Solar Eclipses and Life

The basic idea is that meeting the requirements for the habitability of the Earth for observers makes it more likely that solar eclipses are possible.

ACLU Lawyer and ScienceBloggers Make Off-Base Arguments Against Coppedge Case

A law professor from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (who was previously elected head of the Southern California ACLU) was quoted in an article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune commenting on the David Coppedge’s lawsuit against Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL): “a case like his probably won’t have a shot in court, because courts have viewed intelligent design as a religious belief, rather than a scientific theory, according to Gary Williams, a professor at Loyola Law School.” This raises the question… Does it Matter to the Case Whether Intelligent Design is Religion? First, whether courts have or have not “viewed intelligent design as a religious belief” is irrelevant to Coppedge’s lawsuit. What matters is that, as the Coppedge v. Read More ›

Do the JPL Supervisors Who Demoted Coppedge Know Who Appears in The Privileged Planet?

The current travails of David Coppedge at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hit close to home. He’s being unjustly, perversely punished simply for lending copies of two ID documentaries, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet, the latter based on the book by Guillermo Gonzalez and yours truly. Guillermo, of course, suffered similar bigotry at Iowa State a few years ago, and endured (among other things) a barely disguised campaign to deny him tenure led by, among other people, an atheist professor of religion at Iowa State. It’s hard even to figure out what David Coppedge is supposed to have done wrong. There were no complaints against him by people to whom he had lent these documentaries. He wasn’t Read More ›

Reality Check: Oklahoma Darwinists’ “Gotcha” Moment at Cambrian Explosion Film Falls Flat

According to a live-blogger at the Southwestern premiere of “Darwin’s Dilemma” earlier tonight, a Darwinist during Q and A challenged Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells by charging that the interviews in the film of noted paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine (both evolutionists) were done a decade ago. “Are you aware that the interviews of Morris and Valentine were done 9 and 10 years ago?” the questioner asked. Apparently the implication was that the interviews were so old they no longer accurately reflected the views of Morris and Valentine. Except that the questioner was flat wrong. According to Illustra Media, with whom I checked tonight, the interviews were done specifically for this project in October and November of 2006 Read More ›