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!
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.
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
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
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
He will be at “Church in Vogel”, 127 Vogel Street, Palmerston North on Tuesday 31st March thru Thursday 2nd April. Each evening’s session will start at 7pm and topic will be ……… “In The Beginning – GOD”, a study on the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
More info can be found at www.ariel.org.nz or by contacting info@ariel.org.nz.
Or you can call Llew King on 06 357 0092.
Offerings will be taken.
On Tuesday night, I debated atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, at Virginia Commonwealth University. The topic was, “Does God Exist?”
Thanks be to God (and to you for your prayers) because I don’t think the debate could have gone much better. There were several atheists who approached me afterwards to say that I had won.
One young lady actually apologized for being an atheist! Her position was not well represented, and she said that the arguments for God were.
Hitchens was his usual charming and witty self (I really like him and said as much), but he did not answer any of the eight arguments that I presented for the existence of God. And as many in the audience acknowledged, he dodged nearly all of my questions.
Here is the introduction of a long e-mail sent to me two hours after the debate by a VCU Philosophy professor who attended (this professor told me that he is completely “non-religious”):
Dear Dr. Turek, I wanted to say once again that I greatly enjoyed your talk and that, in my judgment, you clearly and unequivocally prevailed against Hitchens. Your two mind-body arguments were, I thought, very good, as were your modernizations of the cosmological argument and the teleological argument. I was also moved by your argument that, given how vanishingly close to zero are the chances of there being any sort of life, let alone intelligent life, it is more reasonable to infer that there is a God than it is to infer that there isn’t — the first an inference, but not the latter, being an ‘inference to the best explanation’, as philosophers of science would say.
Read the rest here.
National Radio are running this series. Check out the MP3s here.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283
Unexplained periodic fluctuations in the decay rates of Si-32 and Ra-226 have been reported by groups at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Si-32), and at the Physikalisch-Technische-Bundesandstalt in Germany (Ra-226). We show from an analysis of the raw data in these experiments that the observed fluctuations are strongly correlated in time, not only with each other, but also with the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Some implications of these results are also discussed, including the suggestion that discrepancies in published half-life determinations for these and other nuclides may be attributable in part to differences in solar activity during the course of the various experiments, or to seasonal variations in fundamental constants.
What is Kogs-4-Kids?
Kogs-4-Kids is a workbook set that has just been released that supports the Real Science-4-Kids curriculum. This workbook set helps students make cognitive connections between the scientific discipline they are studying (chemistry, biology, physics, and earth and space) and other disciplines such as critical thinking, language, technology, the arts, philosophy, and history. Kogs-4-Kids plus Real Science-4-Kids work together to create not only a foundation for scientific knowledge but also a framework for scientific literacy.
Order the complete Chemistry 1A Bundle today or the individual workbooks of interest (recommended for grades 3-5). You can also download sample chapters for each topic. Find out why kids are going krazy for kogs.
It happened in Auckland…
http://mandmandmandm.blogspot.com/2008/06/battle-of-bills-review-of-craig-cooke.html
My small idea of getting Dr William Lane Craig to have a debate at Auckland University ended up being an event that far exceeded my expectations. Despite the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) booking a larger lecture theatre at the last minute we still had to open up three additional lecture theatres with live video feeds and we still had people sitting on the floor! Question time had to be extended because of the interest. The range of people in attendance was excellent; hardened skeptics, evangelical Christians and everyone in between, young and old, high school students through to tertiary faculty.
And is about to happen in Palmy…
http://christiannews.co.nz/2008/debate-bill-craig-and-bill-cooke/
These are some useful interviews by an Aussie! Webpage here: http://thesciphishow.com/darwinordesign
The author of Darwin or Design is Jason Rennie. Jason is also the host of The Sci Phi Show a podcast that looks at questions of science fiction and philosophy. He lives in Sydney Australia and works as a software engineer when he isn’t busy doing things like this.
If you want to contact Jason in regards to Darwin or Design he can be reached at darwinordesign@gmail.com. He checks his email regularly so you can expect a speedy reply.
An overview of Evolution
Chapter 1 : PZ Myers, An overview of Evolution and ID 15:48
Chapter 2 : Sean Carroll, What is Evo Devo ? 20:17
Chapter 3 : Nick Matzke, Can the flagellum evolve ? 29:27
Design in the ID advocates own words
Chapter 4 : Salvador Cordova, What is ID ? 20:20
Chapter 5 : Mike Behe, What is Irreducible Complexity ? 17:51
Chapter 6 : Angus Menuge, Agency and how to identify it 18:28
Chapter 7 : Guillermo Gonzalez, The Privileged Planet 17:26
Chapter 8 : Joey Campana, Does ID research actually exist ? 26:17
Non-Darwinian approaches to Evolution and Common Descent
Chapter 9 : James Shapiro, Sentient Cells ? 33:50
Chapter 10 : Mike Gene, What is Front Loading ? 23:37
ID’s critics
Chapter 11 : Elliot Sober, ID and the Philosophy of Science 10:46
Chapter 12 : Scott Turner, The problem of Design 24:02
Chapter 13 : Glenn Morton, Can ID work in Biology ? 15:19
Chapter 14 : Ryan Nichols, Are ID and Theology Inseperable ? 14:28
Chapter 15 : Georgia Purdom, Isn’t ID just Creationism in Disguise ? 21:44
ID, The Philosophy of Science, History and The Law
Chapter 16 : David Livingstone, Evolution and Christianity, The History 32:37
Chapter 17 : Del Ratzsch, Can ID be Science ? 25:38
Chapter 18 : Massimo Pigliucci, Evolutionary Epistemology and ID 28:34
Chapter 19 : Henry Schaefer, Science and Religion 14:40
Chapter 20 : Donald McConnell, Intelligent Design, Creationism and The Law 34:42
Chapter 21 : Steve Fuller, ID & Social Epistemology 19:11
ID in the Wild
Chapter 22 : John Davison, The Price of Dissent 35:26
Chapter 23 : Denyse O’Leary, ID & The Media 22:51
Chapter 24 : Geoff Simmons, Darwinism, ID & Medicine 27:40
Chapter 25 : Rob Sawyer, Calculating God 25:27
- Beretta (NZ)
- Bible Technology (NZ)
- Culture Watch (OZ)
- John Pickering (NZ)
- Matt Flannagan (NZ)
- Stand to Reason (US)
- Scott Mackay (NZ)
- Uncommon Descent (US)
Dr. JP Moreland Books
This is an excellent book :: the title says it all.
JP calls this book the Magnum Opus of his writings.
Lee Strobel Books
Intelligent Design Arts
Links
Check it out at: http://ultimatequestions.org/
Christian News has news that W.L.C. is coming to NZ in June. Check it out here.
This is huge news for those interested in apologetics as Craig is one of the best.
Apparently Richard Dawkins was asked if he would debate W.L.C. and replied: "It would look good on his C.V., but not on mine."
Probably what Dawkins really means is that: "Um, I know I will not be able to play fast and loose with this guy like I can with most others, so, um, what derogatory comment can I use to diffuse the question?"
It’s a shame that he turned it down. Craig debated Peter Atkins (MP3)from Oxford University a few years ago, and has done numerous other debates and written and co-written several books.
Check www.reasonablefaith.org for more details!
Well – has science buried God? Of course not. John Lennox answers his own question decisively. No one who understands what science really is and is not could suppose that such interment was ever on the cards. No one who understands what religion really is, beneath its sometimes ugly face, could suppose that it would be good to bury it.
From article:
“He is taken seriously in this not because his arguments are sound but because he is an outstanding rhetorician. It is the art of bamboozlement.”
Source: http://books.guardian.co.uk…
Thanks to Richard Dawkins dot net for this material!
Description:
Dinesh D’Souza, Christian and best-selling author, faced off against Tufts professor, author, and atheist Daniel Dennett in a debate on the existence of god. The resolution for the debate was as follows: “God is a manmade invention.” Daniel Dennett argued the affirmative, and Dinesh D’Souza the negative.
Full debate – VIDEO QuickTime format (185 MB, 2:15:12)
Full debate – AUDIO only mp3 (60.9 MB, 2:15:12)
Part 1
