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July 24th, 2012 | Category: evolutionAs my patience for the Discovery Institute is at an all-time low, it’s heartening to see someone completely eviscerate their arguments. I mean, it happens all the time, but it’s particularly satisfying right now.
Carl Zimmer, well-known science writer, has been battling with DI fellow David Klinghoffer over the past few days over the evidence for a chromosome fusion event sometime in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens that resulted in our chromosome 2, internal telomeres, double centromeric sequences and all. I say battling, but it’s been more [...]
» Continue reading “An epic end to the Zimmer/Klinghoffer chromosome fusion saga”
July 21st, 2012 | Category: intelligent designWhy have I been staying away from writing about the Discovery Institute? Stuff like this keeps happening:
Yesterday our friends at Biologic Institute were being pestered on their Facebook page by science writer and Discover magazine blogger Carl Zimmer on the subject of Science and Human Origins. Facebook is really no place for a substantive debate — the format is such that it doesn’t repay the time you put in.
So I wrote to Zimmer to invite him to participate in a genuine and informative online debate here at ENV, [...]
» Continue reading “Patience: lost”
July 6th, 2012 | Category: intelligent designAuckland University of Technology PhD candidate Paul McBride has admirably published a 6-part review of the Discovery Institute’s latest self-published book, Science and Human Origins, which I previously drew your attention to for – yes – trying to argue that the human race could have originated from a literal Adam and Eve. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but for those without the time or the patience for bad science, the bottom line is:
I have been left wondering why the Discovery Institute, or intelligent design advocates in general, or [...]
» Continue reading “Paul McBride reviews “Science and Human Origins” – SPOILER ALERT, it’s not great”
June 7th, 2012 | Category: intelligent design
It’s not like it needed any extra confirmation, really, but further evidence that the Seattle-based intelligent design think-tank that is the Discovery Institute is actually a stealth traditional creationist organisation is about to be dropped in August, in the form of a new book. “Science and Human Origins” by Discovery Institute regulars Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe and Casey Luskin (and from Discovery Institute Press), according to the book description on Amazon, is set to “…challenge the claim that undirected natural selection is capable of building [...]
» Continue reading “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Stephen C. Meyer”
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”
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Homologous Legs is the personal blog of Jack Scanlan, an Australian science communicator and biology student.
Topics of interest here include the intelligent design/evolution "war", biology, philosophy, religion, music, and mostly coherent thoughts from a scattered brain. Contact
homologouslegs(at)gmail(dot)com
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