Appendix deserves to be Chapter 1 instead!

In the past the appendix (the body part, not the book part) has been used by anti-intelligent designers as a body part that has no purpose, and therefore proof that humans are not intelligently designed. Interestingly, reports now show that the appendix indeed does have a purpose. Apparently it acts as a safe house for good bacteria used to boost the immune system.

New Age Intelligence

The Council of Europe has recently adopted a resolution against the teaching of intelligent design or creationism. In reading about this I came across a blog post by a New Ager who believes in intelligent design and non-materialism. I found it interesting to read the feelings on this issue from a non-religionist/revelationist. The blog post is here.

Has Dawkins been used?

A few years ago in a video interview, Richard Dawkins was asked about the origins of genetic information, and after a long silence he finally made an apparently irrelevant answer. The Creationists making the video made a big deal about him being stumped by the question. Later on the magazine 'The Skeptic', after consulting with Dawkins, published a piece about how Dawkins was conned into appearing in the video interview and the video was edited to substitute a different question for the one that was asked. After the video makers released the raw footage, the accusations were dropped. You can read more about this incident here.

Now, once again, it appears Dawkins is making the same claims about the makers of the film 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'. Read all about it at the New York Times.

It's in the Bible... it can't be true?

A quote from English Nobel Laureate George Thomson:

"Probably every physicist would believe in a creation if the Bible had not unfortunately said something about it many years ago and made it seem old-fashioned."

Read more about some scientists and their bias against the Bible at Post-Darwinist.

First positive "mainstream" review of Behe's Edge book

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a review of Michael Behe's latest book 'The Edge of Evolution'. It appears to be the first positive review in mainsteam (read: non-Christian) media after other prominent news media have been recruiting staunch evolutionists to do reviews of the book. The review gives the best summary of Behe's arguments I have read so far, and also ends with a little attack against other newspapers and reviewers of the book.

New Intelligent Design film due in 2008

A film entitled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" will premiere in the United States on February 12, 2008. It is themed around the "intelligent design vs. evolution" debate that is taking place in the US, and stars Ben Stein who was kicked out of his school for his views and features numererous pro-ID and anti-ID scientists and other commentators on the issue.

Denyse O'Leary has more information over at her 'Post-Darwinist blog.

Ancient microbes

BBC News has an article on a scientific discovery of microbes, that are estimated to range in age from 100,000 to 8 million years of age, from melted samples of Antarctic ice. What I found interesting about the find is in the following quote:

The team suggests that because DNA in the old ice samples had degraded so much in response to exposure to cosmic radiation, life on Earth is unlikely to have hitched a ride on a comet or on debris from outside the Solar System - as some scientists have suggested. "Given the extremely high cosmic radiation flux in space, our results suggest it is highly unlikely that life on Earth could have been seeded by genetic material external to this Solar System," they wrote in
their scientific paper.

Therfore this discovery gives evidence towards life being created directly on earth, not drifting from other planets, galaxies or universes.

Christian fundamentalist and creationist appointed as Physics professor!

Click on link below to learn more about this appointment:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/22/a_teacher_with_faith_and_reason/

Will Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris be up in arms?

We hit the cosmic jackpot!

Over at Salon, there is an interesting preview of upcoming book "The Cosmic Jackpot" by physicist/cosmologist Paul Davies who argues that there is a "grand comsic plan" and that the universe is "filled with meaning and purpose". The book focuses on what is called the "anthropic principle", being that the laws of physics are fine-tuned to support life.

Behe's new book

Just an announcement to let everyone know that Michael Behe, famed author of "Darwin's Black Box" has recently released his new book "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism". In this book he attempts to "define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope." Basically his answer is that common descent and natural selection are well-supported possibilities, but random mutation is not very probable.

The link above to the Amazon website is an interesting read for both reader's reviews and Michael Behe's signigicant postings.

Monday Quote of the Week

Charles Darwin was much more balanced and less-biased than the evolution fundamentalists of today...

"... The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."

- Darwin, C. (1859) The Origin of Species (Reprint of the first edition) Avenel Books, Crown Publishers, New York, 1979, p. 292