The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Rationalwiki is an online encyclopedia struggling to be born. Judging from the copy I saw August 29, 2007 (which will probably change), it appears to be written by a group of people who see themselves as the guardians of reason, progress, and enlightenment, against "the anti-science movement" and "crank ideas".

Nowadays, theirs is a pretty crowded field, in which hordes of half-educated and indifferently talented placeholders aim their resentment at anyone capable of questioning materialist dogmas.

Read more here

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

I just heard from a source I think reliable that Stuart Pivar has dropped his lawsuit against PZ Myers. 'Bout time, too. I stand by my comment of earlier today:

Incidentally, I do not expect PZ to lose his pajamas to the Pivar writ.

Defamation suits generally require a demonstration of harm. PZ verbally assaults people more or less on a daily basis, and who can really claim to have been harmed thereby other than himself?

Had he thought of choosing his targets more carefully and aiming more accurately, he might run risks that are not foreseen in the present case.

Let the Internet police itself.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama , was chosen the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan Buddhists as a small child in 1940. (He was believed to be the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Lama.) After a failed 1959 revolt against the 1949 Chinese takeover of Tibet, his government has been exiled at Dharamsala, India, along with tens of thousands of Tibetans.

The Lama would be a theocrat if he were not in exile. However, he is not at all most people's idea of a theocrat. He is an intensely curious man who has made friends with great philosophers of science and scientists, such as Karl Popper, Carl von Weizsäcker, and David Bohm. He also championed interreligious understanding, all the while campaigning for the rights of the Tibetan people. In 1989, he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In particular, he is well known for his Mind and Life conferences, which bring together physicists and neuroscientists to hear reports on neuroscience investigations into the workings of the human mind, along with input from a Buddhist persepective. As Mario Beauregard and I note in The Spiritual Brain, Buddhists have attempted to understand consciousness for several millennia, but only recently have neuroscience tools been an option. Hence their interest.

The Lama's 2005 book, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005), was released amid considerable controversy. Hundreds of neuroscientists protested his addressing a 2005 conference because they saw it as mixing science and religion. More on that later. His book, Single Atom, is still a top seller in the Religion and Spirituality category.

What makes Single Atom interesting for the intelligent design controversy is the way in which an atheistic Buddhist approach to origins differs dramatically from a Western theistic approach - but comes round to rejecting Darwinism all the same. Let’s have a look at some of those differences.

Next: Part Two: If you are a Buddhist, what would test your faith and what wouldn't?

Series:

Part One: Intelligent design east? The Dalai Lama kisses Darwin goodbye

Part Two: If you are a Buddhist, what would test your faith and what wouldn't?

Part Three: Why does the Dalai Lama reject Darwinism?

Part Four: Materialist neuroscientists vs. the Dalai Lama

Part Five: Other reviews of Single Atom: Materialists and non-materialists continue to lock horns

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here are two key differences between Christian and Buddhists' understanding of the issues around science, materialism, Darwinism and such:

1. Big Bang cosmology is NOT an aid to a Buddhist's faith

Big bang cosmology, which only really gained widespread science acceptance in the last fifty years, has often been used to support theistic religious belief in the West - as I explored in some detail in my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. The Lama, however, dislikes it much, and would prefer an eternal or automatically self-renewing universe. He explains,

From the Buddhist perspective, the idea that there is a single definite beginning is highly problematic. If there were such an absolute beginning, logically speaking, this leaves only two options. One is theism, which proposes that the universe is created by an intelligence that is totally transcendent, and therefore outside the laws of cause and effect. The second option is that the universe came into being from no cause at all. Buddhism rejects both these options. (P. 82)

Naturally, the Lama hopes that someone will disprove the Big Bang. I am glad he is so honest, compared to some atheist cosmologists, who attempt to undermine the Big Bang for what I suspect are precisely the same reasons - but without admitting the nature of their dissatisfaction.

2. Origin of consciousness vs. origin of life: Which is more important?

Western thinkers tend to place a great deal of emphasis on the difference between life and non-life, thus the problem of the origin of life receives considerable attention. But Buddhists are not especially interested in that problem, according to the Lama.

Much more important to Buddhists is the origin of the capacity for conscious experience. That is because Buddhists do not emphasize the difference between life and non-life, but rather the difference between experience and non-experience. For example, a Christian might think that a coral colony is closer to a dog than to a rock because the colony is, after all, alive.

But a Buddhist might think otherwise. He might consider the coral colony closer to a rock than to a dog because the colony is not a subject of conscious experience. The dog, by contrast, is a subject of conscious experience to some extent, in the sense that his canine mind, while limited, perceives what happens to him.

In other words, the Buddhist is primarily interested in the problem of mind rather than the problem of life. How does the mind arise? How does one become a subject of conscious experience, rather than an object colliding with other objects? And what is the significance of being a subject rather than an object? (The fundamental Buddhist doctrine of karma, whatever its merits, depends on the significance of being a subject and making morally accountable choices.)

Next: Part Three: Why does the Dalai Lama reject Darwinism?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Lama has no problem with evolution in principle. But he clearly (though tactfully) rejects Darwinism (non-purposeful evolution) as an explanation for the history of life on earth. However, he rejects it for somewhat different reasons than many Christians do. He is not troubled by the prospect that humans and apes may be genetic cousins but he has three primary reasons for doubt.

First, he does not agree that the development of the universe is random. Indeed, Buddhism places law or karma in precisely the place where most Christians would put God. But the law of karma requires causation rather than randomness. The Lama writes,

From the philosophical point of view, the idea that these mutations, which have such far-reaching implications, take place naturally is unproblematic, but that they are purely random strikes me as unsatisfying. It leaves open the question of whether this randomness is best understood as an objective feature of reality or better understood as indicating some kind of hidden causality. (P. 104)

Second, he rejects the idea that the mind is not real and that therefore consciousness is an illusion. Many people do not realize that a central axiom of materialist science is that the mind is merely a buzz created by the neurons, with no real power to affect anything. That is, the materialist is not just saying that there is no God, he is also saying that there is no you. But the Lama does realize that. Indeed, he was forced to, in a dialogue with a materialist scientist that he recounts in Single Atom,

I said to one of the scientists: "It seems very evident that due to changes in the chemical processes of the brain, many of our subjective experiences like perception and sensation occur. Can one envision to reversal of this causal process? Can one postulate that pure thought itself could effect a change in the chemical processes of the brain?" I was asking whether, conceptually at least, we could allow the possibility of both upward and downward causation.

The scientist's response was quite surprising. He said that since all mental states arise from physical states, it is not possible for downward causation to occur. Although out of politeness, I did not respond at the time, I thought then and still think that here is as yet no scientific basis for such a categorical claim. The view that all mental processes are necessarily physical processes is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact. I feel that, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, it is critical that we allow the question to remain open, and not conflate our assumptions with empirical fact. (p. 128)

As a Buddhist, he places a great deal of emphasis on the idea that the universe is top down, not bottom up. To him, the mind is real and creative. It is independent of matter. On that, he is not prepared to budge, as his reacton to the scientist shows. He writes further,

In order for the study of consciousness to be complete, we need a methodology that would account not only for what is occurring at the neurological and biochemical levels but also for the subjective experience of consciousness itself. Even when combined, neuroscience and behavioral psychology do not shed enough light on the subjective experience, as both approaches still place primary importance on the objective, third-person perspective. Contemplative traditions on the while have historically emphasized subjective, first-person investigation of the nature and functions of consciousness, by training the mind to focus in a disciplined way on its own internal states. (P. 141)

In other words, no view of mind is accurate if it dismisses the you in you.

Third, he rejects the idea that no one genuinely feels compassion (altruism). Strict Darwinism accounts for altruism as simply the way that your selfish genes compel you to spread them. Your feelings are useful illusions that help spread your genes. He acknowledges,

Some more dogmatic Darwinians have suggested that natural selection and survival of the fittest are best understood at the level of individual genes. Here we see the reduction of the strong metaphysical belief in the principle of self-interest to imply that somehow individual genes behave in a selfish way. I do not know how many of today's scientists hold such radical views, As it stands the current biological model does not allow for the possibility of real altruism. (P. 113)

Revisiting the topic and choosing his words carefully, the Lama writes,

I am told there is in fact an entire discipline called ‘evolutionary psychology.’ To an extent I can see how evolutionary accounts can be given for the emergence of basic emotions such as attachment, anger, and fear. However ... I cannot envision how the evolutionary approach can do justice to the richness of the emotional world and the subjective quality of experience. (P. 181)

His views come as no surprise because the development of compassion is central to the Buddhist understanding of spiritual growth. But they proved unacceptable to many neuroscientists.

Next: Part Four: Materialist neuroscientists vs. the Lama

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In its spring 2005 newsletter, the Society for Neuroscience announced that the Dalai Lama had agreed to be the first-ever speaker in an annual lecture series, "Dialogues Between Neuroscience
and Society," in Washington, DC. As we have seen, the Lama comes from an ancient tradition of contemplation of mind, and he is intensely interested in (and financially supportive of) new tools that might assist understanding. So why did hundreds of neuroscientists sign a petition protesting his lecture?

Well, as non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I recount in The Spiritual Brain, a protester explained,

Neuroscience more than other disciplines is the science at the interface between modern philosophy and science. No opportunity should be given to anybody to use neuroscience for supporting transcendent views of the world.

Well there you have it. Neuroscience is one of the handmaidens of materialism, and must not be co-opted by anyone who doubts materialism.

But the story is really more complex than that. While the protesters claimed that they did not want science entangled with religion, they were actually pretty entangled themselves. One key grievance was the Lama's acceptance of the doctrine of reincarnation.

But that raises the question, why should neuroscientists - as neuroscientists - care whether the Lama believes that he is the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama? Neuroscience as a discipline will likely find the subject unresearchable. Only current brains can be researched by neuroscience. If a mind were formerly instantiated in the brain of another body, how would the neuroscientist know? The whole question is precisely the sort that neuroscientists should politely refuse to get involved in because it does not suggest useful research directions. But the protestors did want to get involved because, for them, materialism amounts to a religion. Hence the uproar.

As it happened, the Lama gave an excellent speech on science and ethics, of the sort quite typical for a religious leader, and the whole affair died down quietly. But it was a troubling reminder of the allegiance that many in science still feel toward materialism.

Next: Part Five: Other reviews of Single Atom: Materialists and non-materialists continue to lock horns

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Science writer George Johnson in The New York Times homed right in on the anti-Darwinist implications of the Lama’s approach to science in Single Atom:

But when it comes to questions about life and its origins, this would-be man of science begins to waver. Though he professes to accept evolutionary theory, he recoils at one of its most basic tenets: that the mutations that provide the raw material for natural selection occur at random. Look deeply enough, he suggests, and the randomness will turn out to be complexity in disguise - "hidden causality," the Buddha's smile. There you have it, Eastern religion's version of intelligent design. He also opposes physical explanations for consciousness, invoking instead the existence of some kind of irreducible mind stuff, an idea rejected long ago by mainstream science."

In other words, for Johnson, science is the handmaid of materialism, and a person is scientifically minded to the extent that he is a materialist.

Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace responds:

... mainstream science has largely chosen to ignore such evidence [for the mind as real] on the grounds that there must be a physical explanation for consciousness. Over the past century, cognitive science has focused on third-person measurements of the physical correlates of mental phenomena, while marginalizing introspection, the only means by which mental processes can be observed directly. As a result of this materialistic bias, scientists have yet to come to a consensus regarding the definition of consciousness, they have no means of detecting it or even its neural correlates, and they have yet to identify the necessary and sufficient causes of consciousness, and they have not discovered how neural events influence mental events or how mental processes influence each other. Scientists have made great progress in revealing the physical correlates of specific mental phenomena, but they have left us in the dark regarding most of the fundamental questions about the nature and origins of consciousness.

Materialism, in today's circumstances, is very much an act of faith, as Mario Beauregard and I show in The Spiritual Brain - an act of faith that most people, East and West, are still unprepared to make, and probably always will be. A fascinating study for some of us will be the different ways in which the issues play out, east and west.

Return to beginning: Part One: Intelligent design east? The Dalai Lama kisses Darwin goodbye

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

I just heard from a contact who knows his way around that studio who saw my recent post about the anonymous warning that Darwinists might sue the makers of the Ben Stein Expelled film. The film does not flatter them, and perhaps they'd want to at least stop it from opening on Darwin's birthday next February. Said studio rat writes,

Not only would any lawsuit be a waste of time, but there was nothing unethical about how they obtained interviews from what I've heard. In some cases, namely Richard Dawkins but a number of others as well, the interviewee saw the questions prior to the interview and it was very clear what the subject matter was about. Interviewees were told that the working title was Crossroads, which it was for a while (remember some interviews happened more than a year ago). It's not uncommon for a movie to have one or even a few working titles while it is being produced.

At the end of each interview the interviewees were asked to sign a release form. If they didn't like how the interview had gone it seems that would have been the time to say 'no, I won't sign that' which would have protected them from being included in the film.

He wonders how likely it is that Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers said anything that they haven't said or written publicly before.

Not likely.

Is anyone other than the Pharyngulite complaining? Funny, I would have thought that the Prophet of the Pharyngula would be too busy with other legal matters.

Anyway, Ratsy says he was kind of expecting the Darwoids to make these noises because they don't have many other options. The picture ain't pretty, apparently, but it isn't illegal either. I'm waiting to see if Premise Media wants to issue a statement. Might clear the air a bit.

Update: Here's a podcast with the executive producer of Expelled, Walt Ruloff.

Ruloff gives a brief overview of Expelled, explains how he came to spend over two years making the film, talks about intelligent design as a disruptive technology compared to dogmatic Darwinian evolution, and tells how the film will show that Darwinian evolution is a science stopper. Rather than get mired in the politics of the debate, Ruloff explains that Expelled gets to "where the rubber meets the road, where the science is being done."

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Canadian science fiction writer Rob Sawyer, author of The Calculating God, which explores the idea of intelligent design, has won China's top science fiction prize.

CHENGDU, CHINA, 26 AUGUST 2007: Robert J. Sawyer of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, today won China's top science-fiction award, the Galaxy Award, in the category "Most Popular Foreign Author of the Year." The award, voted on by Chinese readers, was presented at the Chengdu International Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival, the largest science-fiction conference ever held in China. (The last international SF&F conference in China was held ten years ago, in 1997.)

Chinese translations of Sawyer's novels are published by Science Fiction World, headquartered in Chengdu, and his short stories have appeared in SCIENCE FICTION WORLD magazine, the world's largest-circulation SF publication; Sawyer is also a past columnist for that magazine.

[ ... ]

The Galaxy Award honors Sawyer's entire oeuvre, rather than a specific book. The award was presented at a gala ceremony at the Chengdu Museum of Science and Technology.

He deserves it. His sci-fi explores serious issues, not just the crises of geekhood. My review of Calculating God is here.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(links to other Mindful Hack fun follow)

Reading reviews of a book one wrote is one of the best ways to study popular cultural assumptions about who you are and what you are trying to say:

From the Booklist review

Neuroscientist Beauregard is no flighty New-Ager or Creationist but, he says, one of a minority of neuroscientists who don’t adhere to strictly materialist interpretation of the human mind. ... That is, it is too limiting to strictly confine the origin of all human thought to material or chemical interactions. In this complex tome, he ...

I am glad that the Booklist reviewer explained the key point a non-materialist neuroscientist would want to make. But for the record, Mario Beauregard - no New-Ager or Creationist - is a perennialist. And The Spiritual Brain is not a complex tome. As psychiatrist Jeff Schwartz says,

It clearly explains non-materialist neuroscience in simple terms appropriate for the lay reader, while building on and extending work that Sharon Begley and I began in The Mind and The Brain, and work that Mario and I collaborated on in academic publications.

Others have noted the book’s simplicity and clarity here, here, here, and here.

I’d gladly quote the whole review, but I cannot find it online yet. On the whole, I am pretty pleased with it though. It is always nice when the reviewer more or less understands WHAT you are trying to do.

I wish I could say the same thing for the Library Journal review, also not yet on line. The reviewer writes that the book

... argues further that mystical experience shows spiritual beings must exist, and that the existence of God is probable. This conclusion is beyond science.

Actually, the book argues that the mind is not the same thing as the brain ora n illusion (the materialist view), and that reports of life-changing spiritual experiences are credible, based on the evidence. It is a lay introduction to non-materialist neuroscience. Theistic religious believers will, of course, assume that these findings are also evidence for God according to their tradition - but that isn't the point the book makes.

That review, which I will link to when available, illustrates the widespread belief that science evidence - by definition - cannot support non-material realities. The reviewer may not realize that that is one of the fundamental doctrines of materialism, which regards science as its handmaiden - and increasingly, the university as its police academy.

However, this reviewer does at least say that the book

... argues well in clear, readable prose, avoiding highly technical language.

, which is pretty much the consensus of reviewers. As the writer on the team, I'm prtty happy about that.

Actually, these days, I’m happy when a reviewer appears to have actually read the work, at least in part, even if he misunderstood it. Mike Behe may not have been so lucky, as Cameron Wybrow implies in his Philadelphia Inquirer review of Edge of Evolution.

And also:

Does simulating out of body experiences prove that ther is no soul?

Straws in the wind: Why did a skeptics’ society change its name?

Why you shouldn’t vote for a politician who says that his religion will not influence him.

Atheism poster boy rants against genome mapper Francis Collins in science journal Nature

A thoughtful look at why it is difficult to separate politics and religion

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

It's August, after all. Keep that in mind. Even so, I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it, but apparently, according to SciAm blogger Christopher Mims, Lifecode author Stuart Pivar is suing PZ Myers for libel.

Yes, Stuart is the one who was friends with the late Stephen Jay Gould. Hat tip to Jack, who draws my attention to Mims' last graff, quoting Myers:

Huh. I'd heard some noise from Pivar threatening to sue, but this is the first I've heard of any formal action being taken. Since I'm a defendant (one who hasn't been notified of his status!) I suppose I should just shut up at this point and let justice run its course. Since I'm a blogger, though, I can't completely shut up. I will just say that this is Pivar's attempt to squash a negative review of his book, which I posted here. Nothing in the review was motivated by personal malice, and I actually am inclined to favor structuralist arguments in evolution ... but I'm afraid my honest assessment of Pivar's work is that it does not support his conclusions. I still stand by my review, and now I'm a bit disturbed that someone would think criticism of a scientific hypothesis must be defended by silencing its critics.

Oh, my stars. When has anyone ever have tried to do that before? Just unbelievable.

And yes, PZ Myers is the U of Minnesota biologist who got into a row with Dilbert's alter ego. Yes, that Dilbert, the baby engineer. Honest.

If PZ were to libel anyone, like, how would we KNOW?

Update: To learn more about Pivar's actual theory, as opposed to detractions thereof, go here and here. It is a theory of self-organization, it is not an intelligent design theory.

Also, at the Post-Darwinist:

Everybody is anti-science now.

How I got interested in the intelligent design controversy (podcast)

Is science stalled? Many more scientists but no significant increase in new discoveries? Former editor of New Scientist comments.

And at Mindful Hack:

Roger Scruton weighs in on the anti-God crusade.

Another human vegetable wired for thought? What is going on?

Middle Ages tech support

Why Darwinists should throw away any family planning/limitation aids they may own.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Following on the fact that a Canadian writer, Cameron Wybrow, got a positive review of Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution published, I think it is worth introducing two things this evening:

Go here for more.

Following on the fact that a Canadian writer, Cameron Wybrow, got a positive review of Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution published, I think it is worth introducing two things this evening:

Go here for more.

Cameron Wybrow wrote me a while back wanting to know why most legacy Canadian mainstream media will not publish anything about the intelligent design controversy beyond the often incompetent or politically motivated stuff that the New York Times would put out.

I said it was my guess that the legacy media would go under before they would update their thinking and ask obvious questions like, "Could it be that there IS something wrong with Darwinism, and that that is why Darwinists must attempt to ruin the careers of anyone who questions it?"

Well, I underestimated Cameron. He now writes to say,

After many failed tries, I hit upon a newspaper to publish a positive review of Behe, and a major newspaper, too -- The Philadelphia Inquirer. It runs about 700,000 copies for its Sunday edition! My review is going to be in tomorrow, Sunday August 19th.

He will send me the text of the review after it appears in the Inquirer, or else I will link to it. He adds,

The editor, who is not hostile to ID but is more of a fan of Francis Collins, was going to try to get Collins to write a "con" review to match my "pro" review. I don't know if he succeeded. If so, the result would be a unique pair of duelling reviews -- good publicity for Dr. Behe, I think. But if not, at least my review will be the first positive review of Behe published in a major print medium (outside of Christian magazines, that is). I hope it balances things a little.

Yes,and I hope it helps a few intelligent people face up to the significance of Behe's Edge of Evolution challenge to Darwinism.

Update: You can read the article for free here, but you must sign up.

Further Update: Here it is, with no registration required.

One thing Wybrow does is go after the reviewers who have attempted to hide Behe's findings in damning reviews:

A large part of each [hostile] review is ad hominem, concerned with Behe's alleged religious agenda, his minority status among biologists, and other irrelevant matters. In Dawkins' review, the science is barely touched, and it's not clear from Ruse's review that he has even opened the cover of the book. Behe deserves better. Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.

No. Not honestly. Not any more.

Also:

David Warren again refuses to be bullied by Darwinists

Peer review: Wonderful quotation on this recipe for squelching new ideas

The latest incontrovertible truth about human evolution overturned - yet again.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

One of the most interesting journalists in Toronto is a friend of mine, David Warren, who - as if he did not have enough troubles - has gotten sick of bloviating Darwinists and decided to take them on. At least I am not alone any more. Far from it.

Writing to friends, Warren notes, "I have been remiss. I have allowed several months to do by without taking another kick at the Darwinoids. I endeavour to correct this oversight in my column for Sunday," whereupon he directs us to his recent column for The Spectator:

I get such apoplectic letters, whenever I write about "evolutionism," that I really can't resist writing about it again. This is not, of course, because I have any desire to tease such correspondents. Perish the thought. Rather, when a writer finds he has hit such a nerve, he can also know that he is approaching a great truth.

In this case, we must ask ourselves why so many people get so excited about an area of science that should not concern them. For most of these correspondents know precious little science, and haven't the stamina to engage in detailed argument. They are simply shocked and appalled that anyone would dream of challenging what they believe to be the consensus of "qualified experts," whom they assume are a closed camp of hard-bitten materialists, with no time for religious or poetical flights.

The answer to this question is clear enough. People without a stake in a controversy pay little or no attention to it. They will hardly be vexed by assertions of one party or another, when the result of the controversy cannot touch their lives. It is rather when a person does have a stake, that he begins to care.

It follows that my most apoplectic correspondents have a stake in evolutionary controversies. They imagine themselves to have an impersonal interest in defending science against "religious superstition," and the dangers to society that the latter might present. They in fact have strong and uncompromising religious beliefs of their own, which they are loath to have questioned.

Much of the "star chamber" atmosphere, that has accompanied the public invigilation of microbiologists such as Michael J. Behe, and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in organisms and natural systems, can only be explained in this way. The establishment wants such research to be stopped, because it challenges the received religious order, of atheist materialism. Any attempt, or suspected attempt, to acknowledge God in scientific proceedings, must be exposed and punished to the limit of the law; or by other ruthless means where the law does not suffice.

Not to be missed.

An author friend asked Warren recently,

Suppose Lemaitre had offered his Big Bang idea in our current intellectual climate, rather than in 1931. Would he be denounced as a crypto-creationist, trying to dress up the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo in scientific garb? After all, a universe that has always existed does not need a God to create it; that is why the eternality of the world has been a cardinal tenet of those who do not need the hypothesis of God. Once the eternality of the world is no longer accepted, then we are right back to Leibniz' question, "Why is there something rather than nothing," and this question has dangerous theological implications.

ands he replied,

For sure, Lemaitre would have died an ignominious intellectual death in our time. But then, he never tried to call attention to himself, & even now, everyone has heard about Einstein & Hubble, & no one about the man who went "behind & beyond" them.

When I asked Warren if he realized that he would be vilified, as neurosurgeon Mike Egnor has been vilified, he merely replied,

Well, as someone says on your blog (maybe it was you), the way the news on ID gets out, is by all these Darwinoid idiots drawing attention to it. Pravda used to make the same mistake. Nobody realized there'd been a riot in Gorki, until Pravda denied anything had happened.

Yes, that was me, David. I said that the Darwinists have done far more to promote the intelligent design guys' theories than the evil Discos could ever have done. In fact, I remember listening to a Toronto Darwinist announcing to a media person that the Discovery Institute was very well funded. When I pointed out to him that Discovery's Center for Science and Culture (the ID think tank) is actually quite small - and that it relies largely on converting the negative energy generated by people like himself into positive energy - it was obvious that he didn't believe me.

How about that! There he was, actually demonstrating the phenomenon, and he still did not believe me. David, I am afraid there's no help for people like that.

Note: If you are looking for the story about the major film about the ID guys, starring Ben Stein, go here.

Also, recently at the Post-Darwinist:

Origin of life research as a perfect circularity

A blogger tries to make sense of the intelligent design controversy

And recently at the Mindful Hack:

Do neurosurgeons believe that the mind really exists?

Why science, not faith, is becoming the enemy of reason.

Neurotheology or neurobullshipping? Is this silliness coming to a religious college near you?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I just attended a briefing in Seattle about a film aimed at the US presidential election campaign, defending intelligent design, starring Ben Stein: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It details the cases of Rick Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Caroline Crocker.
For more go to the Post-Darwinist.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Following up our discussion of the Creationist Museum here and here, Phillip Johnson wrote an interesting reflection on how an astronomy professor who accepts conventional dating for the age of the universe addresses the apparently substantial number of young earth creationists in his class:

Saperstein [the astronomy prof] concludes that, if very many students remain biblical literalists despite having had a scientific education, he fears for their future, the future of American science, and the future of an American society beset by problems amenable to scientific solutions. He does not explain why knowledge of how the world works now is not sufficient for a science that aspires to solve the problems that beset us. Perhaps our society is more in need of a sound spiritual grounding than of theories about the distant past that cannot be tested by observation or experiment.
I have observed that anti-Darwinist inclinations are fairly common among engineers, for example, who are the scientists most directly concerned with society’s practical problems. But creationists can also be found even among evolutionary biologists and paleontologists, whose theoretical work directly involves the more speculative historical subjects that arouse skepticism in Saperstein’s students.

Johnson also warns,

Alvin Saperstein is also a decent man who is trying to understand his students and reason with them rather than dictate to them. But he had better be careful, because persuasion can work in either direction. I know one senior professor, author of an influential book advocating a naturalistic, chemical evolutionary scenario for the origin of life, who was persuaded by his students that his theory was wrong and that life was intelligently designed. He got into a lot of trouble with zealous colleagues and administrators when he began expressing his doubts about his previous assumptions in his classes.

By the way, did you notice Johnson's "Leading Edge" column's masthead? Yes, that's it, all right - it's the infamous Wedge, and yes, Johnson is the indeed Godfather of the ID theorists.

In reality, of course, Johnson - a constitutional lawyer - was the guy who showed a bunch of isolated scientists how to make their case to a broader world, no matter how colleagues tried to stifle them. That was, as he himself said, a lawyer's contribution. His Darwin on Trial rocketed into the big time when it was denounced by rote in all the science journals.

DoT was probably the book that established the pattern: Publish a good case and use the negative energy of the denunciations by Darwinists/materialist atheists/religious fellow travellers to make up for the deficit in positive financial resources. The book remains a classic, and the strategy has not so far failed. That isn't surprising either - the screaming you hear from Darwinists is genuine frustration; they can't help but go along with it.

It was purely a stroke of luck for the ID theorists that conspirazoids later got hold of "the Wedge document" and sent half the Darwinists' forces down an irrelevant rabbit trail - obscuring the actual, highly effective strategy with rampant speculation about libertarian theocracies and such.

Surely Disco (the ID guys' think tank) did not offer it to them as sucker bait? I refuse to allow my mind to go there. No! No! O, but the perfidy of the world ... Okay, okay, let's consider it. Possible? Yes. But likely? No.

No, the Wedge document just happened, and guaranteed Disco and the ID theorists still more exposure - at the cost of putting out a few more brushfires now and then. But so far as I can see, Disco was only ever in trouble with the materialists and their fellow travellers over that one, not with any significant number of people who think intelligent design is worth considering. That, of course, is why it never did the damage Disco's enemies were hoping for.

Also, recently at the Post-Darwinist and the Mindful Hack:

Evolutionary psychologist fails to acknowledge earlier source.

Here is what Michael Behe has to say about The Spiritual Brain.

So, at least some people are beginning to get the significance of Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution?

Is tenure a dull dog's idea of heaven?

My most recent column for ChristianWeek, addressing two key myths about what Christians supposedly believed in the past.

A friend visits Kentucky's Creation Museum, which helpfully distinguishes between creationism and intelligent design.

Emotional self-regulation and the brain. Can't you help your feelings?

Also: Is tenure a dull dog's idea of heaven?

Student take religious studies to be better people, but profs want them to think more critically about faiths

Marvin Olasky on the current desperate atheist rage. A death rattle?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).