"Common Sense Atheist" Smacks Christian Apologist William Lane Craig: “Basically, Craig defends his faith against the evidence the same way my mom does – 'I know because I know that I know that I know.' And that’s it. 'I know in my heart that Christianity is true, and I know my heart is right because my heart tells me it is right.' That’s, like, the dumbest thing ever. It’s intellectual suicide. It is extreme gullibility and credulity. It is also reveals profoundly arrogant double standard to assert that my heart provides irrefutable proof of metaphysical truths, while the hearts of everyone who disagrees with me deceives them."
Should Evolutionary Psychology Be Required for Med School Training? "Nesse’s paper cites examples of where evolutionary knowledge can benefit those working in medicine. An awareness of why humans have evolved the fever response, for example, could help doctors understand when it is safe to use drugs to block fever. Rubbish. Pharmaceutical studies on living patients in real time do that."
Anti-Climate Change, Anti-Human: "There is no nihilism like the nihilism of a 9-year-old. 'Why should I bother,' one of them recently demanded of me, when he was presented with the usual arguments in favor of doing homework: 'By the time I'm grown up, the polar ice caps will have melted and everyone will have drowned.' Watching the news from Copenhagen last weekend, it wasn't hard to understand where he got that idea."
Requiem for the Dollar:"Ben S. Bernanke doesn't know how lucky he is...Section 19 of this country's founding monetary legislation, the Coinage Act of 1792, prescribed the death penalty for any official who fraudulently debased the people's money. Was the massive printing of dollar bills to lift Wall Street (and the rest of us, too) off the rocks last year a kind of fraud? If the U.S. Senate so determines, it may send Mr. Bernanke back home to Princeton." H/T: Mangan
Derrida in the Laboratory: “Post modernism is creeping into science. The bizarre rationalizations for the self-admitted scientific fraud perpetrated in the ClimateGate scandal are a radical departure from traditional scientific standards…The leading scientific journal Nature has defended all of these scientific crimes by asserting that these scientists were under stress… Peer review is the jury that decides what counts as valid science. Manipulation of peer-review is to science what jury tampering is to justice; it's a crime.”
7 Mysterious Moments in Evolution: "Scientists like to say evolution is a fact... Yet no one has ever demonstrated that genetic changes passed down to future generations can give birth to genuinely new life-forms. No one has witnessed an ape turning into a human, or a reptile turning into a bird. The changes required to go from the first living cell to everything alive today resist our understanding. What are the top 7 transformations that refuse to give up their secrets?..." H/T: Darwiniana
Survey of Professional Philosophers Conducted: David Bourget and David Chalmers have released the results of the largest survey of professional philosophers ever conducted. There were 931 respondents from 99 leading philosophy departments around the world. The most interesting result? 73% of the respondents support atheism; 15% theism; and 12% "other." H/T: Luke
'Tea party' Polls Better Than GOP:"Should the 'Tea Party' movement organize itself to run congressional candidates across the country, it would poll better than the Republican Party, according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports. In the national telephone poll of 1,000 likely voters released Monday, 23% said they preferred to vote for a candidate from the yet unformed “Tea Party” for Congress in 2010. The Republican Party trailed the non-existent political organization by 5 percentage points, getting the support of 18% of respondents."
The Fiction Of Climate Science: "In 1974, the National Science Board announced: 'During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age'…From the witch doctors of old to the elected officials today, scaring the bejesus out of the populace maintains their status.
Vive La Différence! But How Did It Begin?: "If we accept evolutionary theory we are required to imagine that each animal that today reproduces sexually, in the distant past was going about its business of reproducing asexually, dividing and budding away, when all of a sudden it accidentally produced an egg and at the same time, in the same locale, another animal of the same species just happened to make a sperm cell. Also, simultaneously and independently they each accidentally acquired the apparatus to get the egg and sperm together so they could produce offspring with a full set of genes. Are you buying this?… To my mind, the very fact of sexual differentiation necessitates, yes, demands a plan. And a plan demands a planner."
At Monday's White House press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was challenged by a reporter over the Obama Admisnitration's decision to press ahead with a climate change treaty in light of the recent "ClimateGate" scandal...
Lester Kingsolving, WCBM Radio Baltimore: “Are you aware of the list of 31,000 scientists who oppose this idea of global warming? 6,000 of them are PhDs.”*
Robert Gibbs: “I don’t doubt that there’s such a list, Lester. I think there’s no real scientific basis for the dispute over this.”
Gibbs says there’s “no real scientific basis for the dispute” just after being told that 31,000 scientists ARE disputing it? How Orwellian is that!
Yesterday, Clive Crook - the Senior Editor of The Atlantic Monthly and typically a mouthpiece for bland, conventional thinking - wrote a heartfelt piece on the implications of "ClimateGate" for the scientific and political communities...
In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back...
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And... this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu. It goes to the core of that process...
This is not an academic exercise. We contemplate outlays of trillions of dollars to fix this supposed problem. Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot. These people are willing to subvert the very methods--notably, peer review--that underwrite the integrity of their discipline. Is this really business as usual in science these days?
Dr. Michael Egnor analyzes Cook's turnaround here.
Intelligent Design Film Shut Down By Museum:“A decision at a popular museum in Los Angeles to shut down debate over Darwin's theory of evolution has prompted a lawsuit alleging officials violated the First Amendment rights of supporters of a documentary exploring Intelligent Design…It claims museum CEO Jeffrey Rudolph ‘was pressured to cancel the event by colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Southern California, the Huntington Library and elsewhere.’ But as a state agency, it is not allowed to 'suppress legitimate discussion.'"
Year of Darwin Lecture to Feature 'What Darwin Got Wrong': “In his forthcoming book with co-author Massimo Piattelli-Palmarinin, What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, February 2010), [Jerry] Fodor argues that the Darwinian account of evolution is committed to a fallacious inference from “creatures with such and such a trait are selected,’ to “creatures are selected for having such and such a trait.’ He argues that this fallacy is fatal and suggests new ways of thinking about evolution.” H/T: Darwiniana
Darwinism Used as Cudgel Against Human Exceptionalism: "When Darwinism is brought to bear to undermine human exceptionalism and reduce us to merely another animal in the forest–as opposed to explaining biological processes–it gives aid to powerful and profoundly destructive social forces. So, no more complacency. No more pretending that the elites still generally believe that all men are created equal or that Jefferson’s insight is still considered a self-evident truth. No more blithely assuming that if one can just prove that a threatened life is human, that it will necessarily win the debate over whether the most vulnerable among us can be killed or objectified. It really is time to defend human exceptionalism against all its foes. I mean if being human is not what, ipso facto, gives rise to ultimate moral value, the very principle of universal human rights becomes intellectually untenable." H/T: Darwiniana
Dr. Michael Egnor on Climategate: "I'm not sure that the scientific community can or will respond to this debacle in a courageous or ethical way. The ID-Darwinism debate clearly demonstrates that venality and shameless self-interest, as well as a toxic leftist-atheist ideology, runs very deep in the scientific community. Science surely provides much benefit to mankind, but we may need to pursue scientific truth with a different set of scientists than the ones we have now. Surely many many scientists knew of the frauds so clearly documented in the ClimateGate scandal; where were the august scientific organizations--the Royal Academy, the UN's IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science--while this fraud was growing and gaining power. The obvious truth is that these citadels of organized science were part of the fraud, or at least acquiescent in it...It may well be that the public will be forced to protect itself from organized science, as we now protect ourselves from organized crime."
Barbara Hollingsworth on Scientific Corruption: When former Cambridge biochemist Douglas Axe computed the chances that the four amino acids that form DNA could self-arrange themselves into just one functional protein, he found it was 1:10164 -- or less than the odds of finding one marked subatomic particle in the entire observable universe. In other words, the evolutionary story now universally taught to students fails to account for the origin of the basic information that forms the very blueprint of life.… 'If we've defined science such that it cannot get to the true answer, we've got a pretty lame definition of science,' Axe said." H/T: Darwiniana
The Dangerous Mystery of Consciousness:"If I had the time, I would establish an international Mysterian society for those who recognize that the universe is still a profoundly mysterious place and yet don't want to be alone thinking dark thoughts about it. That's really all I want to do. It bothers me. I want it to bother others, too… I don't think religion has the answers, but I don't think science does either. Yet. Whether it ever will is the fourth great mystery." H/T: Darwiniana
On Monday, I channeled my inner Darwinist by attacking Global Warming with the King of All Questions: "But is it science?"
Then yesterday, I stumbled upon a wonderful website that compiles ALL of the horrible things scientists blame on Global Warming. And it's a LONGGG list...
Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, poppies more potent, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pressure changes, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, Alaska reshaped, moves, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra to burn, Arctic warming (not), Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, barbarisation, beer and bread prices to soar, beer better, beer shortage, beer worse, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds return early, birds shrink, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down, blood contaminated, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brain eating amoebae, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, British monsoon, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north, carbon crimes, camel deaths, cancer deaths in England, cannibalism, caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened, childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase, coast beauty spots lost, cockroach migration, coffee threatened, coffee berry borer, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia, consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral fish suffer, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, cost of trillions, cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened, creatures move uphill, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change, cyclones (Australia), danger to kid's health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague, deadly virus outbreaks, death rate increase (US), deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, dig sites threatened, disappearance of coastal cities, disasters, diseases move north, dog disease, Dolomites collapse, dozen deadly diseases - or not, drought, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, early marriages, early spring, earlier pollen season, Earth axis tilt, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down, earthquakes, earthquakes redux, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, ladybirds, pikas, polar bears, possums, walrus, toads, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species, not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches, salamanders, tropical insects) experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting, famine, farmers benefit, farmers go under, farm output boost, fashion disaster, fever, figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fires fanned in Nepal, fish bigger, fish catches drop, fish downsize, fish catches rise, fish deaf, fish get lost, fish head north, fish shrinking, fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flames stoked, flesh eating disease, flies on Everest, flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, flora dispersed, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), football team migration, footpath erosion, forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased, frosts, fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, geese decline in Hampshire, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacial growth, glacier grows (California), glacier wrapped, global cooling, global dimming, glowing clouds, golf course to drown, golf Masters wrecked, grandstanding, grasslands wetter, gravity shift, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, great tits cope, greening of the North, Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, haggis threatened, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harmful algae, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, health risks, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, HIV epidemic, homeless 50 million, hornets, high court debates, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes, hurricane reduction, hurricanes fewer, hurricanes not, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice age, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, icebergs, illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada), industry threatened, infectious diseases, inflation in China, insect explosion, insect invasion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of alien worms, invasion of cats, invasion of crabgrass, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of king crabs, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, Italy robbed of pasta, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky, jet stream drifts north, Kew Gardens taxed, kidney stones, killer cornflakes, killing us, kitten boom, koalas under threat, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, large trees decline, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers' income increased (surprise surprise!), lawyers want more, legionnaires' surge, lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, locust plagues suppressed, lush growth in rain forests, Malaria, mammoth dung melt, mango harvest fails, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Meat eating to stop, Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, Melanoma decline, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migration difficult (birds), migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys at risk, monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days, more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountaineers fears, mountains break up, mountains green and flowering, mountains taller, mortality lower, Myanmar cyclone, narwhals at risk, National Parks damaged, National security implications, native wildlife overwhelmed, natural disasters quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying, oaks move north, ocean acidification, ocean acidification faster, ocean dead spots, ocean dead zones unleashed, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up, oceans noisier, Olympic Games to end, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, Pacific dead zone, penguin chicks frozen, penguin chicks smaller, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, pines decline, plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plants lose protein, plants march north, plants move uphill, polar bears aggressive, polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears deaf, polar bears drowning, polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness, puffin decline, pushes poor women into prostitution, rabid bats, radars taken out, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees, reindeer endangered, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease, ruins ruined, Russia under pressure, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, seismic activity, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sexual promiscuity, shark attacks, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, shrinking ponds, shrinking sheep, shrinking shrine, Sidney Opera House wiped out, ski resorts threatened, skin cancer, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall decrease, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snow thicker, soaring food prices, societal collapse, soil change, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders getting bigger, spiders invade Scotland, squid aggressive giants, squid larger, squid population explosion, squid tamed, squirrels reproduce earlier, stick insects, stingray invasion, storms wetter, stormwater drains stressed, street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement, teenage drinking, terrorism, terrorists (India), threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tigers eat people, tomatoes rot, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, toxic seaweed, trade barriers, trade winds weakened, traffic jams, transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed, trees in trouble, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, truffles down, tundra plant life boost, turtles crash, turtle feminised, turtles lay earlier, UFO sightings, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina, uprooted - 6 million, Vampire moths, Venice flooded, violin decline, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, walrus stampede, war, war between US and Canada, wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, wasps, water bills double, water scarcity (20% of increase), water stress, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whale beachings, whales lose weight, whales move north, whales wiped out, wheat yields crushed in Australia, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, winds stronger, winds weaker, wine - Australian baked, wine - harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine - more English, wine - England too hot, wine -German boon, wine - no more French , wine passé (Napa), wine - Scotland best, wine stronger, winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World War 4, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.
At this point, I have to take off my glasses, stroke my chin, and ask: "But is it science?"
For the political elites who know very little science (George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and John Debryshire come to mind), they like to shrug off the I.D./Darwin debate by asking I.D. supporters (who aren’t there to defend themselves): “But is it Science?”
I guess they ask that question because they think I.D. supporters will reluctantly admit that the answer is “No,” and thus, they can end the debate in 5 seconds flat.
Apparently, the question, “But is it science?” has some unknown magical power.
Over Thanksgiving, I’m going to test this theory for myself. When I’m sitting at the kitchen table, and my mom asks me to pass the turkey, I’m going to look at her scornfully and ask, “But is it science?” That oughta shut her up! ;)
But seriously…When I read articles like the one below, I really do have to ask, “But is it science?”
Harvard Says Kidney Stones, Malaria Are Climate Risks
Kidney stones, malaria, Lyme disease, depression and respiratory illness all may increase with global warming, researchers at Harvard Medical School said.
Oh brother! Have we learned nothing from the last few days??
For the purposes of this blog, the only reason I occasionally cover the Global Warming controversy is because it reveals - in a way most people can understand - how the Scientific Establishment - despite all of its protests of being "objective" and "unbiased" - actually is motivated by an anti-life ideology while working to impose that ideology on the rest of us.
The same people who push Global Warming down our throats are the same people who push Darwinism down our throats. In the case of both Darwinism and Global Warming, scientific and political elites advance junk science as "Da Truth" and ostracize anyone who interferences with that "Truth."
With that mind, I hope this new, remarkable scandal about the IPCC - the Nobel Prize-winning organization which is the loudest voice for global warming scaremongering - gets major media attention.
The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet…
As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more…
Here are a few tasters…If genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise…
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal…
Hadley CRU, established in 1990 by the Met Office, is a government-funded body which is supposed to be a model of rectitude…
If the Hadley CRU scandal is true, it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.
The Selective Compassion of Karen Armstrong: "Among people who know nothing about religion and don’t care much about factual information (an unfortunately large demographic), Karen Armstrong has become something of a sensation. But for those who think that claims about religion, ethics, or history should have some grounding in reality, Armstrong is considered an embarrassment." H/T: Darwiniana
A Christian Defends Ayn Rand: "There is one aspect of Rand's worldview, known as objectivism, which any Christian should appreciate: her belief in absolute reality. Rand believed in an objective world external to man's senses, and with it, absolute truth and morality…Rand's belief in objective truth and morality, regardless of its form, is an aberration among atheists."
Ken Wilber Rejects Darwinism: “Folks, give me a break on this one. I have a Master’s degree in biochemistry, and a Ph.D. minus thesis in biochemistry and biophysics, with specialization in the mechanism of the visual process. I did my thesis on the photoisomerization of rhodopsin in bovine rod outer segments. I know evolutionary theory inside out, including the works of Dawkins et al…. Instead of a religious preacher like Dawkins, start with something like Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. And then guess what? Neo-Darwinian theory can’t explain shit. Deal with it.”
Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution: "Both at the Dover trial and in his lectures and books (such as Only a Theory), one of Dr. Kenneth Miller’s primary responses to Michael Behe’s arguments for irreducible complexity is to cite evidence for common ancestry. This class of evidence does not refute Behe because at most, evidence of sequence similarity in DNA demonstrates common ancestry—not a Darwinian evolutionary pathway. Indeed, on closer inspection, it turns out that much of Miller’s favorite evidence does not even provide a strong case for common descent: Miller assumes that functional genetic similarities must result from common descent, ignoring the possibility that such biochemical similarities might result from common design upon a functional blueprint."
Experimental Data Force Researchers to Admit There’s “No Such Thing As Junk RNA:”"Originally, proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution lauded 'junk' DNA as functionless genetic garbage that showed life is the result of blind and random mutational events. Then 'junk' DNA was disproved by the discovery that the vast majority of DNA is being transcribed into RNA. Did the failure of this Darwinian assumption cause evolutionists to terminate their love affair with biological 'junk?' Of course not. They just shifted their argument back, claiming that the cell is full of 'junk RNA'—DNA that is being transcribed into RNA but still does nothing in the cell. Earlier this year we reported on a Nature paper suggesting function for 'junk' RNA. Now a Science DailyNews article is confirming that finding."
A Tip of the Hat to an Honest Darwinist:“Incremental changes in an existing biological structure the alterations in beak shape of the finches that so impressed Charles Darwin during his voyage to the Galapagos Islands, for instance – can indeed be attributed to natural selection. Even most creationists do not deny this. But when it comes to the innovation of entirely new structures ('morphological novelties') such as segmentally organized bodies (seen in earthworms, insects, and vertebrates such as humans, but not jellyfish or molluscs), or the hands and feet of tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs), Darwin’s mechanism comes up short.
New Interest in “Near-Death Experiences:” On Oct. 16, CNN.com’s lead story was about NDEs, although their headline was unfortunately titled, Doctor Says Near-Death Experiences are in the Mind. Umm, they’re not. But anyhoo, the CNN.com is article is part of a series about NDEs called Cheating Death. One excerpt – a quote from Bob Schriever, co-founder of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association: "Why are so many people dreaming the same thing? How can so many people, and there's hundreds of thousands of people who have experienced this, how can we all be dreaming the same thing and describe the exact same thing?"
Poll: U.S. Belief in Global Warming is Cooling: "Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says…Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities — such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles — are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 percent from 2006."
A Novel about Aristotle? Annabelle Lyon’s new book, The Golden Mean, looks very interesting. Unfortunately, the price at Amazon.com is a steep $32.95.
Einstein once asked, "Does Evil Exist?": A short video reveals his answer.
A Stunning Global Warming Fraud Exposed:"A set of data long used in support of the anthropogenic global warming claim has turned out to be an out and out fraud."
Italian Scientist Reproduces Shroud of Turin: "An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake."
Rabbi Jon Hausman on the Yale-Mohammed Cartoon Controversy: "Honestly, I would not send my child to any school where there is such uniformity and conformity of thought and attitude...It is clear that the university suffers from the malaise of relativist truth and the multicultural ethic...In the final analysis, I believe that the university is lost."
The Simpsons Mock The Secret: "On last night's episode of The Simpsons, Bart got Mrs. Krabappel fired from Springfield Elementary by spiking her coffee. His guilt eventually got the better of him, but instead of confessing immediately, he went to the bookstore and bought his ex-teacher a copy of The Answer instead ('available wherever dubious quasi-scientific self-help books are sold'). Edna opened a muffin shop as a result of The Answer, which she hated.
Is Vox Day a Miserable, Pretentious Jerk? Nah, that's impossible!.."I came here with the genuine wish to learn why people believe what they believe and find myself so terribly disappointed. Here is a blogger that instead of explaining himself prefers to sling insults at others. I do not understand his letters to the comprehensible Luke and so am branded unintelligent. I am not unintelligent...He insults the idle reader who is now adding another name to the list of hateful Christians, increasing the size of the wedge between me and faith."Gosh, I have no idea what this guy is talking about!
New VFR discussion, Darwinian Conservatives Reveal Themselves as Cultural and Moral Relativists: My comment: "Atheists are not people who are willing to risk bodily harm or death for noble principles such as 'freedom' or 'democracy.' By definition, they would rather be slaves than martyrs. Decades from now, in Europe, that's exactly what they'll be."
A Very Quick and Dirty Recap of Liberals' Darwinists Paradox: My comment: "Both conservatives and liberals have a lot to lose from Darwinism, as you say. The conservatives lose faith; the liberals lose equality. Maybe that's an incentive for both groups to pierce through the Darwinian propoganda and decide whether or not Darwinism is 'Da Truth' it claims to be."
Free Will is Not an Illusion After All: "Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn't exist is being challenged."
Modern Evolutionary Synthesis - Science Stopper?: I'm not a scientist (I only play one in the blogosphere), so I can't judge whether this analysis is valid or not, but it strikes me as accurate: "Carl Woese and Nigel Goldenfeld offer a scathing history of how the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis stagnated the study of evolution in microbiology...'The major wrong turn in biology’s course was its conceptualization and subsequent handling of the problem of the gene. It would come to a point where the discipline had to choose between the obvious biology of the situation and the tenets of reductionism. Molecularists choose the latter, thereby taking off the table a major biological question.'"
Larry Arnhart's Reviewof Hitler's Ethic:"Proponents of Darwinian ethics--like myself--should be honest in recognizing the impressive evidence that Weikart marshalls from Hitler's writings and speeches to show how Hitler's thought and actions were driven by a coherent view of Darwinian ethics."
Irving Kristol, Darwin Doubter, RIP: Kristol:"'Evolution' is no simple established scientific orthodoxy, and to teach it as such is an exercise in dogmatism. It is reasonable to suppose that if evolution were taught more cautiously, as a conglomerate idea consisting of conflicting hypotheses rather than as an unchallengeable certainty, it would be far less controversial. As things now stand, the religious fundamentalists are not far off the mark when they assert that evolution, as generally taught, has an unwarranted anti-religious edge to it."
Scientists Pull An About Face About Global Warming:"Prof. Mojib Latif...is one of the leading climate modellers in the world...Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN's World Climate Conference--an annual gathering of the so-called "scientific consensus" on man-made climate change --Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering 'one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.'
Chuck Colson Uses My God/Dog Analogy to Defend I.D: I doubt Mr. Colson is reading my blog, though. I might have picked up the analogy subconsciously from someone else.
Research Finds that Atheists are Most Hated and Distrusted Minority:Personally, I don't hate any minority group, so I don't condone the intolerance indicated by this survey. Having said that, it might worthwhile for the Atheist community to do some soul-searching (pun intended) about why there is so much vitriol toward their beliefs. No, I don't want to "blame the victim." But let's face it: If modern atheists consider their mission to actively undermine religious belief (as opposed to the traditional atheist ethos of going with the currents of Western life) than they shouldn't be shocked when believers (80-90% of the population) react negatively.
From the "They Keep Pulling Me Back In" Department: Before I was essentially kicked out of Vox Day's blog, I participated in his discussion about feminism. One of my comments:"I can't find a direct link between feminism and the culture of booty calls, Internet porn, World of Warcraft, etc. Is modern feminism harmful? Yes. And is there a 'quality gap' between the sexes today? Yes. But there's still enough good women out there to justify holding men to the same high standard that we've always done throughout history (and even if the feminists don't keep those standards, we - as men - should). In addition, Novaseeker, a pro-Gamer blogger, has a fine essay, The Happiness Gap, which is worth reading.
**UPDATE, DEC. 8, 2009**
As part of a recent discussion at Luke’s website on the subject of “free will,” Brian G. made an excellent point…
In my view the problem with Libet's experiment is that it asked people to record the time when they felt the will to act. The problem is that it neglects an obvious part of the choice. As soon as the researcher explains the experiment, the person is making judgments about what he is going to do. The person might be thinking, "ok, it makes no difference which button I press, so I'll just press the one I 'feel like' pressing." But this itself is part of the choice. The person chose to let their subconscious do the work in selecting an arbitrary button. Then the researcher finds that the readiness potential proceeds the conscience choice. But the real choice was made when the person first was given instructions, and this had to be done through the conscious mind or else he could not understand the instructions of the experimenter.
To me it seems that the "I" must really be doing something. I would expect this even if it could be shown to be only a product of evolution. If the I doesn't do anything, why is it there? Natural selection is only interested in survival, not in giving us a show. A conscious mind that makes real choices, could help in survival. A conscious mind that only thinks it's making real choices cannot help survival.
Reincarnated: Our Son is a World War II Hero Come to Life: "A lifelong Christian, it was not the answer he had sought for his son's behavior. But he came to believe James was the reincarnation of a World War II fighter pilot; a man who had been shot down in his plane and struggled to escape as it caught fire; a hero. The idea seems so preposterous as to be unbelievable. Yet in their new book, Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation Of A World War II Fighter Pilot, Bruce and his wife, Andrea, lay out some compelling evidence.
Why AI Is a Dangerous Dream:"Q: Are we close to building a machine that can meaningfully be described as sentient? A: I'm an empirical kind of guy, and there is just no evidence of an artificial toehold in sentience. It is often forgotten that the idea of mind or brain as computational is merely an assumption, not a truth. When I point this out to 'believers' in the computational theory of mind, some of their arguments are almost religious. They say, 'What else could there be? Do you think mind is supernatural?'''
Shakespeare and Monkeys: One of Lawrence Auster's new essays includes a point by me on how Shakespeare and monkeys disprove Darwinist theory. Huh? Well, click on the link.
Also, please note that I've added a bunch of new websites to my Blog List. Some of these bloggers (Roissy, for instance) are people I strongly disagree with, but - at a minimum - they're interesting and write (at least tangentially) on topics pertaining to The Mustard Seed.
Because the current "reasonably enlightened group of people" in charge of China, at the moment, can just impose "politically difficult but critically important policies" like raising gas prices to encourage clean power investment and so on.
Jonah Goldberg: “I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it's the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn't picky in this regard). This is the argument for an "economic dictatorship" pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It's the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.”
Mark Steyn: The technocratic argument — that there are no legitimate philosophical or policy differences, merely correct solutions that all experts agree on and that democratic politics merely obstructs — has been used to justify totalitarian regimes from Germany and Italy to the rinky-dinkiest post-colonial African basket-case backwater [TW note: This is consistent with my theory that modern liberalism is a product of relativism. See my essay, From Rorty to Obama to Beyond].
But what's even weirder about Friedman's valentine to the Politburo is that on his big bugbear — "climate change" — the Chinese have explicitly rejected the cap-&-trade/emissions reduction regime he urges upon us. Having no public opinion or Friedmanite media to worry about at home, the ChiComs told the "international community" to go take a hike.
Just in the past few months Tom Friedman’s “reasonably enlightened group” of Chinese dictators has jailed blogger Wu Baoqun for posting information that the government forced Chinese peasants to sell their land at extremely low prices, so that the Communist Party could auction that land off for a hefty profit.
But complaining about government expropriations from peasants is not all the CCP has been up to. Let’s take one of Mr. Friedman’s pet issues, the environment. His favorite enlightened despots have sent Sun Xiaodi , a Gansu environmental activist and recipient of the 2006 Nuclear-Free Future Award and his daughter Sun Haiyan, to re-education-through-labor camps for exposing official corruption and nuclear waste pollution in GansuProvince. Likewise, the CCP has sent activists Wu Lihong and Tang Zhirong to jail for for complaining about industrial pollution.
It appears that for the enlightened dictatorship that rules China, one is free to build electric cars and solar panels, particularly if these products can make a hefty profit for the CCP and businessmen connected to the Party. An added bonus for Chinese producers of alternative energy is positive press in the New York Times. But if you are just an ordinary Joe (or Zhou) seeking some recourse against industrial pollution and hazardous waste, jail time is the most likely outcome.
From the publisher's book page: Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change…
The authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.
The savvy Chinese rulers may be first out of the blocks to assuage greenhouse emissions and they will succeed by delivering orders. They will recognize that the alternative is famine and social disorder
Let us contrast this with the indecisiveness of the democracies which together produce approximately the other half of the world’s greenhouse emissions. It is perhaps reasonable to ask the reader a question. Taking into account the performance of the democracies in the reduction of emissions over the past decade, do you feel that the democracies are able and willing to reduce their emissions by 60-80 per cent this century or perhaps more importantly by approximately 10 per cent each decade?
If you say “yes” then you fly in the face of a track record of persistent failure in a wide range of environmental management.
There is the dismaying whiff here of the 1930s and the loss of faith in those years by political elites and the chattering classes in the future of parliamentary democracy as measured against the robust and healthy decision-making processes of those, uh, non-parliamentary systems.
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