Religion & Law

Bring Back Bing

Posted on August 13, 2009
Mike Haubrich of Tangled Up In Blue Guy managed to ship his thirteen year old son off to Japan for the summer. There's just a little problem now ... getting him back home. As Mike explains:Bing has made new friends in Japan, but they want to keep him there...

One Shell of an Argument

Posted on August 13, 2009
Mark Chu-Carroll has a good post up on Stephen Meyer's smoke and mirrors "evidence" for design ... specifically, Meyer's use of equivocation in the meaning of the term "digital." As Mark points out, there are:Three possible definitions of digital information: 1...

Scientific Philosophy, Philosophical Science

Posted on August 12, 2009
Glenn Branch has a nice review, entitled "Philosophers, Creationists & Serious Brainiacs," of the new edition, edited by Michael Ruse and Robert Pennock, of But Is It Science?, originally published in 1988.But Is It Science? is evidently intended as a sourcebook for university classes in philosophy, the history of science, science and religion, and so forth, and as such it succeeds admirably...

Is the Word Incalcitrant or Recalcitrant?

Posted on August 12, 2009
The Undiscovery Institute's John West is kvetching about "the outlandish new 'study' evaluating state science standards published by two officials of the National Center for Science Education ... [in] a journal devoted to the one-sided teaching of evolution" [i...

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Law & Epistemology

Posted on August 11, 2009
.A thought:The epistemological problems generated by supernatural theism necessitate the faith commitments required of believers. The insufficiency of human cognitive faculties for knowing the supernatural demands willful assent without conclusive evidence?faith?from those who seek temporal meaning in a transcendent reality...

The Best They Can Do

Posted on August 10, 2009
The Discovery Institute has announced in a press release (where else?) a new animation of the interior working of a cell -- in particular the copying of DNA and protein synthesis -- that supposedly "dramatically illustrates the evidence for intelligent design within DNA, as described in Stephen C...

Ride 'Em

Posted on August 10, 2009
There is simply nothing to be said about this ...(except maybe that you should click on the picture and look closely at the tie.).

In the Land of the Inane

Posted on August 10, 2009
Can David Klinghoffer become any more intellectual inane?Given his starting point, that is a close question, but there is no doubt that he's in there giving it the good ol' college try.His latest attempt is contained in a post at his blog, Kingdom of Priests, entitled "Charles Manson, Evolutionist...

The God Balloon

Posted on August 09, 2009
Free Inquiry magazine has published (pdf available here) a report on a new survey of 6,000 self-identified atheists, agnostics, humanists and other nonreligious Americans. This is the summary from the article:To summarize, relative to the religious or churched segment of the population, the nonreligious are distinguished both demographically (more likely to be male, highly educated, never married or cohabiting) and by their personality (more open to new experience and intellectually oriented, less agreeable [defined as: "a quality of being amiable or nonconfrontational as opposed to skeptical of others"])...

Late Nights

Posted on August 08, 2009
New York Yankees 2, Boston Red Sox 0, 15 inningsHome Run, Alex Rodriguez

Theological Revelations

Posted on August 08, 2009
Heh!The Discoveryoids are in a theological dispute with the "theistic evolutionists" that, quite appropriately, clearly reveals the religious roots of Intelligent Design Creationism. The latest feeble bow shot is by David Klinghoffer, who once again demonstrates that he has an intellectual range that is both an inch deep and an inch wide...

Widespread Mediocrity

Posted on August 07, 2009
Barrett Brown, co-author of Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism & Intelligent Design, has a nice takedown of Wild Bill Dembski and his blog, Uncommon Dissembling ... er ... Dissent ... er ... Descent.Brown recounts Dembski's misadventures with flatulence and Homeland Security, and Dave ("DaveScot") Springer's imperviousness to self-irony...

The "Pros" from Dover

Posted on August 07, 2009
The Discovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation is bewailing the mean ol' "Darwinists" again:The anti-ID crowd has an old canard about there being no serious scientists who doubt Darwin, let alone any that support intelligent design. And they like to say that there is no science being done by ID scientists...

Origin of Species

Posted on August 07, 2009
John Wilkins' exceptionally pretty and no doubt highly informative book is just about available.According to the University of California Press, the book is expected to ship August 11th, though the official release date remains September 1st. If I were you, I'd order my copy right away, since the demand will surely be J...

Through a Glass Darkly

Posted on August 06, 2009
The National Center for Science Education has now got the entire collection available at its site of its Creation/Evolution Journal, begun in 1980 and continuing until 1996, when the journal was merged with its Reports of the National Center for Science Education...

Casting a Vex

Posted on August 05, 2009
Joel Hendon is vexed in his spirit.I become vexed at the wads of crabgrass and dandelions which keep showing up in my lawn. My dogs, whom I love with little reservations, vex me with their lack of prudence in performing their daily routines, also on my lawn...

The Dangers of Dictionaries

Posted on August 04, 2009
Heh!It's time to review the definition of "petard" again.Ed Brayton links to WingNutDaily's publicizing of an anonymous YouTuber who claims Biblical evidence that Barack Obama is the Antichrist:His 4-minute video focuses on the direct quote: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven...

Everything's Up to Date ...

Posted on August 03, 2009
Tina Brown... is a Christian who is married to a pastor. Together, they have 7 children and homeschool 6 of them. They reside in Richardson, TX.She also has "reviewed" The Astronomy Book by Dr. Jonathan Henry which is "written from a God created viewpoint ...

Of Geese and Ganders

Posted on August 02, 2009
Jason Rosenhouse is continuing his review of Chris Mooney's and Sheril Kirshenbaum's book, Unscientific America. I'm not much interested in the book but Jason's arguments against Mooney's and Kirshenbaum's positions are another matter. Jason says this:They put a lot of weight on the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism, apparently thinking that the New Atheists are confused about the distinction...

Religious Education

Posted on August 02, 2009
A University of Michigan Institute study has purportedly found that College students who major in the social sciences and humanities are likely to get less inclined towards religion while those majoring in education are likely to become more religious...

Counting Noses

Posted on August 01, 2009
Jim Lippard has taken one for the team and sat through Creation Ministries International's "documentary," The Voyage That Shook The World. You can see his review/debunking here.Jim notes that the film at one points sets up a novel opposition between evolution and creationism in that evolution supposedly argues for the fixity of species while creationism is in favor of their mutability:The film suggests that the religious view is that the wide diversity and geographic dispersal of living things emerged in the last few thousand years since the flood of Noah, which entails a rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible...

Ophelia Swoons

Posted on July 31, 2009
Ophelia Benson has been making much of some commenter at Chris Mooney's and Sheril Kirshenbaum's blog, going by the 'nym "TB, stating that Benson was "lying" about Mooney and Kirshenbaum not having evidence for their assertions in their book. Benson has even demanded that the comments be removed by Mooney and Kirshenbaum and, in a different instance, Sheril apparently ...

Montezuma's Revenge

Posted on July 30, 2009
A thought:It was clear to Paley and to other defenders of the organismic design argument that the intelligent designer who built organisms must have been far more intelligent and efficacious than any human being could ever be. This is why the organismic design argument was for them an atgument for the existence of God...

The Eyes Have It

Posted on July 30, 2009
There is a point-counterpoint in the Los Angeles Times between Francisco Ayala and Michael Shermer over the appropriateness of Francis Collins' appointment to head the National Institutes of Health. The most notable thing is this from Ayala:Do I expect Collins to use his office as NIH director to promote religion? No...

Cultured Journalism

Posted on July 30, 2009
A couple of months ago, after Larry Moran had announced that he was attending the "Two Cultures" meeting in New York, I stumbled across Mike Treder's (of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) live blogging of the event. Mike described a panel discussion on "How to More Effectively Communicate Science Issues to the Public" where an unnamed "scientist and educator" asked why all of the panelists in the session were science journalists and expressing the dismay many scientists feel at the job that science journalists do...

Scientific Sleuthing

Posted on July 28, 2009
Ian Musgrave has a good post up at The Panda's Thumb on William Dembski's science envy. What caught my eye was Ian's responce to Dembski's claim that there is a "powerful new caste of scientists who have appointed themselves the guardians of humanity and the priests of a new social order," based on the scientific community's consensus about anthropogenic global warming...

The Day the Argument Stood Still

Posted on July 27, 2009
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum are in Time humping their book Unscientific America (nothing wrong with that -- good ol' American free enterprise) when they just about ended any chance I'll like the thing.Part of your book talks about the depiction of "mad scientists" in Hollywood films...

Ground Control to Major Tom

Posted on July 26, 2009
Craig Nelson, author of Rocket Men ? The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, on conspiracy theories that deny that American astronauts landed on the moon:"Those people have a religion and no facts will undo them," Nelson said. His favorite response to conspiracy groups comes from Armstrong who said it was easier to just go to the moon than it would have been to fake it...

Bastards On the Beach

Posted on July 26, 2009
The Fifteenth Carnival of Elitist Bastards is lounging about the beach at The Coffee-Stained Writer.Stephanie Zvan at Quiche Moraine has an interesting take on the framing/accommodationist/incompatiblist debate that centers on the claim by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future:Dawkins and some other scientists fail to grasp that in Hollywood, the story is paramount?that narrative, drama, and character development will trump mere factual accuracy every time, and by a very long shot...

The First Plagiarism on the Moon

Posted on July 25, 2009
Gary Peach, a retired British scientist who was working at the Tidbinbilla satellite tracking station near Canberra, Australia at the time of the Apollo lunar landing, claims to have come up with astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous statement upon setting foot on the moon: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind...

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