Michael Behe and Stephen Barr debate intelligent design

Michael Behe is Catholic and Stephen Barr seems to be a theistic evolutionist (naturalist). (H/T Evolution News via ECM)

The main page is here, and it has the video.

There is an MP3 file here, 71 minutes long.

Michael Behe goes first, then Stephen Barr.

Keep in mind that the dividing line in the debate on intelligent design vs. Darwinism is between open-minded scientists who think that there might be objective evidence that material cause-and-effect may not be able to account for specific kinds of complexity (specified complexity) in nature, and philosophers who believe that is never permissible to overturn the philosophical assumption of materialism, regardless of what the scientific evidence shows.

So the pro-ID side is like “let’s look at the evidence and see what naturalism can and can’t do” and the anti-ID side is “the presupposition of materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”. It’s ID scientists vs naturalist materialism pre-supposers. Reason vs faith. Inquiry vs dogmatism.

UPDATE:

Upcoming conference features pro-ID scholars and theistic evolutionists in Austin, Texas in October.

Barack Obama, sharia law, stealth jihad and the 9/11 mosque

Story here from defense analyst Frank Gaffney.

Excerpt:

At a White House celebration of Ramadan tonight in the company of representatives of several of the Nation’s most prominent Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, President Obama announced his strong support for one of their most immediate objectives: the construction of a mega-mosque and “cultural center” at Ground Zero.  In so doing, he publicly embraced the greatest tar-baby of his presidency.

Obama actually wants Americans to not just tolerate the 9/11 mosque – but to respect it.

Gone too is the option of continuing to conceal an extraordinary fact: the Obama administration is endorsing not only this “local matter,” but explicitly endorsing the agenda of the imam behind it – Feisal Abdul Rauf.  Rauf is the Muslim Brother, who together with his wife Daisy Khan (a.k.a. Daisy Kahn for tax purposes, at least) runs the tellingly named “Cordoba Initiative.”   He is believed to be on a taxpayer-underwritten junket and/or fund-raising tour of the Middle East, courtesy of the State Department, which insists that he is a “moderate” in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the President’s rhetoric – like that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other apologists for and boosters of the GZM – tracks perfectly with the Muslim Brotherhood line about why we need to allow what Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin has correctly described as an “Islamist victory arch”  close by some of America’s most hallowed ground.  It is, we are told, all about “religious freedom” and “tolerance.”

Actually, it is all about submission to shariah – arguably the most intolerant of theo-political-legal codes, ironically particularly when it comes to respect for freedom of religion.  Rauf’s mosque complex and the shariah ideology/doctrine that animates it – the same program that animated the jihadists who destroyed the World Trade Center and many of its occupants on 9/11 – has everything to do with power, not faith.

The rest of Gaffney’s first article has profiles of some of the people who attended the dinner, like these:

Ingrid Mattson heads the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the country, the Islamic Society of North America.  ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the biggest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history and was identified as a Brotherhood “associated or friendly” group in documents introduced as evidence uncontested in that Holy Land Foundation prosecution.  Ms. Mattson now presides over the selection, training and certification of Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system – interestingly, a job formerly in the hands of Muslim Brother Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder and first head of the American Muslim Council, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence on terrorism charges.

Salam Al-Marayati is president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).  In 1999, then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt withdrew his nomination of Al-Marayati to a leadership position on the National Commission on Terrorism when it became public that Al-Marayati claimed that the terrorist group, Hezbollah, was a legitimate organization and has the right to attack the Israeli Army.

I note that Gaffney has a follow-up post with the response from the families of 9/11 victims.

Senate candidate indicted for showing obscene materials to teen

Story here from the Toronto Sun.

Excerpt:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene was indicted in South Carolina Friday on charges stemming from his arrest last year for allegedly showing pornography to a college student.A grand jury indicted Greene, 32, an unemployed Army veteran and campaign novice whose primary win in June stunned political observers, on a felony charge of disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity and a misdemeanor charge of showing obscene materials to someone without consent.

The charges followed his arrest in November for an incident in which he allegedly displayed obscene or pornographic materials on a computer to a University of South Carolina student and then suggested going to her dormitory room.

Reached at his home in Manning, South Carolina, where he lives with his elderly father, Greene said: “My lawyer is dealing with that. That’s all I have to say.”

The maximum penalty for conviction on the felony charge is five years in prison, with the misdemeanor carrying a three-year maximum sentence, said the office for Greene’s attorney, Eleazer Carter.

Greene, whose long-shot candidacy has attracted intense media scrutiny, won South Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary after a campaign that included no budget, no staff and no verified public appearances.

He defeated former Charleston judge and state legislator Vic Rawl, who had the endorsement of the state Democratic Party. He will face Republican Senator Jim DeMint in the November election.

In several halting interviews with media, Greene has said his platform includes jobs, infrastructure and education and suggested South Carolina’s high unemployment rate could be lessened by manufacturing dolls and action figures of himself.

Greene gave his first public speech last month. He talked for less than 10 minutes and, in a monotone, third-person reference to his legal troubles, mentioned that his anticipated trial had been delayed.

Wow. This is the Democrat Senate candidate for South Carolina running against Jim Demint for a seat in the United States Senate?