Month: January 2008
The Facts about Intelligent Design: A Response to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science, Evolution, and Creationism
I have written an extensive response to the National Academy of Sciences’ new anti-ID booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The full response, The Facts about Intelligent Design: A Response to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science, Evolution, and Creationism, can be read online here or downloaded as a PDF. Permission is freely granted to reproduce the document for educational use. Below are some excerpts from the rebuttal: IntroductionA 1982 poll found that only 9% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes. Two years later, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued its first Science and Creationism booklet, stating that science and religion occupy “separate and mutually exclusive realms.” Public skepticism of evolution remained high–a 1993 Read More ›
Materialist Neuroscience and the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness
Materialist neurologist Dr. Steven Novella recently took Deepak Chopra to task for Chopra’s support for mind-body dualism. Chopra, a respected physician and professor of medicine who has written and lectured extensively on spirituality in medicine, had pointed out the numerous problems raised by a dogmatic materialist understanding of the mind-brain problem. Materialists believe that the mind in a sense doesn’t exist as a separate entity; it’s merely a state of the brain, caused entirely by neurons and neurochemistry. Novella states:
New NAS Document Science, Evolution, and Creationism Misrepresents the Flagellum
One could write many pages correcting the inaccurate information in the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) new version of Science, Evolution and Creationism. One of its most egregious errors is that it blatantly misrepresents the flagellum. It states, “For example, in the case of the bacterial flagellum, there is no single, uniform structure that is found in all flagellar bacteria.” (pg. 40) While technically this statement may be true if one looks at the fine-grain of the amino-acid sequence of every single protein among flagellum-bearing bacteria, there most certainly are highly conserved flagellar parts. In this regard, this statement is extremely misleading and inaccurate. Consider the conclusions, directly to the contrary of the NAS, of Mark J. Pallen et al.‘s Read More ›
William F. Buckley Praises New Berlinski Book
In April, Random House will release a brand new book by CSC senior fellow David Berlinski, titled The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. Who better than an agnostic to argue with atheists about science?William F. Buckley likes it. “Berlinski’s book is everything desirable: it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing, and of course vastly learned. I congratulate him.” –William F. Buckley Jr. And, so does Michael Behe. “With high style and light-hearted disdain, David Berlinski deflates the intellectual pretensions of the scientific atheist crowd. Maybe they can recite the Periodic Table by heart, but the secular Berlinski shows that this doesn’t get them very far in reasoning about much weightier matters.”–Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biological Sciences, Lehigh Read More ›
Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 14: “What would Darwin do?” (from JudgingPBS.com)
[Editor’s Note: This is slide 14 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS presents a thoroughly pro-Darwin only account of the debate over evolution. In fact, there are many reasons why we should teach the controversy over Darwinian evolution: (1) Congress supports such a policy:“The Conferees recognize that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to Read More ›