|
|
February 20th, 2012 | Category: this week in intelligent designIntelligent design news, commentary and discussion from the 11th of February to the 19th of February, 2012.
So, it happened again: the Discovery Institute decided to notice something I wrote about them. I’m not sure if it’s because I write for The Panda’s Thumb and they see me as the weakest, undergraduate link in its strong chain of esteemed, proper biologists, or because my criticisms of their ideas are annoying, but they seem to focus on me quite a lot. Ah well, any recognition is good recognition, right?
[...]
» Continue reading “This Week in Intelligent Design – 19/02/12″
February 15th, 2012 | Category: intelligent designIntelligent design, as a scientific hypothesis, is in trouble if it doesn’t have peer-reviewed papers establishing, analysing and providing evidence for its core ideas – so it’s no surprise that proponents of ID are quite adamant that such papers do in fact exist.
Casey Luskin, intelligent design expert and apparent head writer over at Evolution News & Views, is naturally no exception, and he recently answered an objection to the claim that over 50 peer-reviewed articles support ID: namely, that the majority of the articles cited by the [...]
» Continue reading ““Pro-ID”, “endorse ID” and “ID-friendly” – Holy terminological ambiguity, Batman!”
January 20th, 2012 | Category: intelligent designGetting mentioned on the Discovery Institute’s flagship blog Evolution News & Views never fails to make me smile. I mean, it’s a big deal that they’ve gone out of their way to talk about me – they could be doing some groundbreaking scientific research after all. However, I do wish that one day they’ll have something useful or interesting to say.
Do I sound a little snarky? Perhaps I do. And perhaps I mean to be, just a little. Because, you know, it’s not every day you read [...]
» Continue reading “So, Discovery Institute, do I win an award or what?”
December 29th, 2011 | Category: intelligent design
From the 6th to the 14th of July, 2012, the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is hosting a seminar on intelligent design for college and university students, entitled “Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences”:
The CSC Seminar on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences [emphasis in original] will prepare students to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID). The seminar will explore cutting-edge ID work in fields such as molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology, developmental biology, paleontology, computational biology, ID-theoretic mathematics, [...]
» Continue reading “The CSC Seminar on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences – Would I be welcome?”
December 22nd, 2011 | Category: intelligent design
As mentioned, I have a couple of pro-ID books that need to be read and reviewed these holidays: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design by Stephen C. Meyer, and Intelligent Design Uncensored by William Dembski and Jonathan Witt. While I’ve done preliminary readings of both books, in order to grasp their overall structure and scope, I recently started reading the latter in a greater level of detail.
What I’ve found has not been pretty.
Yes, Intelligent Design Uncensored is not a very healthy book to [...]
» Continue reading “Thoughts on the first three chapters of Dembski and Witt’s “Intelligent Design Uncensored””
December 1st, 2011 | Category: intelligent designWhen you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.
~ Cersei Lannister, HBO’s “Game of Thrones”
Bit of a dramatic quote, isn’t it? But for some reason it entered my mind when I read what David Klinghoffer wrote about me and my views on the dismissive rhetoric of the scientific community towards the intelligent design movement (which I maintain is understandable, given the history of ID and creationism), in [...]
» Continue reading ““You Win or You Die” – Unintentionally nourishing the ID rhetoricotrophs”
November 28th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designIt seems like some unknown – but clearly mysterious – phenomenon is linking my mind with others’, because the day after I mused on Twitter about the way the intelligent design movement capitalises on the dismissive attitude of the scientific community towards people who argue against evolutionary theory, the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin wrote a blog post doing exactly that – “The Uncivil Style of Intelligent Design Critics”. Well, either a mystical force is sharing the thoughts of bloggers around the world, or Casey [...]
» Continue reading “Why scientists are feeding the rhetoricotrophic beast of intelligent design, and why they need to stop”
October 28th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designWhat do think-tank organisations do when they have no arguments to support their position? Why, they denigrate organisations who have opposing messages, of course! On the level of superficial and immediate PR, it’s the obvious choice. But in the long run, organisations that do nothing but attack their opposition with smear campaigns tend to fall prey to closer scrutiny and are eventually criticised for their underhanded, rhetorical tactics.
Would the Discovery Institute – the world’s premier intelligent design think-tank, the self-proclaimed scientific bastion of proper critical thought in biology, the [...]
» Continue reading “David Klinghoffer’s credibility implodes violently, leaving no survivors”
September 16th, 2011 | Category: miscellaneousReally, truly, I didn’t mean it. Life gets busy, you know? Er, I mean, the Men-in-Black arrested me and wiped my memory; my cat ate my laptop; the Tasmanians invaded; the Internet in Australia was shut off for two weeks; I was turned into a horrible Drosophila ananassae/Homo sapiens hybrid in a freak lab accident involving PCR, a papercut and a dodgy pipette: mix and match your favourite (far more exciting) excuses for my absence.
Anyway, the point is, I was gone for a while. But the Internet stops for no [...]
» Continue reading “While I was gone… (aka. Having compound eyes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be)”
July 1st, 2011 | Category: religionThe Novellatron – the skeptical, alien-made robot also known as Dr. Steven Novella – has many detractors in the worlds of pseudoscience and antiscience, but none that I would call his nemesis: other than perhaps that of Dr. Michael Egnor, conservative Catholic neurosurgeon and ID proponent. Hmm, then again, maybe “nemesis” is too strong [...]
» Continue reading “How To Reclaim A Derogatory Nickname, with Michael Egnor”
|
Homologous Legs is the blog of Jack Scanlan, an Australian biology student who has a serious problem with creationists, intelligent design proponents and anyone else who misrepresents evolutionary biology or science in general.
He uses this blog to post news about the intelligent design/evolution "war", science communication in biology and chemistry, and mostly coherent thoughts from his scattered, music-loving brain. Contact
homologouslegs(at)gmail(dot)com
Book Wishlist and Flattr Donations
|
