Snap, Crackle … Chirp? Or, Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places

The silence is only eerie if you try to listen too hard. Efforts to confirm that there is intelligence elsewhere in the universe have, to put it mildly, fizzled. Each new theory about why we can’t find intelligent life anywhere else in the universe ends up like a damp firecracker: there’s a bunch of crackling in the blogosphere, but there’s never any bang. So. It seems that Paul Davies has published the equivalent of a benign stick of TNT reiterating all the failed attempts, and then coming up with a few new zany ideas. Instead, he might consider reading in Signature in the Cell about the evidence for intelligent design that booms out of DNA right here on this planet.

Seeing Ghosts in the Bushes — Or How to Keep the Theory of Evolution from Breaking Your Heart and Driving You Crazy

What would be evidence against evolution, and very strong evidence at that, would be the discovery of even a single fossil in the wrong geological stratum….But not a single solitary fossil has ever been found before it could have evolved. Richard Dawkins (2009, pp. 146-7) Professor Dawkins is right: you can’t be older than your own grandfather, all country-western songs notwithstanding.

Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District: Evolution May Be Taught Even if it Conflicts With Religious Beliefs

Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District is a well-known case from the 9th Circuit in 1994 where a federal court of appeals found that it is legal to teach evolution even if a teacher feels it conflicts with his religious beliefs. While the court was correct to hold that it is perfectly legal to require that evolution be part of the curriculum, unfortunately they expressed no sympathy whatsoever for the millions of Americans who feel that teaching evolution is not religiously neutral. 1. Summary In Peloza v. Capistrano, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a teacher can be ordered to teach evolution, even if the theory conflicts with his or her religious beliefs.93 John Peloza, a high Read More ›

Listen in as Stephen Meyer Debates Peter Atkins on the U.K.’s Premier Radio

UPDATED: Today, Premier Radio UK is airing a debate recorded earlier this week between Signature in the Cell author Stephen Meyer and noted Oxford University chemist and “new atheist” Peter Atkins. The debate is part of the kick off of promotion for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which arrives in the UK on DVD this month. Both Atkins and Meyer are accomplished scholars with very different viewpoints. The at times testy back and forth between them is as entertaining as it is enlightening. Click here to listen to the debate, which is about an hour long. Dr. Atkins, is a noted critic of intelligent design and author who appeared in Expelled, stating: “Religion, it’s just fantasy … and is evil as Read More ›

Responding to Stephen Fletcher’s Views in the Times Literary Supplement on the RNA World

To the Editor The Times Literary Supplement The RNA World Sir: Having with indignation rejected the assumption that the creation of life required an intelligent design, Mr Fletcher has persuaded himself that it has proceeded instead by means of various chemical scenarios. These scenarios all require intelligent intervention. In his animadversions, Mr Fletcher suggests nothing so much as a man disposed to denounce alcohol while sipping sherry. The RNA world to which Mr Fletcher has pledged his allegiance was introduced by Carl Woese, Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick in 1967. Mystified by the appearance in the contemporary cell of a chicken in the form of the nucleic acids, and an egg in the form of the proteins, Woese, Orgel and Read More ›