Judge Jones Nudges Judge Judy

Judge John E. Jones, a former trial attorney and State Liquor Control Board member who now is a federal judge for central Pennsylvania, is also a new phenomenon on the federal bench: a judge who, having made a ruling (e.g., the Dover case), goes on speaking tours and television shows to promote himself, his ruling and — yesterday — a PBS documentary on his ruling. Yesterday morning he was on the Today Show. Soon we will be asked to consider his views on the Iraq War or the writers’ strike in Hollywood. Maybe he should retire and start a talk show for Air America (where he also has appeared).There must have been others who have broken from the long-standing customary Read More ›

Should Dr. James Watson Enjoy Free Speech?

The furor over Dr. James Watson’s comments on the supposed racial inferiority of black people–resulting from evolution–caused cancellation of at least one of the Nobel scientist’s speeches in England this week. He may even have lost his job at Cold Spring Harbor. This brings a new element into the story.

Lucky for Koonin, he doesn’t teach at Baylor

I’ve already commented on the paper by Eugene Koonin and the Darwinists’ concern that it might show that there is a serious controversy over the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life at all, let alone in a gradual step-by-step process over eons of time.= Koonin challenges the standard Darwinian view of the tree of life. His research shows that it lacks the ability to explain life’s complexity, but he hasn’t been fired from the National Center for Biotechnology or lost his funding from the National Institute’s of Health (yet). Like Koonin, Michael Behe in his latest book The Edge of Evolution shows what evolution can do and what it can’t. Professor Robert Read More ›

The Spiritual Brain: An Argument Against Materialism

“The fact is materialism is stalled. It neither has any useful hypotheses for the human mind or spiritual experiences nor comes close to developing any. Just beyond lies a great realm that cannot even be entered via materialism, let alone explored.” (xiv) Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard notes at the beginning of his book The Spiritual Brain, co-authored with journalist Denyse O’Leary, that he belongs to a small minority of nonmaterialist neuroscientists. He is upfront about the fact that he “went into neuroscience in part because [he] knew experientially that such things [religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences (RSME)] can indeed happen.” Driven by his curiosity about what is happening to the brain during RSME, Beauregard and his colleague studied the spiritual Read More ›

Weikart Responds to Avalos

Iowa State atheist professor of religion Hector Avalos (yes, the same Professor Avalos who harassed Guillermo Gonzalez about astrobiology) seems to now consider himself an expert in modern European History as well. Avalos recently challenged (see: “Creationists for Geoncide“) the work of California State University, Stanislaus professor of history Richard Weikart. Weikart is author of the acclaimed From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany. Weikart recently responded to Avalos’s charges in a comment left at Panda’s Thumb. I’ve pasted it below for wider distribution: