T. Oakes reviewed Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler: As Richard Weikart proves in his magnificently written monograph From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection released a veritable Pandora’s box of evil vapors and demonic spirits, which, once unleashed on an eager […]
Derbyshire Provides a Turkey of an Argument Against Intelligent Design
John Derbyshire continues to insult social conservatives (and skeptics of Darwinism both liberal and conservative) at NRO‘s The Corner. He uses the high rate of skepticism toward Darwinism in Turkey to demonstrate that intelligent design represents a dangerous attack on modern biology. Since it’s a fallacious guilt by association argument, and one that flies in […]
Science magazine reviews The Language of God by Francis Collins, Ignores the Book’s Intelligent Design
Robert Pollack reviews Francis Collins’s new book The Language of God in the latest issue of Science. In the process he conveniently makes it appear that virtually Collins’ entire case for the existence of God boils down to the moral law in the human heart. But Collins also makes design arguments based on the Big […]