Dr. Jonathan Sarfati has written a new book. Sarfati is arguably the most able defender of creationism alive today. From the CMI webpage:
The Greatest Hoax on Earth? meets Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth head-on. Dr Sarfati firmly and comprehensively answers Dawkins’ challenge, chapter after chapter, covering a vast range of disciplines in his trademark crisp, clear style. He convincingly shows, for those with ears to hear, that to believe the Bible’s account of Creation/Fall/Redemption straightforwardly not only does not commit intellectual suicide, it is if anything the intellectually superior position.
The introduction to the book is available free.
This is from the blog of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Their journal is Philosophia Christi.
My paper ‘The Emperor’s Incoherent new Clothes – Pointing the Finger at Dawkins’ Atheism’ has just been published in the latest edition of Think (Number 24, Volume 9, Spring 2010). Think is a Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, edited by Stephen Law and published by Cambridge University Press. I argue that Richard Dawkins’ ‘new atheism’ proffers self-contradictory ideas about moral value, knowledge and responsibility.
“…I have written elsewhere that The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist. Let me say that again. Let me say also that I am proud to be the focus of the invective of the new atheists. They are a bloody disaster and I want to be on the front line of those who say so.”
Atheist Philosopher of Science, Michael Ruse.
OPINION
So a 39 year old father of two is knifed to death in Auckland. The killer will be caught, his DNA matched to confirm that he is indeed the killer, and millions will be spent on a court case and 15 or so years of meals and accommodation and rehab in prison.
In the meantime, the Mohini family will go thru a living hell (to quote Bob Dylan) and the children will live with no earthly father for the rest of their lives.
I think our society has its sums wrong. The killer has taken a life that was not his to take. Only God has the right to take another life because only God holds the privileged position of creator and sustainer of all things. The killer has taken the life of a human being, a person made in the Imago Dei. A person stamped with the image of God in his very being. The killer has violated the divine law, and now our justice system will almost certainly practice further injustice towards the Mohini family by showing them that the life of a husband/father is worth only 15 or so years.
Occasionally polls are taken and results published, and we find which groups in society are perceived to be the most trustworthy, according to society. The findings usually show something like: we trust doctors and firemen, but lawyers, used-car salesman, real estate agents and politicians, are, um, not very trustworthy. Well, something like that anyhow.
Well, what about scientists?
UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers is yet another mainstream-published piece that adds to the recent torrent of credibility claims about the previously-called global warming saga. Look at the opening shots from the Times article, and consider whether terrible damage that is being done to the credibility of science and/or scientists.
The chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion’s share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.
It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.
Ouch!
Stephen Meyer, Michael Medved, David Berlinski and Thomas Woodward are coming to Tampa Florida for Design vs. Darwin Event
The debate between Darwin and design is coming to Tampa, Florida with a major one-night event featuring some of the leading voices challenging Darwinian evolution.
Click here to register for this event: http://signatureinthecell.eventbrite.com/
Discovery Institute senior fellow and national radio personality Michael Medved will lead a two-hour discussion about the evidence for intelligent design and the challenges it proposes to modern evolutionary theory. Joining him will be Signature in the Cell author, Stephen C. Meyer; leading Darwin skeptic and author of The Deniable Darwin, David Berlinski; and scientist, scholar and writer, Thomas Woodward author of Darwin Strikes Back.
The event will take place at The A La Carte Pavilion, Tampa, FL, Thursday, January 28th at 7pm and is hosted by the C. S. Lewis Society. Discovery Institute is one of the co-sponsors.
The cost of admission is $6 for Students and $12 for Adults. For more information and advanced ticket sales, call (727) 376-6911 x 336. Or you can simply purchase tickets to the event online: http://signatureinthecell.eventbrite.com/
Source: Facebook
UPDATE: This is an excellent discussion with lots of argy-bargy from Prof. Atkins. What I so liked about this discussion is that Atkins is an honest atheist and does not beat around the bush. These guys should should do a full moderated 3-hour debate — it would be so beneficial to those interested in this debate. Meyer too was brilliant.
Justin Brierley from the Christian radio program Unbelievable has put together an amazingly high-quality debate. I made a rough transcript, so please see below for that.
The MP3 file is here. (60 minutes)
The following is from the Unbelievable website:
Intelligent Design theorist Stephen Meyer vs. Atheist scientist Peter Atkins debate Intelligent Design.
The documentary film “Expelled” is presented by US Actor Ben Stein and makes the case that scientists who question Darwinian orthodoxy and support Intelligent Design are being “expelled” from academia.
As the UK edition of the DVD is released we ask “Is freedom of thought at stake or is Intelligent Design out of bounds when it comes to biological science?”
Stephen C Meyer is co founder of the Discovery Institute in the USA and a major proponent of Intelligent Design.
Peter Atkins is Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University and an outspoken atheist.
They both feature in “Expelled” and join Justin to debate the pros and cons of Intelligent Design theory.
Mark Haville who is bringing the film to the UK also joins the discussion.
Thinking Christians should subscribe to Justin’s podcasts here to get a regular dose of scholarship:
http://ondemand.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/AudioFeed.aspx.
PS. Justin Brierley also interviewed William (Bill) Dembski and Lewis Wolpert a couple of weeks ago on the same radio show.
The global-warming scandal is bigger than one email leak.
This piece from the Wall Street Journal is a pretty good summary of what a lot of us are no doubt thinking about “global warming”. When scientific data is kept behind closed doors, unavailable, or classified, then why should we not be suspicious that there is really something else going on other than science. The fact that the masses in Copenhagen are apparently so slow or even so unwilling to respond to the points raised in an article such as this while singing to the same tune just fuels the fire. This seems to me to be NOT science, but ideology, running wild on tax-payers money.
From here: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/12/ouch_intelligent_design_guys_p.html
The great debate over the adequacy of evolution continues. Sort of. The latest head to head meeting had Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Richard Sternberg debating Dr. Michael Shermer and Dr. Donald Prothero. Heading into the debate I was quite excited; these aren’t lightweights, after all. The defenders of evolution are well known in science circles and to followers of the overall debate. Indeed, we’ve blogged a fair amount on Dr. Prothero who has, shall we say, a colorful and cavalier way with the facts. He is known more for polemical bromides and spurious personal attacks than for any serious science.
Waiting for the event to start, I was wondering if Prothero would be better behaved in person than he is hiding behind a keyboard. His partner was Skeptic magazine’s head honcho, Michael Shermer, who has debated Stephen Meyer before, and is known for making more theological arguments against ID, as opposed to bringing any serious scientific criticisms bear. I expected he would be the good cop to Prothero’s keystone cop. What I didn’t know was that Prothero would be Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson.
On the other side, the contenders are just as well credentialed — maybe more so — with one holding a philosophy of science degree from Cambridge (Meyer) being the less qualified, since Sternberg holds two degrees in evolutionary and theoretical biology. Not to mention that Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell, is by far the most prominent book of any of the participants, having just been named a bestseller by Amazon.com, and last week honored in the Times Literary Supplement of the London Times as one of the best books of the year.
It was all shaping up to be a serious heavyweight bout. And then Meyer and Sternberg simply KO’d the competition in the opening round. If I were being generous I might say that Prothero tripped over his own arrogance and impaled himself on his condescension, but let’s be honest; he was completely knocked out by Sternberg. I think Sternberg earned a third degree tonight, one in evolutionary bulldozing.
The debate video will be made available at some point by American Freedom Alliance, the sponsors of the debate, along with Center for Inquiry, The Skeptics Society and Discovery Institute.
Shermer opened by denouncing intelligent design as not science and not to be confused with science, which is what he and Prothero apparently assumed to be the topic of the debate. (It wasn’t, sadly.) Then he turned it over to Prothero, who — after repeatedly repeating that science cannot resort to the supernatural — proceeded to race through a litany of complaints against intelligent design and assertions about the creation of amino acids and proteins, most of which was non-controversial and also not evidence for Darwinian evolution. Prothero made a number of claims about RNA chains, about how the evidence of the fossil record is “ironclad” or would be if people treated it fairly, and about how the Miller-Urey experiment was right, “and even if they weren’t it still works” (quit laughing, he was serious!). His Darwinian motivational rant went on about how the Cambrian explosion was really a “slow fuse,” not an explosion. Amazingly, he claimed that almost all the major phyla had ancestors 50 million years before the Cambrian. Alas, he was so far wrong that it wasn’t all that much effort to point it out, completely discredit him, and then let him hang himself with his twisted rope of unearned arrogance and condescension. If you’re going to be arrogant, you’d better be able to back it up with something better than, “I climbed some rocks in Russia and read an article in The New Scientist.”
To call the debate a massacre would be a discredit to Sitting Bull. The only thing I can say is that Shermer needs to add a point to his booklet on how to debate “creationists” — namely, leave Donald Prothero at home in his van by the river.
This guy is to be taken seriously? I had to remind myself not to laugh every so often during his presentation — it was so pathetic and ill-informed. Basically, Shermer and Prothero blathered on about supernaturalism, and Meyer ceded his time to Sternberg, who made an interesting presentation about whale evolution. Then he proceeded to point out the topic of the debate to Shermer and Prothero: Has Evolutionary Theory Adequately Explained the Origins of Life?, something which they never addressed because they were so busy falling all over themselves to denounce intelligent design.
Some of the best points came later in the debate, when Sternberg slammed Prothero with factual put down after factual put down, citing the current literature time and again. His command of the subject matter — from population genetics to junk DNA — was so far and above beyond Shermer and Prothero’s knowledge, so far above their pay grade, that it was almost painful to watch him school them point after point. As I said before, shortly you’ll be able to watch the debate for yourself. But be warned, it isn’t pretty.
See also:
http://www.stephencmeyer.org/
http://www.signatureinthecell.org
Dr. Stephen Meyer will debate Skeptic magazine editor and Darwin defender Michael Shermer in Beverly Hills on Monday November 30.
More info on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184759894536&ref=share
Apologetics 315 has a bunch of stuff about this debate online, including the MP3 which is over 2 hours long and includes questions and answers from the floor.
Moderator of the debate, Dr. Bradley Monton has kindly put up a review of the debate on his website here.
I was really hoping for some knock-down arguments from Ayala given his amazing academic credentials and outstanding ranking in the world of evolutionary biology. But once again, I think there was little gunpowder in the evolutionist’s chamber and we are all intellectually the worse for it.
I wonder if Richard Dawkins will have time to listen to the debate (that could have been his) and reconsider debating Craig.
Reading the summary on Bradley Monton’s website, I wonder if Dawkins may regret NOT taking up the offer and debating Craig, especially if he is so sure of his incredible claims. Why? Because apparently Craig conceded afterward that he is very inexperienced at debating this subject, so Dawkins could have blasted some big holes in ID and its followers like myself by hitting us between the eyes David Tua style with the evidence that we keep asking for.
As for a winner, my feeling is that we can notch up another win for Craig, but overall the debate could have been a lot better.
Lastly, it seems to me that for such a smart guy, Ayala’s should have a worldview that is much more coherent. He seems to believe in God, but rejects any notion that we can detect God’s handiwork in biology. He also seems really confused about theology — even though he has a doctorate in theology!!! I wonder if he has ever come across the essential doctrine of the fall because it seem to me that it plays a vital role in so many of the criticisms he has of “design” in biology. If Ayala rejects both general revelation and special revelation, upon what does he base any belief in God at all? Why not just go the whole hog and ditch God-belief altogether?
There is usually more heat then light generated in the evolution wars. However, this video is actually pretty good imo. Thanks to the Hoover Institution for making this available!
embedded by Embedded Video
A dvd by Dr John Blanchard
Based on the book of the same title – which is available for purchase online.
Part of a series of dvds by John Blanchard (same time & venue).
Sponsored by
Grace Reformed Baptist Church
Palmerston North
How Could God Command Genocide in the Old Testament? is the question under discussion on Justin Taylor’s blog. Certainly something worth reading imo.
The MP3s are up and ready to listen (or you can watch)
Here are the names of the speakers: Dinesh D’Souza, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Darrell Bock, and JP Moreland. What a fantastic lineup!!!
Here is the page:
http://saddleback.com/mediacenter/services/currentseries.aspx?site=yDi0V4EwP58=&s=OsqcpA0SUkE=
http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/ should have the MP3s linked pretty soon…..
A dvd by Dr John Blanchard
Part of a series of dvds by John Blanchard (same time & venue):
- Saturday 31st October: Does God believe in atheists?
- Saturday 28th November: Is God past His sell-by date?
Sponsored by
Grace Reformed Baptist Church
Palmerston North
Antony Flew’s book (with Roy Abraham Varghese) There is a God : how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind is not in the Massey library, however it is available throught the BONUS+ system here:
