Category: News Media
Vatican Astronomer Replaced
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 ›
iTunesTM Listeners Weigh-In On the ID The Future Podcast
Discovery Institute has been producing the ID The Future Podcast for a few months, and already iTunes listeners are giving it rave reviews. What follows is a brief highlight of the reviews and some brief commentary to thank the reviewers: Comment by SeanG: “A timely and well needed podcast that will foster dialogue and knowledge of what a large portion of the American public believe. I have many political, philosophical and scientific “blurbs” on my I-Pod, and this new addition to the scientific/philosophical debate by the many fine doctorate holding professors and research scientists at the Discovery Institute will do nothing but add clarity to an issue that demands such. Many of the issues found herein are merely current ruminations Read More ›
Derbyshire Attacks Gilder Part III: Praising Judge Jones while Pretending To Not Praise George Gilder
Maybe the most fascinating part of Derbyshire’s article is the candor with which he evaluates the strength of Gilder’s arguments. Derbyshire states clearly that “[Gilder’s metaphysic] refutes evolution, which has high-information-bearing substrates arising out of low-information-bearing ones… [and] As metaphysics go, [Gilder’s is] a pretty good schema… a good metaphysic for our age…” Thus it seems that Derbyshire affirms one of Gilder’s central points! In an attempt to not sell the entire farm, Derbyshire assures his fellow naturalists that we are “getting along just fine… discovering new things about the world, pushing the wheel of knowledge forward a few inches every year.” But Darwinist biologist Franklin M. Harold wrote that while “[w]e should reject, as a matter of principle, the Read More ›
Derbyshire Attacks Gilder Part II: Overblown Claims for Evolution
By Joe Manzari and Casey Luskin John Derbyshire claims that modern biology is built on evolution. He says that “Creationists seem not to be aware of how central evolution is to modern biology. Without it, nothing makes sense… Speciation via evolution underpins all of modern biology, both pure and applied.” However, in 2001, A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, made it clear that “evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one.” Apparently Derbyshire sees things differently from Wilkins, claiming that evolution is vital for “such things as new cures for diseases and genetic defects, new crops.” Yet Wilkins’ sentiment was re-affirmed in 2005 by Philip Skell, a member of Read More ›
LiveScience Discussing the Controversy that Doesn’t Exist
LiveScience is one of the premier science news sites on the internet. Thus, I found it funny that its “Evolution” page is largely devoted to discussing (their perception of) intelligent design. The title of the page is “All About Evolution and Intelligent Design.” Since it is “All” about evolution and ID, let’s see how the articles break down.