Tag Archives: intelligent design

Psychopathic Trolls and The Dark Tetrad

Chris Mooney at Slate reports on some actual psychological research that has been done on Internet trolls: [R]esearch, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling … Continue reading

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Why I Prefer Evolution to Intelligent Design

First, it is perverse to reject evolution outright. Darwin was largely right, and people who try to reset science to pre-Darwinian assumptions are engaged in folly. The converging lines of evidence from numerous scientific disciplines point to the fact that … Continue reading

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Is Our Universe A Computer Simulation?

In the above image snapped at the Getty Villa in Malibu, poor crocodile is no crocodile at all, but the representation of a crocodile; the simulacrum of a crocodile. Might you be a simulacrum as well?  This post is about … Continue reading

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Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Watch: Junk DNA is Not Junk

This is in the New York Times today: The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles … Continue reading

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Naturalism, Supernaturalism, and Motivated Reasoning

At the ID website, Uncommon Descent, a person who goes by the name of “Mirrortothesun” makes the following thread comment: Here’s the problem with every single post on this site, including this one. They are all examples of motivated reasoning. … Continue reading

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Was the Cambrian Explosion Really an Explosion?

Donald Prothero, a paleontologist, knows his fossils. And, in 2007, Columbia University Press published his book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. For it’s scope, clarity of writing, and visual attractiveness (it has lots of illustrative drawings, … Continue reading

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Dead Parrot Watch: The Multiverse Appears To Be in Trouble. Does That Mean Atheism Is in Trouble Too?

In 2008, cosmologist Bernard Carr of Queen Mary University of London, told a science journalist for Discover the following: If there is only one universe, you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a … Continue reading

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Is the Placebo Effect a Problem for Atheism?

Catholic journalist Denise O’Leary seems quite persuaded that the placebo effect stubbornly resists any plausible materialist explanation, and so is a problem for atheists. (O’Leary wrote, with a neuroscientist by the name of Mario Beauregard, an interesting book a few years back … Continue reading

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Evolution v. Creation Watch: Felisa Wolfe-Simon on the Implications of Arsenic Based Life

In the below BBC clip for an upcoming special on whether there is life on other planets, Felisa Wolfe-Simon says something to the interviewer that ought to blow everyone away. If what she has indeed recently found at Mono Lake is … Continue reading

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William Dembski: Noah’s Flood May Have Been Global

At Panda’s Thumb Jack Krebs has an interesting post on the famous IDer, William Dembski, and his apparent drift towards belief in young earth creationism, including the idea that Noah’s Flood was a global historical event. Krebs, for example, quotes William Dembski recently … Continue reading

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Intelligent Design v. The Multiverse Hypothesis: Astronomer John Gribbin Cleverly Splits the Difference Between Them

At the UK’s Telegraph, astronomer John Gribbin puts an intelligent design twist on the multiverse hypothesis: he writes that it’s possible—indeed, plausible—that “a very advanced civilisation”, knowing how to birth new universes via the creation of black holes, designed our universe with life-friendly … Continue reading

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Go West, Young Species? Like Ulysses and Darwin, Launch Out?

Exploiting an open territory appears to be a larger driver of big evolutionary changes than getting into an already crowded market and competing for local territorial niches, suggests a new scientific study that, at first glance, might seem to contradict Charles Darwin’s … Continue reading

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Evolution v. Creation Watch: The Cambrian Explosion (545 Million Years Ago), the Cambridge Explosion (1869), and Natural Selection Replaced by the Eschaton?

Here is a depiction of the HMS Cambridge firing a torpedo (Illustrated London News, 1869): And here’s a fossil from the Cambrian explosion (image source: Wikipedia).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     . And here’s my question: does the Cambrian explosion (the relatively sudden appearance of … Continue reading

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Jerry Coyne v. Jerry Fodor: The Great Divorce

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s book, What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), received a fair amount of attention (and drubbing) when it first came out in February. On Tuesday of this week, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne expressed dismay that Jerry Fodor, in a recent interview, continues … Continue reading

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Stairway to Gilligan’s Island: Jason Rosenhouse and Auguste Comte on Theology v. Science

At EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse takes after theology’s shell game: If theology must change every time scientists achieve consensus on something, then what good is it? If it is only allowed to make assertions about things that are completely divorced from … Continue reading

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The Holographic Universe: the Unbreakable Lightness of Being?

After reading yesterday’s mind-bending New York Times article on gravity (and the possibility that we live in a holographic universe), I think I’ve put it all together. But I need a very smart physicists or science oriented person to set … Continue reading

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Why neither intelligent design nor young earth creationism can ever function as part of the sciences

I’ve always liked this cartoon:

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This religious epidural is brought to you by Francisco Ayala

Geneticist Francisco Ayala, introduced with some soothing piano and string music, takes on the manner of a family physician, assuring his jittery audience of nonexperts that everything is just fine; there is no conflict between science and religion (and we can … Continue reading

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Equal time alongside global warming: biblical armageddon theory comes to the classroom

Teach the controversy? I love the science-and-religion-in-harmony diorama at the 1:20 mark. Did you catch it? It has two smiling scientists and a priest glibly declaring—“We can all agree”—as a meteor hurdles toward Earth.

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Backward Causation: William Dembski’s Desperate Ad Hoc Move, Ctd

One more thought on William Dembski’s recently published idea of “backward causation,” a term that he designates for salvaging the idea that death really did come into the world by the sin of Adam and Eve. Would you propose such a thing, … Continue reading

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