The Dawn Treader

"It's (EXPELLED) going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant –– which means they're going to draw in about 90% of the American market."
~ Evangelist for atheism, PZ Myers

In the worldview of PZ Myers, I probably fit all of those categories ;)  If you do too, then join Mr. Dawntreader on Freedom Day, April 18th, at Valley View theaters to see Expelled!  We can grab a cup of coffee afterwards and discuss the film. 

Thank God that America is a land that has never tolerated tyranny, suppression and despotism of any form ... including academic despotism.  I hope this film delivers on exposing the ridiculous tactics of those in the scientific establishment who refuse to tolerate dissent in their ranks. 

There should be no need to fear questions about reality.  Develop a model.  Make predictions.  Put your predictions to the test.  Revise your models.  Follow the evidence where it leads.

Openness to ID can be costly in the academic ranks: case in point, the case of Frank  Beckwith's tenure vote at Baylor.  Thankfully, justice prevailed in Beckwith's case.  Congratulations to Frank Beckwith.  It was well deserved.  Further up and further in!

A bunch of granite rocks strewn over an Amazon hilltop in northern Brazil.  Random rock formation, or ancient observatory?

The so called "" provides a nice case study for Willliam Dembski's explanatory filter.

I am engaged in a thread with some Christians on a different forum.  They are trying to make sense out of deep rooted anger laced with desperation when Darwin is threatened by the likes of Behe, Dembski and Johnson.   Why the nastiness expressed at the recent death of Henry Morris as referenced in Mark Hartwig's post or the recent Richard Dawins special attacking Christianity?

Opponents of ID are doing the very thing they decry ... they are using the law to fight against criticism of evolution ... instead of defeating ideas with ideas.  The ACLU bullied Ohio into submission with the threat of a multimillion law suit as described in this World magazine article called Junk Science.

This strategy produces Pyrrhic victories at best.  It will win a skirmish in Ohio, but the apologists of Darwin continue to wage a losing war in this culture ... and the ranks of public dissenters within the scientific community grows.  How long till it is safe for the untenured to dissent?  Once that happens, a Kuhnian shift shouldn't be far behind.

The message this sends to Americans who have doubts about pure naturalistic Darwinism (which still is the majority of Americans) is ... force is required to win this debate because ideas won't do it.  Not allowing criticisms of ideas is a disastorous approach and using the establishment clause to get your way makes it even worse.

No wonder Michael Ruse has been quoted recently as telling Dennet and Dawkins "we are losing this war."  He is right.

To provide a taste of what it feels like to not be able to dissent, I am disabling comments on this post.  It stinks, doesn't it?

Breaking news!  The ruling is in.  Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dover school board policy.  No promotion of biological design  in public school science classrooms.

A better approach, in my opinion, is to allow biological design to flourish as a metascience as Dr. Robin Collins suggests here. As a metascience, biological design will receive the time and support it needs to mature and flourish.

Scientists make wonderful pragmatists and lousy philosophers.  Philosophical arguments about science will not convince them to switch away from their current research paradigms.  In order to gain traction and acceptance, design based research programs need to produce more discoveries, more break throughs and more cures.    Research grants will follow, and so will more scientists.  One interesting area to keep a close eye on is the oxymoronic research area known as directed evolution.  It may prove to be an interesting testing ground of paradigms (design -vs- chance).  I hope to post more on this interesting subject as I learn more about it.  A second area where I think design based programs may yield superior results is in forensic biology.  Just a hunch.

Once biological design gains traction in the scientific community, and I have every reason to expect it will, then you will see a more interesting trial than the one we witnessed in Dover.

Update: Some legal and philosophical analysis of the case from an expert over at Through A Glass Darkly.

A stunning political victory for Intelligent Design supporters.    If you thought all the news about Intelligent Design -vs- Evolution was coming out of Kansas and Dover these days, guess again...

Introducing ... (drum roll) ... Christiansburg :)

My Has Intelligent Design Reached The Tipping Point? touched off an extensive and interesting debate.  I suspected it would.

After the equivalent of 50 pages of comments, I made a motion to end the debate ... for now.  Sometimes you just need to take a break and ponder and wait for fresh ideas.

Then along comes a  fresh idea (new to me anyway).  Macht points to an interesting and thought provoking article by philosopher-scientist Dr. Robin Collins called: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN PROGRAM: AN ANALYSIS AND A PROPOSAL  It is 13 pages and worth a read if you are truly interested in the future of I.D.

I maintain that I.D. has indeed reached the tipping point.  But exactly where is this thing going?  What is the best path forward?  Dr. Collins has some ideas that make a lot of sense.

Everywhere you look people are talking about intelligent design (ID).  The lefty blogs.  The righty blogs.  In my email inbox.  On the news.  On the talk shows.

Can you say, ?

UPDATE:  The cover of TIME magazine!  This idea has tipped.

James Pinkerton wrote a new article that raises a serious, but little discussed issue, called transhumanism.

Hold your nose and please speed read through all of the threadbare, vacuous objections to "religous" intelligent design.   Pinkerton gets to something really interesting at the bottom.

Start with the paragraph that begins with "But here's something coming that's real, replicatable, and thus inarguable. "

Pinkerton is right about where we are headed: transhumanism, which he calls SID.  This is exactly why bioethics should be at forefront of worldview issues on the table.  Money is ultimately driving us there ... which is why this article appears on a web site with the subtitle "where free markets meet technology".

Dembski exposes the duplicity in Pinkerton's argument about ID.  My purpose is different.

I simply want to use this article to raise awareness about the area of transhumanism ... something that only a few blog about or are informed enough to discuss.

For the followers of Christ out there ... the ethical debates being waged today involving technology will turn into laws tomorrow ... and possibly protected under the rubric of constitutional privacy concerns.  In my opinion, many Christians are equipped to engage in the areas surrounding death and life ... but transhumanism presents a new ethical challenge.  Be forewarned.

(HT: ID The Future)