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William Dembski and Robert Marks Publish Mainstream Scientific Paper on Conservation of Information
Is there a “magic bullet” mechanism by which blind and unguided search engines can find rare, isolated targets? This question may seem esoteric, but it’s the precise problem facing Darwinian evolution. In a new scientific paper published in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Discovery Institute senior fellow William Dembski and Robert J. Marks explain why Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason dictates that without prior knowledge about the search target or the search space, no search algorithm will ever increase the probability of finding the target. Any search that increases the probability of finding the target smuggles in “active information” about the target’s location or the search space. In other words, when it comes Read More ›
Los Angeles Times Reporting on Lawsuit Against California Science Center for Cancelling Intelligent Design Film
Finally, it seems that the filing of two separate lawsuits against the California Science Center for its blatant viewpoint discrimination when it censored Darwin’s Dilemma has caught the attention of the mainstream media. The Los Angeles Times is now reporting on the story. Strangely, the California Science Center (CSC) claims to have cancelled a contract with the American Freedom Alliance not because of something the AFA did, but rather because they didn’t like the press release put out by Discovery Institute. It might come as a shock to the CSC, but free speech is still protected in this country. The Institute can, and will, say whatever it wants to about the public activities of its scientists and researchers. The CSC Read More ›
PBS: Pushing Bad Science
As 2009 comes to an end, so does the delirium of “Darwin Year.” From “Darwin Day” on February 12 (Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday) to November 24 (the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species), Darwin’s disciples spared no expense (using mostly taxpayers’ money) in their exuberant celebrations, even though most of Darwin’s ideas were mistaken and his contributions to science were insignificant compared to those of hundreds of others–including (to name just a few) Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein in physics; Robert Boyle, Antoine Lavoisier and Willard Gibbs in chemistry; and Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Cuvier and Gregor Mendel in biology. What Darwin promoted was not empirical science but materialistic philosophy. As historian Neal C. Read More ›
Darwin and Mao
A reader of my blog, Paul Burnett taunts me: Go ahead, David, say it: “Darwin taught Hitler (and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot) how to kill millions of people.” That is of course a ridiculous parody of what I’ve written on Darwinism and its historical consequences, and I’ve never written a word about Darwin-Mao, but…now that you mention it, Paul, I just so happen to have before me on my desk China and Charles Darwin, by China scholar James Reeve Pusey of Bucknell University, published in 1983 by Harvard University Press. Pusey is a son of the illustrious late Harvard president Nathan Pusey. (They don’t give people names like that anymore, do they? Too bad.) Let’s just look up Read More ›
Bah Humbug! British Librarian Tries to Ban Explore Evolution in the Name of Darwin
It’s the holiday season, which means that cheer and values like charity, academic freedom, tolerance, and diversity are abounding–but apparently not among Darwin’s defenders in the United Kingdom. A recent angry editorial by the “Atheist Examiner” titled “Creationists try to sneak Intelligent Design into school libraries” tells the story — except that it’s not the actual story. The correct story is that “Truth in Science,” a British organization allied with a number of credible British scientists and academics, is offering Explore Evolution to school libraries. Contra the “Atheist Examiner” article, the textbook Explore Evolution does not argue for intelligent design, but rather presents students with the scientific evidence both for and against neo-Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design is not advocated in Read More ›