Dear Darrel,

Since I am banned from Biologos, I am unable to contact you, so I'm "sending" this open letter to you via telicthoughts.com, and hope you read it. I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend the conference. I wanted very much to meet you. My accusations against Ussery are patently true: He misquoted Behe and used those misquotes to attack Behe's integrity and competence. If he had merely quoted Behe correctly and then attacked Behe's position, I would have had no complaint, since I do not have much background in biology, and would leave that discussion up to the experts. But I do know English. And I do know when someone is being misquoted. For you to suggest that what Ussery said was true means that you have either not bothered to compare Ussery's misquotes of Behe with Behe's actual text, or that you yourself are guilty of deceit. I hope it isn't the latter. If you haven't compared the two, please do so now. Then demand a retraction of the misquotes by Ussery, if you are any kind of Christian at all.

Sincerely,
Bilbo

P.S. The email address I use at Biologos is quite correct. Read the rest of this entry »

Pds posted Fact-Checking Biologos: More Misrepresentions of Michael Behe, at his blog. Ussery wrote this about Behe (bold added by pds):

In spite of strong protestations from many (including myself) in their reviews of that work, Behe still clings to the idea that no one has ever published anything about the evolution of these complex molecular machines. “Despite the amazing advance of molecular biology as a whole, despite the sequencing of hundreds of entire genomes and other leaps in knowledge, despite the provocation of Darwin’s Black Box itself, in the more than ten years since I pointed out that a situation concerning missing Darwinian explanations for the evolution of the cilium is utterly unchanged” (page 95).

Again, the interested reader is invited to visit PubMed, type in “cilium evolution” and see for oneself: are we to believe that articles with titles like “The evolution of the cilium and the eukaryotic cell” and ‘Origin of the cilium: novel approaches to examine a centriolar evolution hypothesis” simply don’t exist? Perhaps if one closes their eyes, and clicks their heels three times, thinking, “They don’t exist, they don’t exist”, maybe these articles can simply vanish!

Two bold types. The first is the misrepresentation. The second the mockery. There is a time and place for everything. A time to confess. A time to apologize. We're listening Ussery. Does Biologos stand behind this?

Produced with minimal comment is the following the New Scientist: The Chaos Theory of Evolution. (Thanks go to Pez for this story.)

Some highlights follow.

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[Update: My apologies to Biologos. They did notify me by email that I was banned. It went to the junk mail section, and I only discovered it yesterday (Nov. 4).]

I think I've been banned from Biologos.org, though since I haven't been notified that I have been banned, I can't say for sure. I've sorta' been left in limbo, as anyone who has been banned from TelicThoughts can attest to.

I'm guessing it has something to do with this thread, and my continued insistence on posting a comment that Ussery has failed to respond to any of my evidence that he is either delusional or a liar.

strike you as untruthful?

[Disclaimer: This thread is pro-9/11 truth, and does not reflect the view of most of the members of Telic Thoughts. In fact, most of them disagree strongly with it. They tolerate my occasional postings about it, which I confine to about twice a year.]

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Science is dangerous because it makes people question everything and is particularly harsh on supernatural tracts and anything canonical.

agam

This assertion is a useful starting point for a series on modern mythologies. Science is not dangerous unless spin-off technologies are used for destructive purposes as is the case with wars. Science does not make us question everything either. Experiments are the offspring of thinking about physical phenomenon. The thinking process can be profound at times but is generally limited to the scope a specific test. What is noteworthy is how unresponsive social canonical ideas can be to science. More on that in another post.
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A friend of mine, who is NOT an Intelligent Design proponent, posted a reply to someone who asked him what he thought god-of-the-gaps arguments were. I thought his analysis was rather good, so I thought I would restate it here:

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Tiger

Credit: bigfoto.com

http://www.bigfoto.com/themes/nature/animals/

BioLogos and Christian unity. Part I: The cost of artificial unity was posted at Quintessence of Dust. The theme of the post appears to be that Christian unity is not a goal worth striving for if it entails sponsoring a conference whose attendees include organizations Steve considers anti-science and therefore dishonest. Steve can correct me if that is the wrong interpretation. Steve does not detail why he considers the organizations named- Reasons to Believe and the Discovery Institute- anti-science. I'm more familiar with the DI. Does Reasons to Believe debunk evolution? I'm not bothering to check as I know someone will tell us in the comment section. But this quote is taken from their website:
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Bonnie Bassler thinks bacteria invented social networking billions of years before Twitter or Facebook.

"We think that bacteria made the rules for how multicellular organization works…you've just evolved a few more bells and whistles."

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's "The Grand Design" got a lot of press due to Hawking's comments on God. Less discussed were the authors philosophical views of science – particularly their "Model-Dependent Realism". (As usual, this comes well after the authors declare philosophy to be dead, once again showing that those who reject philosophy usually can't shut up about it.)

Whatever the case, I thought it could be interesting to provide some short quotes from the book on this subject. Let's have a look.

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About natural selection. Just some fairly simple and straightforward questions about natural selection and evolution.

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Well it's obvious to me that she struggled with this one. However, she spurted out what I think is an honest answer: if in office, she will let the local school board decide this question.

If I were asked this question, unlike my counterparts at UD, I would not ask Wolf a bunch of questions on definitions. I would simply say the following:

"My Christianity is bigger, and quite compatible, with mainstream evolutionary biology. However, it's quite evident that mainstream evolutionary biology is itself evolving. I would predict that evolutionary theory continues to evolve to a more complex state, such that evolution itself is revealed to be much more sophisticated than anyone first thought. My wish is that school boards promote reflection of this evolving scientific thought when it comes to science education."

Here's a challenge, if you were in O'Donnell's seat, and you were asked this question, how would you respond? Leave your answers in the comments section. Keep in mind that you are a tea party candidate when answering this question.

A guest post by Thought Provoker.