News

Darwinian fundamentalists burn new intelligent design movie at the stake

2 Comments

Evolution News reports on the latest censorship by the ignorant, close-minded, witch-hunting Darwinians.

Excerpt:

The knee-jerk response of Darwin’s defenders is to suppress any message that challenges Darwinian evolution’s orthodoxy. Case in point, this past week the Los Angeles Daily News reported that the California Science Center, a “department of the State of California,” banned the screening of the new intelligent design film, Darwin’s Dilemma, after the screening became public knowledge and there was intense pressure to cancel.

And get this, from what we’ve heard the intense pressure came from the Smithsonian Institution with which they are affiliated. That’s right, the very same Smithsonian Institution that trampled evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg’s academic freedoms. The very same Smithsonian Institution that apologized for allowing another ID film, The Privileged Planet, to be shown at the Institution’s Museum of Natural History.

In this instance the American Freedom Alliance entered into what was presumably a legally binding contract with the California Science Center when it rented its facilities. That they would be a screening a pro-ID film was never a secret. The Science Center apparently had no problem with the film being screened there and okayed the contract. So, who did have a problem? Why did the screening have to be canceled?

It happens all the time.

This isn’t the first time a major academic or scientific institution has trampled academic freedom of scientists who are proponents of intelligent design. Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez was the victim of very shameful treatment by the faculty and board of regents at Iowa State University. Dr. William Dembski was hounded out of Baylor University for his views on intelligent design. There’s an entire film that millions of people have seen, Expelled starring Ben Stein about what happens to people who are advocates of design theory. Even Stein was later sacked from his position at The New York Times, in part, according to him, for his having made that film.

Galileo in reverse.

UPDATE: I note that the pro-intelligent design team have organized a debate with their critics. Speakers include Stephen Meyer, Rick Sternberg, Michael Shermer and Don Prothero. Say what you want about Michael Shermer, he is not a coward.

Share

Mentoring

Does being a nice person make your religious beliefs true?

3 Comments

I used to really enjoy listening to Dennis Prager and Michael Medved back when I wasn’t writing all the time. And one of the things I noticed about these two famous Jewish radio talk show hosts is that they believed that the test of whether a religion is true is whether it results in good behavior.

I agree with Dennis and Michael on many topics, but not on this topic. When it comes to religious epistemology, I am solely and completely concerned with only one question. Is it true?

The Pugnacious Irishman posted recently on this topic of whether 1) subjective experiences and “good” works, or 2) correspondence to reality, should be the standard for choosing a religion.

He writes:

For Christian public school teachers, the most interesting opportunities happen in the staff lounge at lunch.

As I sat down to eat lunch on Friday, a few of the teachers were talking about Mormonism.

“My pastor calls Mormonism a cult. That pisses me off. Why doesn’t he just leave them alone? The Mormon kids in my classroom are such nice and dependable kids.”

[…]“You know, I’ve got a better question to ask. Rather than asking, ‘does a certain religion make nice and conscientious followers’ (which is a plus in some ways), a more fundamental question to ask is, ‘is the religion true‘?”

One of the teachers at the table balked, “That can be kind of hard to determine, can’t it?”

“Not necessarily. If a religion makes historical and scientific claims, it can be verified or not. Most of the monotheistic religions make these types of claims, so they can be tested in that regard.”

A religion that is verifiable has a distinct advantage over religions that are not.

[…]It was a good conversation. And that is the fundamental question, isn’t it? A certain religion can produce nice people and still be wholly false. Of course, you need to figure ‘what kind of person it produces’ into the equation–if a certain religion, followed accurately, routinely produced a Charles Manson, that would most definitely be a strike against it–but that isn’t the most fundamental issue. It’s necessary, but not sufficient.

Rather, the most fundamental question you should ask is, “is the religion true?” Asking such a question doesn’t make you intolerant or bigoted.

When it comes to choosing a religion or talking about religion, the first and only rule is to focus on public, testable, propositional truth. The reason why so many Christians struggle to get into the kinds of conversations that Rich gets into is because they are not taking Rich’s approach. Find the claims of a religion that can be tested, then test them.

Share

News

Government-funded research unit destroyed original climate data

Leave a comment

Story from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (H/T American Thinker via ECM)

Excerpt:

In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.

In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space.  The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis.  CRU’s destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.

In a declaration filed with CEI’s petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU’s revelation “a totally new element” that “violates basic scientific principles, and “throws even more doubt” on the claims of global warming alarmists.

CEI’s petition, filed late Monday with EPA, argues that CRU’s disclosure casts a new cloud of doubt on the science behind EPA’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide.  EPA stopped accepting public comments in late June but has not yet issued its final decision.  As CEI’s petition argues, court rulings make it clear that agencies must consider new facts when those facts change the underlying issues.

CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data.  But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable.  If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”

Among CRU’s funders are the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy – U.S. taxpayers.

Fraudulent government-funded research designed to support a socialist takeover of private industry by government? Hard to believe isn’t it?

Share