Liberals are not...In his book, The Edge of Evolution, Michael Behe offers a couple of arguments trying to establish exactly how much neo-Darwinian evolution can accomplish. In his second argument, in chapter 7, "The Two Binding-Sites Rule", he concludes
I just finished watching the debate between physicist Stephen Barr and biochemist Michael Behe, which I thought was very good, with both of them making very good points. The one point of Barr's that I thought Behe let slip by was his argument of an infinite regress of intelligent natural designers. If it was time travellers, then it wouldn't be an infinite regress. Just a closed loop. If it was space aliens, then it is only an infinite regress if we know that the previous designer had to be irreducibly complex. How would we know that in advance? Therefore, a natural intelligent designer would be a proper "scientific" explanation, even as Barr understands it. And since the possibility of a natural designer would be allowed, how would science know ahead of time that the designer is natural and not supernatural? Without further evidence it wouldn't. But it could have good reason to believe that there was in fact a designer.
Tom Gilson wrote The Evolutionists' Otherwise Practical Promiscuity at Thinking Christian. This is better than a freshly brewed cup of morning coffee. 
Sex, rattlesnakes and Nick Matzke (comment section) all in one post. Tom begins:
Evolution—the naturalistic kind—is dangerous. I’ve never seen that danger exposed so clearly as in Jesse Bering’s article today at Scientific American’s website, Polyamory chic, gay jealousy, and the evolution of a broken heart [caution: crude language]. He writes,
HT: Clare
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Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan, and Jean Norman on Naturalism appears at the Keith Burgess-Jackson blog. The author notes that naturalism "is a philosophical doctrine about science." He also observes scientific limits with respect to empirical inferences about broader philosophical and religious issues. While believers in naturalism will acknowledge the distinction between it and science, the distinction is blurred when cultural issues are the focus and an attachment to naturalism becomes a potent influence on non-scientific matters.
Scientism is the ugly step-child of naturalism. Acceptance of scientism brings one a step closer to building a philosophical foundation needed for authoritarianism. The building process is fraught with logical slights of hand, subtle insertions of straw men and intellectual arrogance; all tools in the process of shaping young minds and a broader societal agenda.
HT: Clare, Paul and Joseph
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It is been observed that there is significant homology between bacterial flagella and T3SSs. Pallen and Matzke have proposed that both evolved from "a common, but simpler, ancestral secretion system." While others have argued that the T3SS developed from the bacterial flagellum.
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An ongoing exchange involving Matt, John, Eric and Olegt led me to post this:
The authors are Douglas D. Axe, Brendan W. Dixon and Philip Lu. It is published in PLoS ONE. The abstract:
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Credit: bigfoto.com
http://www.bigfoto.com/
David Heddle wrote The Unreasonable Success of Physics at his site He Lives. From the entry:
If you consider all the talking points in ID–irreducible complexity, privileged planet, cosmological fine-tuning–some of which I find useless (irreducible complexity) and some of which I find interesting (the apparent sensitivity of life to the values of constants) no one observation from the world of science or mathematics has ever struck me as a more powerful apologetic than Feynman's and Wigner's point.
The world is not only governed by orderly laws, but those laws are expressible in simple enough terms that we can make sense out of them and use them to make astonishingly accurate predictions. As Feynman suggested, if I read him correctly, science can never explain why this is so. It is, in fact, unreasonable that this happens.
Climate alarmists on the run appeared as an editorial in The Washington Times. The following remarks caught my interest:
Faith in man-made global warming had never been more widespread, with liberal academics and media subjecting to ridicule any who dared question the "settled science."
Ridicule. That's a favored tool. Practically speaking how is it working out? We'll find out in November.
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There is no legitimate reason to keep it a secret. It would also be nice to know who did the banning.
Casey Luskin authored Is It Legally Consistent for Darwin Lobbyists to Oppose Advocating, But Advocate Opposing, Intelligent Design in Public Schools?
Quoting Luskin:
As noted in Part II.H, courts have consistently held that advocating creationism in public schools is unconstitutional. In this regard, this present author agrees with courts that there are certain core tenets of creationism– namely its adherence to supernatural or divine forces–which make it an unscientific and untestable religious viewpoint that cannot be constitutionally advocated in public schools.
Is human dignity and uniqueness an outmoded conceptual relic? Do humans have a claim to inalienable rights not enjoyed by the great apes? Princeton University Bioethics Professor Peter Singer does not appear to think so. Nor does the nation of Spain. Is this just another social movement waiting to happen? Waiting for the right alignment of political power and judicial precedents?
Theron Bowers alludes to these issues and more in his article THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS IDEA Being human is no big deal. Perhaps the concerns mentioned are a bit far fetched. They are clearly at variance with biblical ideas which have framed basic values of western civilization. But do those hostile to such values have any grounds for rebuking Singer? Spain?
The Multiverse and the Resurrection of Christ appears at First Things. The comment section seems more interesting than the OP. Stephen Barr, Barry Arrington of UD and Joe Carter and others exchange views in the comment section.
The increased interest in the idea of the multiverse—the theory that a vast number of universes lie beyond the limits of what we can observe—has led Christians to develop differing opinions about its plausibility. Some argue the scientific merits of the theory. As physicist, and First Things board member, Stephen Barr, has said, “There are physics reasons why the multiverse has to be taken seriously as an idea. It absolutely is not kooky.” Others believe it is posited primarily to circumvent the evidence for fine-tuning of our cosmos.
HT: Clare
It's occurred to me that there should be some fairly simple ways to test the evolvability of the bacterial flagellum. Instead of knocking out all the flagellar genes (as Behe suggested a long time ago), and seeing if bacteria can evolve a flagellum, why not begin by knocking out just one gene and seeing if bacteria can evolve a replacement gene?
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| Agents Under Fire by Angus Menuge |
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| The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene |
