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February 3rd, 2012 | Category: podcast
The Pseudo Scientists – Episode 38
In this episode of The Pseudo Scientists, the official podcast of the Young Australian Skeptics, Jason and I talk about former No. 1 tennis player Margaret Court’s homophobic op-ed in the Herald Sun, and a group of doctors trying to ban the teaching of alternative medicine in Australian universities. Plus, I interview freakin’ PZ Myers! Yes, that PZ Myers. We chat about alien biology, getting more biologists involved in the skeptical movement and its conferences, and the [...]
» Continue reading “Episode 38 of The Pseudo Scientists: Homophobia, alternative medicine in universities, and PZ Myers”
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 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”
Intelligent design news and discussion for July 1st to August 9th, 2011.
Did the ID movement miss me whilst I was gone? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t pretend to believe I’m important enough to be noticed, so I’ll leave that there. But then again, I don’t blog to necessarily be noticed and to directly engage with the ID crowd: I blog in order to disseminate correct information and to share a passion for science and demonstrable truth (as tacky as that phrase is - I apologise).
So, yes, this is a TWiID [...]
» Continue reading “These Weeks in Intelligent Design – 09/08/11″
August 2nd, 2011 | Category: intelligent design
A little while ago I decided to take advantage of the little travel money I had left over from my TAM 9 trip and purchase a number of books from my Book Depository wishlist. While not all of them relate to intelligent design, three of them do, and I hope to review them here in the coming months.
The first of these books is Intelligent [...]
» Continue reading “Two pro-ID and one anti-ID: more books to add to the review queue”
April 19th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designA well-accepted characteristic of a scientific hypothesis is that it must generate predictions about the world against which tests can be run – confirming or falsifying those predictions and thus supporting or not supporting the hypothesis in question. Understandably then, intelligent design proponents need to demonstrate that ID can produce predictions if it is to be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis and alternative to evolutionary theory.
Historically (as much as I can say “historically” in the context of such a new movement), this has not been a major goal [...]
» Continue reading “The conceptual alchemy of ID, transmuting baseless assertions into scientific predictions”
Intelligent design news from the 30th of March to the 5th of April, 2011.
Sometimes, keeping up with the intelligent design movement can feel like a full-time job. Other times… not so much. While some of the output by the Discovery Institute and its related organisations is somewhat novel, most of it is simply rehashed ideas from a limited pool. This week was a fairly good example of the latter. We had copy-and-paste arguments for the positive nature of the design argument, as well as an unsurprising plug for a [...]
» Continue reading “This Week in Intelligent Design – 05/04/11″
March 30th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designI’m currently 310 pages into Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell, which was sent to me a few weeks ago for the purpose of a review on this blog (which I’m happily planning to do). The book’s total length is 611 pages, but the main, non-appendix/index/notes portion is only 480 pages – and guess what? Stephen has yet to articulate any sort of argument for intelligent design. Skimming ahead a little, the first real attempt at this (arguably) occurs in Chapter 15, at p. 324.
That means [...]
» Continue reading “Update on my Signature in the Cell adventure”
March 15th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designWhile reading Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer, I realised something important that I had previously overlooked in the debate between pro- and anti-ID camps. It’s always perplexed me why ID proponents, especially those at the Discovery Institute, constantly talk about “materialistic evolution”. If their contention is that ID is secular, why muddy that position by bringing in what seems like a theistic idea – non-materialism?
In Chapter 2 of Signature, Meyer goes through a reasonably brief history of the scientific debate between biological materialists and [...]
» Continue reading “Does intelligent design have a dualistic assumption, not a theistic one?”
March 11th, 2011 | Category: intelligent designLook what arrived in the mail! Yes, that’s right: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, by Stephen C. Meyer. I made a callout a little over a week ago for people to consider buying me pro-ID books for my birthday, and someone obliged.
But not just anyone did, no. It was Paul A. Nelson, Discovery Institute fellow and member of the Access Research [...]
» Continue reading “The mere presence of this book is interrupting my Darwin worship”
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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
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