Month: November 2010
Actions Speak Louder: Exposing Kirk Fitzhugh’s Denial of Suppressing Freedom of Thought on Intelligent Design
In the previous post in this series, we saw that Natural History Museum of LA County (NHMLAC) scientist Kirk Fitzhugh denied that academic freedom for intelligent design (ID) is “being suppressed.” After reviewing the severe misconceptions that Dr. Fitzhugh has about ID, we come to the California Science Center and its decision to cancel the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma last year. In that decision, Kirk Fitzhugh played no direct role but he did participate in the correspondence surrounding it. On October 15, under the subject heading “DI spin,” NHMLAC scientist John Long e-mailed Fitzhugh about attending the rescheduled American Freedom Alliance (AFA) event on October 25. He wrote: “I enjoy reading your commentary on the ID issues. Will catch you Read More ›
The Edge of Evolution, as seen by Dave Ussery and BioLogos
In his next installment Professor Ussery complains that I wasn’t enthusiastic enough in my chapter “What Darwinism Can Do.” As an example of common descent I pointed to Baker’s yeast, for which there is good evidence that sometime in the past its genome duplicated. But I also noted that other yeasts with unduplicated genomes have done fine for themselves. The point was that gene or even whole genome duplication is not the powerful tool that Darwinists often claim. That point passed over Dave’s head. His main comment on the book’s next chapter, “What Darwinism Can’t Do” is to tell the reader to search PubMed for the words “cilium” and “evolution.” One gets lots of papers that contain both those words, Read More ›
Response to Edward Max on TalkOrigins Immunity Article
[Editor’s Note: This is the final post in a six-part a series from microbiologist Donald L. Ewert, where he argues that the processes used by our immune system to generate antibodies are anything but “random,” and do not serve as an example of Darwinian evolution. Other posts in this rebuttal can be found at: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four, and Part Five. In the first five posts, Dr. Ewert responded to Kathryn Applegate of the BioLogos Foundation. In this sixth post, he responds to similar arguments from Edward Max at TalkOrgins that antibody generation is “evolution in miniature.”] One of the goals of Edwards Max’s post at TalkOrigins is to refute a narrow claim of “creationists” Read More ›
Listen Live Tonight as John West Talks about God and Evolution
This just in from Tom Woodward: A special edition of the weekly “Darwin or Design” program, featuring Trinity College Research Professor Tom Woodward’s interview with Discovery Senior Fellow John West, is airing tonight, Thursday, November 18th. The hour-long program begins at 7 pm Eastern (6 pm Central, 4 pm Pacific) on the Salem Network station in Tampa, WTBN, at AM 570. The discussion centers on the scientific and philosophical issues in the origins contoversy among naturalistic Darwinists, theistic evolutionists, and design theorists. Those outside Central Florida can listen live via the internet by clicking here.. The topic is the new book, God and Evolution, edited by Discovery Fellow Jay Richards. Dr. West contributed the opening chapters of the book, and Read More ›
Dave Ussery Ruminates about The Edge of Evolution
The first part of Professor Ussery’s review of The Edge of Evolution on the website BioLogos is mainly an exercise in throat clearing, where he describes his “philosophical and personal perspective,” notes that he and I agree on common descent, and correctly points out that my book concerns the mechanism of evolution. In the second installment Dave begins to show that he somehow just doesn’t get the big points of the book. In writing of the sickle cell and other antimalarial mutations which degrade the genome, I had said that they were “hurtful.” He misunderstands this, writing, “the example [Behe] gives us is not a ‘good mutation.’” But the sickle cell and other antimalarial mutations most certainly are “good” mutations Read More ›