Toronto: Watch Oxford mathematician and Oxford zoologist square off on intelligent design!

Saturday night, November 29, the Copernicus Lecture Series Group in Toronto will host a showing of the film of the debate on "Is God a Delusion?"between Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins (yes) and Oxford mathematician John Lennox (no). I have written about this epic debate here.

Watch the show here, if you are in the area:

Science & Faith Session

Part 1: Is God a Delusion?

Part 2: Science, Faith and God

Saturday November 29th 2008

9711 Bayview Avenue, Richmond Hill ON

(lots and lots of parking)

AGENDA

6:10 PM –
Watch the Dawkins versus Lennox debate. The DVD is stopped after Dawkins and Lennox have finished the first question: “faith is blind; science is evidence based”

6:50 PM –
Watch the Dawkins versus Lennox Debate – question two: “science supports atheism, not Christianity”

7:30 PM –

Questions from audience (alternatively between theist and atheist) from the floor for fifteen minutes or so

8:00 PM –
Bryan Karney – “Science, Faith, and God”

8:45 PM –
Q&A with Bryan Karney

Refreshments generously provided. I won't be able to attend, as I am writing a report on a related matter, but Q and A moderator Bryan Karney is a University of Toronto engineer, pictured above.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Sketches from the Toronto ID conference 4 - Sharp words erupt:

The first panel: Does nature have a purpose?

Note: If you came here looking for a story about Baylor prof Francis Beckwith's credentials, go here.

The official title of the panel was “What is Science?” which is about as useful as asking “What is Love? ”, so the panelists quickly wandered into more promising territory.

After Robert Mann spoke, we got around to panels. The first one, “What Is Science” Featured Robert Mann, James R. Brown, Bryan Karney, and Sehdev Kumar.

Brown, a philosophy prof at the University of Toronto and a self-described atheist, told the gathering that the elimination of teleology (purpose or design) from nature was a tremendous achievement. Darwin’s achievement, in his view, was that he was the first mechanistic evolutionist. Thus ID is a 500-year step backward.*

He and Robert Mann clashed over teleology in nature, with Brown saying that the evidence is “overwhelmingly against it” and Mann saying that nature is teleological because humans prove it.

Indeed, that was a subject that was never properly thrashed out. Universal Darwinism means, in effect, that meaning and purpose, consciousness and free will in humans are in fact an illusion, but both sides assumed that they exist.

Brown also insisted that there is no relationship between what is “out there” (outside a person) and what is “in here” (inside a person) - for example, that there are no “colours” in nature, it is purely an interpretation of the brain.

I asked physicist Dr. Kumar (emeritus), a physicist, about that question later. It would seem more reasonable to think that the changes in light absorption out there, one’s visual system, and one’s mind operate as a system that enables the perception of colour - in which case there certainly is a relationship. I also don’t clearly see how science would be possible if no such relationship existed. He agreed with both points; too bad we couldn’t have pursued it.

*Brown also later announced that the ID guys “fearless leader” Phillip Johnson is a fraud, but provided no evidence for that.

The second panel: “The God hypothesis: Is there room for God in science? ”

I was on the second panel, featuring Dr. Brown again, and also philosophy of religion prof Don Wiebe and ethics prof Dennis O’Hara. I thought the topic another dud, and we quickly left it behind, but hey.

Things went fine until one of the panelists announced that professional humility was a key characteristic of scientists, and I responded that, after four years of covering the intelligent design controversy I had noticed nothing of the kind.

Indeed, I have covered a variety of beats: automotive, sewer and watermain, bookselling, trucking, the rag trade - I never encountered as much arrogance, professional as well as personal as among Darwinian biologists. Maybe it looks good on them, but don’t tell me they ain’t wearing it.

I got the distinct impression that people didn’t like me pointing out this kind of stuff.

For that matter, one self-proclaimed atheist at the conference also announced that atheists are mostly good people. Now, in my experience, a man who thinks he is good isn’t.

There is a simple explanation for that. Anyone who has begun to want virtue soon discovers his own lack of virtue. Suppose he makes progress toward virtue. The more progress he makes, the more the remaining gap bothers him, even if it is closing. It can’t close fast enough for him. So he assures you he is not good. And he is right.

So the man who thinks he is good has probably set his standards low enough that he cannot fail, but that is not where the bar is generally set.

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?

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.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Sketches from the Toronto ID conference 3

I'd left the conference early on Friday night. The house was packed out and the U organizer worried about the Fire Marshal's opinion of people sitting on the stair grades, so I ceded my seat.

(So much for "ID is dead ..." Not in Toronto, anyway.)

(Note: For Sketch 2, go here.)

Thus I missed the presentation by emeritus chemist Dr. David Humphreys, in support of the view that the molecules of life give evidence of purposeful design. I bet they do. I also missed the presentation by astronomer Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe.

When I got back early Saturday morning, there was a distinct buzz because Ross had "witnessed" during his presentation.

Wish now I had taken bets. Friends say he is at heart an evangelist and uses every opportunity he can and any science info he can get hold of to win converts to Christianity.

But in Toronto, witnessing is widely regarded as infra dig.

Well, it will give the local village atheists something to go on about. And on and on and on. But hey.

The Saturday morning lecture was more along the lines of what the organizer had expected. Dr. Robert Mann, chair of physics at the University of Waterloo, and also an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics there, and chair of Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation (equivalent to American Scientific Affiliation), discussed "universal Darwinism." A discussion long overdue, in my view.

Universal Darwinism means just what it says. As Mann ably showed, according to universal Darwinism, Darwin's theory explains everything from the operations of the human mind (consciousness and free will are just an illusion and your thoughts are merely "memes" ) through morality (just a way to spread your selfish genes ) all the way to the creation of the entire universe via Darwinian evolution in black holes .

Evolution of species? Aw, that's just small potatoes. The fact that there is very little evidence of the evolution of species via any mechanism (because speciation is not often observed) doesn't really matter after all. The Darwinist, it turns out, has whales to fry, not sardines. There is no evidence for the whales, of course, but the Darwinist can always start yelling about "science" in general and create a whale of a disruption.

Significantly, not one Darwinist present at the meeting suggested that Mann was mistaken, that Darwinism in fact has limited aims.

If I could choose just one thing to get across to the people who want to know why there is an intelligent design controversy, it would be the very topic Mann introduced: The fact that the Darwinist - like the Fascist or the Communist - does NOT have limited aims.

The Darwinist wants natural selection acting on random mutations to explain absolutely everything in the universe, and if he can get hold of your kids in the school system, that's what he will try to do. And force you to pay for it. That is part of the reason why there is an intelligent design controversy.

(There are other reasons, but once people realize what the Darwinist is up to, that alone is a reliable generator of controversy, although many of the actual controversies are stupid and destructive.)

Mann castigated both sides in the Darwinism-ID debate. He castigated the Darwinists for thinking the ID guys stupid. He was weary of hearing that because, he said, whatever the ID guy are, they are not stupid. But he also said the ID guys need to do way more research to demonstrate their interesting ideas.

Mann pleaded for some sort of experimental test of Darwinism vs. ID. I suspect he had in mind the kind of test that decided in favor of the Big Bang over the Steady State universe, which I wrote about in By Design or by Chance?.

I asked Mann over lunch how he thought the ID guys could manage that. Like, if you are denied a PHD or tenure, or booted out of your job for investigating subjects that might generate an ID finding, does that make it easier or harder to do the research?

I got the feeling he has not heard the stuff I have. But a guy who does cosmology for a living probably doesn't hear the down 'n' dirty about what Darwinists do to keep hold of power and money when there is actually very little evidence to support their theory of speciation and none to support its inflation to the entire universe or the human mind.

But, of course, in principle Mann is right - sort of.

The ID guys do need to come up with things that grab people's attention. On the other hand, let's not be under any illusion whatever that, in the short term, that will protect them from Darwinists. Anything they do come up with, they will have difficulty publishing. And they will have difficulty getting or keeping degrees or tenure after they do it. A large number of the non-Darwinist scientists that the Discovery Institute has tallied are safely retired (no surprise there - a whole industry of retired and dead guys doubt Darwinism, safe from its thugs).

Maybe Discovery should provide a clause for scientists' wills saying, "Look, I never agreed with all that crap, but I had a family, you know, and a career. Too bad about the guys who said something while they were alive."

By the way, it was really interesting the way the Darwinists sneered at Mann, who is almost certainly light years ahead of most of them in intelligence, because he is a Christian. That was precisely the sort of thing they do to ID folk in general, a fact that he noted politely in his talk.

Essentially, I have learned that uncivilized and unjustified arrogance is the Darwinists' second key weakness. Their first key weakness is that they apparently do not have the goods.

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.

Sketches from the Toronto ID conference 1

Two top-of-mind events, for now:

(In the order of remembrance of things past, not necessarily long term importance)

1. The depth of the crisis with Darwinian evolution became apparent to me when I watched and listened to the Darwinian biologists present. For these people, Darwinism is a cult. They simply cannot understand objections to Darwinian evolution as actual objections. For example, the fact that very few instances of speciation are actually observed makes it very difficult to test Darwinian evolution against other kinds. This may be an accident, to be sure, but it is an accident with consequences. It means that the "overwhelming evidence" that supposedly exists for Darwin's theory is really just overwhelming belief on the part of people like themselves.

But there they sit, placid with overwhelming belief like pious grannies, mistaking it for overwhelming evidence.

2. To bolster their view - and this is a familiar psychological tactic - they construct a straw man of opponents. I was informed, by one career atheist, for example, that Phillip Johnson was a "fraud", by another that no ID papers have ever been published, and by a third that the ID guys are in it for the money and that no serious scientist would disagree with Darwinian evolution. All nonsense, of course.

In what must have been the nastiest moment (but still funny), an elderly evolutionary biologist implied to me that the journalists who cover the ID controversy without trashing the ID guys are getting paid to come to conferences by the Discovery Institute where we are sold a bill of goods.

Yeah really. Okay, okay, folks, we do have a secret handshake, too, that includes mimicking the Panda's Thumb and then pretending to spit ... and we also have this underground shrine in a bunker somewhere where we desecrate copies of ... So sorry, I forgot, this is journalism, not Fiction 101. Back to da fax, I am afraid.

When I made clear to this individual that an ethical journalist would not accept money for such a purpose, he changed his tack a bit, but it became clear that he has little idea how media work, and less interest. He did not even realize, for example, that a journalist who writes a book, like Pamela Winnick, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, or myself must convince a trade publisher, not the Discovery Institute, that there is a book-length story to tell.
But, like the career atheist who is convinced that Johnson is a fraud, he doesn't really care about the facts of the case. Darwinism is his creation story, and he is not likely to question it.

Conference alert: University of Toronto, Friday/Saturday September 29/30

The God Hypothesis: Has Science Found God?

* Friday, September 29, 2006 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

- An Evening of Lecture and discussion

7:00 p.m. Science ... and the Quest for Purpose by Dr. David Humphreys

Chemist David Humphreys will present a thought provoking blend of experiments, demonstrations, and scientific insights in his consideration of the way in which the molecules of life can give evidence of purposeful design

8:00 p.m. Have Astronomers Identified the Creator? By Hugh Ross

Astronomer Hugh Ross notes that ours is the only generation that has witnessed the measuring of the Cosmos. What does this mean for our questioning of creation? The current base of astronomical research also permits an ongoing testing of a cosmic creation model based on sacred religious texts.

When/Where?: 7:00 p.m. at Alumni Hall, 121 St. Joseph Street, Room 400

No admission fee for friday night - reservations recommended, Tel 416 926-2247

now, for Saturday:

* Saturday, September 30, 2006 9:00 a.m. - to 5:00 p.m.

- A One Day Workshop: Lectures, Panel Discussions, Group Conversations

A day of Dialogue with Guest Lecturers and Panelists, including

- Dr. Robert Mann, Chair, Dept. Of Physics, University of Waterloo
- Ms. Denyse O'Leary, Journalist, author of By Design or By Chance?
- Dr. James R. Brown, MA, PhD, Professor, Department of Philosophy
- Dr. Dennis O'Hara, Director of Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology
- Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D., Astronomy
- Dr. Sehdev Kumar, Director, Forum for Dialogue between Science and Religion

Topics covered: What is Science? Is there Room for god in Scientific Dialogue? Universal Darwinism and Intelligent Design?
Astronomy and Human Destiny

Fee (for Saturday ) $100.00 (includes lunch) [Remember, Friday evening is free.]

Reservations: 416 926-7254
E-mail: continuinged.stmikes@utoronto.ca
Info: Lynda at 416 229 2399 ext. 125
Get there by TTC: Get off at Bay Station on the Bloor line (one west of Yonge), walk south past St. Mary's Street to St. Joseph's Street. Turn right.
Parking locations and motor vehicle directions here.
Web site: The God Hypothesis: Has Science Found God? (Scroll down.)

A part of the University of St. Michael's College Continuing Education Anniversary Lectures