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Materialist Science Fiction Promoted to Students at a Local Public Library
Recently I went to a public library to do some work, and I saw a book featured on top of a reference desk titled Life on Other Planets (by Rhonda Lucas Donald, Watts Library, 2003). The title page featured little green men with big alien bug-eyes, the kind of picture you might see on some nutty UFO website. The book and its display were clearly aimed at students — perhaps junior high or high school-aged. Fun and silly pictures don’t bother me if they get kids interested in reading about science. The problem here was that when I opened the book, what I found was not science, but science-fiction. Where Does Your Information Come From? The second page of the Read More ›
Who Would Connect “the Legacy of Darwin,” Medicine, and Eugenics?
P.Z. Myers and I finally agree on something! In a recent post, I described several actual Darwinian medicine “theories”: ‘Children Hate Vegetables Because of Ancestral Reproductive Advantage of Avoiding Toxins’ or ‘We Will Evolve Oiler Skin Because of Frequent Bathing’ or ‘X-Linked Color Blindness Evolved to Help Paleolithic Male Hunters See Camouflage.’ As I pointed out in my original post, these theories are real, and in fact represent the cutting edge of Darwinian medicine. Myers refers to these Darwinian medicine research projects as “silly”: No, none of those very silly talks were given. And he’s right. What he fails to note, however, is that these theories differ little in substance from the ephemeral corpus of Darwinian just-so stories. These silly Read More ›
Darwinian Medicine and Military History
Several Darwinist bloggers have taken exception to my observation that Darwinian stories about the origin of diseases contribute little of significance to medical education, research, or practice. Orac responds: …that creationist neurosurgeon with a penchant for laying down hunks o’ hunks o’ burnin’ stupid on a regular basis, that Energizer Bunny of antievolution nonsense, Dr. Michael Egnor has spouted off on evolution again in a way that got my attention. It came in response to a post by PZ about a conference he attended entitled Understanding evolution: the legacy of Darwin, which served as a launching pad for Dr. Egnor to go right down the rabbit hole…The stupid, it burns. It sears. My neurons are crying out in pain. Once Read More ›
The Mind and Materialist Superstition
Materialism Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Superstition 1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition 2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary Mind (in a human or other conscious being) The element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges. Materialists have taken note of the growing efforts by non-materialist neuroscientists to point out the deep problems with the Read More ›
The False Dilemma: “Science or Religion?”
CSC fellow David Klinghoffer has a recent column in the Jerusalem Post which explains how intelligent design is different from creationism and examines the difficulty many religious believers have with Darwin’s theory: When Jews and Christians alike aren’t being forced into false dilemmas, we are given alternatives to Darwinian theory that can be imagined as reconciling science and theology only if the whole subject is kept cloudy and confused. Thus the two most recent popes have appeared to speak of the Church’s comfort with “evolution” but without defining the term. Does it mean an unguided process or a guided one? One that gives scientific evidence of a Designer’s purpose, or not? The ambiguity and hedging probably comes from a fear Read More ›