Exotic Science and Theology in Rome

This week’s conference in Rome on Darwin and evolution, nominally sponsored by the Gregorian University and Notre Dame “under the High Patronage of the Pontifical Council on Culture,” has a public relations budget to promote some conclusions that would seem to vary from the positions of Pope Benedict. The Council on Culture has little or no funding of its own for such science conferences and has had to accept non-Vatican funding — and the guidance and other strings that go with it. Intelligent design scientists not only are not present, as a consequence, but their views were misrepresented and trashed ahead of time by the conference organizers. Instead, alongside some rather interesting speakers, you will hear a parade of atheists, Read More ›

Making Hash of Evolutionary Psychology

Stuart Derbyshire, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Birmingham, has an absolutely scathing review (at Spiked) of the latest nonsense emanating from evolutionary psychologists. As Derbyshire has it in the first line: Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World is an unbearably stupid book. The authors, Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden, ‘explain’ war and violence by treating human beings as machines programmed by evolution to grab resources, form in-groups and pass on their genes. Women, according to the authors, are naturally more passive because they must invest more effort into rearing offspring, and men are naturally more aggressive because they can produce lots of offspring by being dominant. Read More ›

An Open Letter to The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) has announced its decision to boycott the State of Louisiana in retaliation for Louisiana Science Education Act passed last year by the Louisiana Legislature and signed by Governor Jindal. The effect of the new law is to allow teachers in Louisiana to use supplementary materials to teach controversial scientific theories without threat of recrimination. In a letter to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, SICB president Dr. Richard Satterlie has announced that his organization will hold its 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City, rather than in New Orleans as had been planned. Dr. Satterlie wrote: We will not hold the Society’s 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans…the Executive Committee voted to hold the 2011 Read More ›

“Geologists on Intelligent Design” Book Botches Attempts to Demonize Intelligent Design

The latest anti-intelligent design book to hit the shelves is a 2009 collection published by University of California Press, For the Rock Record: Geologists On Intelligent Design. Many of the contributors seem stuck in a timewarp, as if the last time they checked into the debate was 1980 when evolutionary geologists were fighting against young earth creationists. The book thus opens with a comparison of intelligent design (ID) to young earth creationism, proclaiming the “enormous joy and relief” (p. 1) that came when the authors read the Kitzmiller ruling that declared ID “a particularly pernicious variant of creationism we had hoped was banished a quarter-century before.” (p. 1) If you haven’t already guessed, the book reads more like a polemic Read More ›

Associated Press Corrects Misreporting on Iowa Evolution Academic Freedom Bill

The Associated Press has corrected an inaccurate article about the Iowa Academic Freedom bill which had stated that “The bill asserts that teaching religious theories of evolution falls under academic freedom. It would let teachers at all education levels teach religious theories as science and forbid them from discounting non-science based answers from students.” The bill, of course, says precisely the opposite, as it expressly states: “This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.” Thankfully, after being shown the actual text of the bill, the AP realized that it was erroneous to claim that the bill allows Read More ›