Still can't sleep?: A few brief notes to make wakefulness fun

Clearing out the inbox here,

- Herre's an interview with physicist Freeman Dyson, where Dyson says a number of bad things:

Yes, the western academic world is very much like Weimar Germany, finding itself in a situation of losing power and influence. Fortunately, the countries that matter now are China and India, and the Chinese and Indian experts do not share the mood of doom and gloom. It is amusing to see China and India take on today the role that America took in the nineteen-thirties, still believing in technology as the key to a better life for everyone.

Freeman is so bad that he actually doesn't hate or fear the intelligent design guys.

- I haven't said much about the big uproar, pro and con around an ID conference to be held at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, this weekend. This item written by a limited section of the professorate demanding that Darwin be affirmed on faith and this one by some ID guys wanting a discussion of ideas give you a general picture. I just hope no one arrives there to find the conference arbitrarily cancelled. Most universities nowadays must protect themselves strenuously from ideas, information, and evidence that challenge materialism, and they can't be too careful because there is so much of that out there. Religious universities must be more careful than most. I expect we will be hearing from many a dog-collar, reassuring us that "religion" is entirely compatible with a universe that shows no evidence of design. And incompatible with a universe that does show evidence of design. But least compatible with the idea of looking for evidence.

- A while back, I mentioned lecturer Nancy Bryson's troubles after she introduced students to biology-based criticisms of Darwinism, and here is a podcast of her account. I don't think she quite grasped that it doesn't matter if the critics have good evidence or not. Unguided Darwinian evolution is now held as an article of faith, and is at present among the most intransigent religions in the world.

- Here's an interesting item on the rise of eugenics in the United States. As I have said lots of times, the Darwinian component of eugenics was fundamentally incoherent because if you really believe that natural selection can create all the forms of life, why couldn't it take care of minor present problems like the alleged excess of Irish in Darwin's day?

- When Antony Flew converted from atheism to deism in 2004 because of the apparent design of the universe, it is interesting how hard some atheists worked to undermine the significance of that fact. Just as interesting is the way in which some alleged Christians in science need to undermine any suggestion that design is real. Go here, here, and here, for example. Why do I care? Well, I don't really, but institutionally supported treachery fascinates me. It explains so much. It would make a good novel really ... I mean, the general idea.

Finally, apologies to those whose comments were delayed in moderation - I was out of town. As you will see, I have just posted a whack of stuff below. Here are links so you do not have to scroll down so far:
Origin of life: Tangled skein continues to tangle

Intelligent design and popular culture: Psychiatrist tries analyzing ID folk en masse

Nancy Pearcey, author of Total Truth, offers some insight into why Darwin's theory was controversial and how long it took most evangelicals to actually "get it":

The tragedy is not just that evangelicals failed to meet the challenge: For the most part they did not even recognize it. As good Baconians, evangelicals denied the role of philosophical assumptions in science - and thus they were powerless to critique and counter the new assumptions when they appeared on the intellectual horizon. A great many of them simply took the facts that Darwin presented and inserted them into the older philosophy of nature as an open system - not realizing, apparently, that the older philosophy was precisely what was under attack.

Great news! ID theorist Mike Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, following up on Darwin's Black Box, has already attracted a profoundly negative review - and it is not even published yet.

Re the recent accusations that the ID guys are in denial: Here's a link to an interesting column on the origin of "denial" as an alleged problem in the wilds of therapy talk. You'd think sci guys would want to steer clear of that goop, but hey.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

Origin of life: Tangled skein continues to tangle

Here is a report from Ed Pelter on the current state - actually statelessness - of origin of life research. Here's a summary of some of the issues, by the way.

Personally, I am fascinated by the speculation around origin of life, just as I love listening to discussions of why Rome fell. But one thing especially intrigues me: Materialists both deny that intelligence is necessary for the universe to exist, yet insist that they will somehow find out how life accidentally originated. This is a really interesting disconnect because if the universe is indeed a great thought rather than a great machine, the great mind might leave clues for little minds. But if it is just the materialist's cosmic void, maybe nada.

Intelligent design and popular culture: Psychiatrist tries analyzing intelligent design advocates en masse

This old-fashioned psychiatrist tried analyzing ID folk - no mean feat when you don't know the people or the issues (which he doesn't) and - if you look at the folk at Uncommon Descent, for example, the ID folk are a fairly disparate bunch. But then, I keep forgetting, ID is one of those subjects, like world religions, on which one is allowed to have an opinion that people pay attention to even if one knows nothing whatever. One need never go so far as to read a book actually written by an authentic source. Bad for the gut, I hear.

Brief book excerpt: What really made Darwin's theory revolutionary?

Parents sometimes worry that the teaching of Darwinian evolution in schools will undermine faith and values - and almost as often they are soothed by bureaucratic assurances that Darwinism is completely compatible with traditional theistic beliefs.

Now, of course, most school office go-home-at-fivers tell parents these things because they cannot be bothered finding out. A few may know perfectly well that not only are most prominent Darwinists atheists, but a number of them have embarked on an anti-God campaign. But they hope the parents don't know.

Nancy Pearcey explains how Darwinism differs from "evolution" in general in this excerpt, reprinted with permission, from her recent book Total Truth:

. . . The reason Darwinian evolution was so revolutionary was not its concept of natural selection but its definition of knowledge, or epistemology. The older epistemology assumed an open universe, where concepts like design and purpose (teleology) made sense and were considered perfectly rational. But as we saw in chapter 6, Darwin wanted to establish a naturalistic epistemology that assumed a closed system of cause and effect—one that ruled design and purpose out of bounds. Thus the heart of the conflict revolved around two rival epistemologies: Which definition of knowledge should govern in science?

The tragedy is not just that evangelicals failed to meet the challenge: For the most part they did not even recognize it. As good Baconians, evangelicals denied the role of philosophical assumptions in science - and thus they were powerless to critique and counter the new assumptions when they appeared on the intellectual horizon. A great many of them simply took the facts that Darwin presented and inserted them into the older philosophy of nature as an open system - not realizing, apparently, that the older philosophy was precisely what was under attack. In the late nineteenth century, explains historian Edward Purcell, the majority of thinkers failed to realize that Darwinism implied "a fully naturalistic worldview." They inserted Darwinism into a religious and providential framework, trying to somehow fit it into a "belief in nature as part of a comprehensive divine order, and in science as part of a larger and morally oriented natural philosophy."

An example was the Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield. As a young man, he had bred shorthorn cattle on his father's ranch, where he noticed that wild cattle developed distinctive traits through interaction with their environment. In short, he had witnessed natural selection. Thus when he encountered the concept of evolution, he accepted it easily, describing himself as “a Darwinian of the purest water.” Yet when Warfield explained what he meant by evolution, he spoke of the constant supervision of divine providence, punctuated by "occasional supernatural interference." Anyone expressing those views today would be branded a flaming creationist.

Princeton president James McCosh likewise called himself a Darwinian. Yet he held that several pivotal events could not be explained by natural causes alone - that God worked by immediate fiat" at the origin of life, intelligence, and morality. Finally, one of the most influential theistic evolutionists of the nineteenth century, Asa Gray, also inserted Darwin’s concept of natural selection into the older theistic cosmology open to divine supervision and design. He apparently failed to understand that Darwin's intention was to replace that cosmology with a naturalistic one.

One of the few to recognize what was at stake philosophically was Charles Hodge. "The distinctive element" in Darwinism, he wrote, is not natural selection but the denial of design or purpose. And "the denial of design in nature is virtually the denial of God."
Despite Hodge's protest, the debate was not really engaged on the level of philosophy until the rise of the Intelligent Design movement in our own day. When I began writing on science and worldview back in the 1970s, the debate was still being carried on almost solely at the level of scientific details (fossils, mutations, geological strata). One reason the Intelligent Design movement has had such a powerful impact is that Phillip Johnson finally succeeded in shifting the argument to Darwin's naturalistic definition of science. "Christians often think the controversy is primarily a dispute about scientific facts, and so they become trapped into arguing scientific details rather than concentrating on the fundamental assumptions that generate the evolutionary story," Johnson writes in his latest book. The rise of the Intelligent Design movement signals that Christians are finally moving beyond a Baconian view of science, recognizing the formative role that philosophical assumptions play in what counts as genuine knowledge.

So the lesson here is, if you are traditional Christian, theist, or non-materialist of any description, edge away from that grinning, baby-faced clergyperson who assures you that "evolution" (= Darwinism) is "entirely compatible with your faith." His/her "faith" maybe ... but yours? In all these situations, the rule is, find out what is going on and decide for yourself.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

New book!: Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution argues design even more prevalent than he earlier thought

I mentioned a while back that Behe had a new book out from Free Press in 2007, and now he writes to say,

The first review of my new book, The Edge of Evolution, is out from Publisher's Weekly (see below). Next week PW is supposed to run a feature article on me 'n' the book. The book itself will be out in early June. The gist is that data available in just the past decade from
studies of microbes which occur in nature in truly astronomical numbers, such as the malarial parasite and HIV, demonstrate random mutation to be incoherent, and Darwinian processes capable of only trivial changes to pre-existing systems. (Now, who on this list is surprised at that?) Extrapolating from such data allows relatively precise, firm limits to be placed on what is reasonable to expect of unintelligent processes to have done during the course of life on earth. The bottom line is that design extends very deeply into life, well past such Cadillacs of
complexity as the flagellum, far deeper than I myself would have guessed ten years ago.

Edge of Evolution promises to be great, because the Publisher's Weekly review is profoundly negative, and the book has not even been released (but it was 22, 500th when I just checked this evening). Hey, I'd hate to be a materialist right now too, but there is a cure for it. (Note: You have to scroll down or search on "Behe".)

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

New book!: Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution argues design even more prevalent than he earlier thought

I mentioned a while back that Behe had a new book out from Free Press in 2007, and now he writes to say,

The first review of my new book, The Edge of Evolution, is out from Publisher's Weekly (see below). Next week PW is supposed to run a feature article on me 'n' the book. The book itself will be out in early June. The gist is that data available in just the past decade from studies of microbes which occur in nature in truly astronomical numbers, such as the malarial parasite and HIV, demonstrate random mutation to be incoherent, and Darwinian processes capable of only trivial changes to pre-existing systems. (Now, who on this list is surprised at that?) Extrapolating from such data allows relatively precise, firm limits to be placed on what is reasonable to expect of unintelligent processes to have done during the course of life on earth. The bottom line is that design extends very deeply into life, well past such Cadillacs of complexity as the flagellum, far deeper than I myself would have guessed ten years ago.

Edge of Evolution promises to be fascinating, because the Publisher's Weekly review is profoundly negative, and the book has not even been released (but it was 22, 500th when I just checked this evening) - a limp recitation of all the reasons why Behe MUST be wrong.

Hey, I'd hate to be a materialist right now too, but there is a cure for it. (Note: You have to scroll down or search on "Behe".)

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

Thinkquote of the day: Origin of "denial" as alleged problem

Recently, I expressed my appreciation to the folk at Denialism.com for drawing attention to this humble blog. Meanwhile, columnist Suzanne Fields explains the origin of their concept:

"Denial" came out of the therapyspeak prevalent in the middle of the 20th century, especially as it was applied to confronting the reality of mortality. It was popularized as the first stage of grief, but was quickly expanded to include refusal to confront any bad news or disturbing ideas. Like the broken clock that's correct twice a day, denial is sometimes an accurate label for certain behavior, but as a consuming mythology in our culture it becomes the all-purpose description to deny independent thinking. ... This attitude wreaks enormous havoc when it is applied to public issues.

A friend considers them "sheep" for their silly attacks on paleontologist Rick Sternberg, because he sometimes attends conferences sponsored by creationists. For example, one little lamb bleats"

"Sternberg does have a history of collusion and shepherding as well: his own paper was "reviewed" (very critically, I'm sure) by fellow baraminologist Todd Wood, and DI Fellows Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells."

Presumably, that's not something they would ever dare to do. Clearly, Sternberg is worse than a shepherd; he is a wolf in wolf's clothing. But I digress; the fact is, that denialism.com has attracted new interest to my blog and for that I am so grateful that I am going to provide here a link to "Where Sheep May Safely Graze".
P.S.: A friend notes that what got the affirming lambs bleating was this paper by Sternberg, where he thanks "Drs. Paul Nelson, Stanley Salthe, Jonathan Wells, and Todd Wood", at least some of whom dare to doubt Darwin.

But, oh dear, the lambs of affirmation are now becoming a bore, because another friend now insists I comment on this silliness, where they try but fail to get used to the fact that many very disparate people disbelieve Darwinism on the flimsy evidence. The fact that Darwinism is the creation story of materialism means nothing if one is not a materialist - so ID types do not need to fight with YECs, even if they disagree with them about the age of the earth. Too simple - must be a conspiracy.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design.

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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