In the News

In Casey Luskin's final installment in ENV on Evolution and Intelligent Design, he writes on the semantic trouble folks can get into when engaging evolutionists.

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In bethinking.org, Professor Flew has recently written his forthright views on Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion.

Antony Flew was a lecturer at the Universities of Oxford and Aberdeen, before posts as Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Keele and of Reading. He has now retired. He is renowned for his 1950 essay "Theology and Falsification" and his atheistic work, before announcing in 2004 his belief in a Creator God.

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Sir John Templeton, the American-born investor and philanthropist who devoted his later life to funding the scientific study of religion, died July 8 at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas. He was 95.

The John Templeton Foundation, his charitable organization, said the cause of death was pneumonia.

Once called "arguably the greatest global stock picker," Templeton founded a prize for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities" in 1972. He sought to make the million-dollar Templeton Prize the world's largest annual award bestowed on an individual, always exceeding the monetary value of the Nobel Prize.

In 1987, Templeton, a Presbyterian, set up an eponymous foundation dedicated to exploring what he called the "big questions" of science and religion: God's plan, man's faith, and the order of the universe.

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IDURC Announces 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award

The Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center (IDURC) is proud to present the 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award, presented annually to a deserving college graduate for excellence in student advocacy of intelligent design.

The recipient of the 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award will remain anonymous for the protection of the recipient. The many students, professors, and scientists who have been denied degrees or tenure and removed from positions and jobs for no other reason than acceptance of - or even sympathy to - intelligent design theory is very telling of the importance of keeping these bright young minds out of the crosshairs of those opposed to open-minded investigation and critical thought.

The recipient of this year's award is a graduate earning a degree in history. This student has demonstrated great courage in promoting intelligent design and academic freedom, working previously with the IDURC and also serving as an IDEA Club president. The recipient will receive a certificate of achievement, a $100 award, and an autographed copy of Dr. Michael J. Behe's newest book, The Edge of Evolution: the Search for the Limits of Darwinism.

The Casey Luskin Graduate Award was established in 2005 and in 2007 its name was changed from the "IDURC Graduate Award" to the "Casey Luskin Graduate Award." The award is named for Mr. Casey Luskin, a graduate of the University of California at San Diego, who was the first student truly to step out of his comfort zone as an undergrad and take a stand for intelligent design - a stand that would be seen across the nation. His founding of the Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center has been a great step forward for the intelligent design movement and, more importantly, for academic freedom everywhere. Today, Luskin continues his work with the ID movement as a lawyer and legal analyst for the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, Washington. Students everywhere today are indebted to the work that Luskin has done.

Each July, the IDURC will present the Casey Luskin Graduate Award to an outstanding student who has just completed his or her undergraduate degree and has demonstrated exemplary dedication to both the rigorous investigation and the widespread promotion of intelligent design. This year's recipient joins the recipients from past years, since the award was initiated in 2005, in demonstrating such excellence.

Much thanks needs to be given to the board of directors at the IDURC for their work in preparing this year's award and for their efforts year round. A very heartfelt thank you also goes to Dr. Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University for his support of the work we do at the IDURC and for his autographing and inscribing The Edge of Evolution for this award.

As always, I must thank Mr. Dennis Wagner and Access Research Network for the donation of the $100 prize money and for their continuous and generous financial support of the IDURC.

ScienceDaily reports that Berkeley Lab scientists have for the first time pieced together the three-dimensional structure of one of nature's most exquisite pieces of machinery, a gossamer-like filament of proteins in the inner ear that enables the sense of hearing and balance.

"It's one of the most beautifully deigned systems in the body," says Manfred Auer of Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division. "But how it really works remains a mystery. Our goal is to determine what the system looks like, so we can determine how it functions."

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Interesting how the scientists cannot seem to get away from the word "designed". To the materialist, the "design" is accomplished by time, chance, and natural selection. Materialist bow at the alter of time. For ID proponents the apt phrase is, "If it looks designed, maybe it is!"

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"Okay ID proponent, who designed the designer?" This is a question often asked. There comes a point where we look to the best candidate for ultimate explanation.

Jay Richards provides a brief podcast on the ultimate explanation. Is it a designer: a personal, immaterial, eternal mind, or nothing? The materialist is backed into a corner, having to assert that physical reality came from absolutely nothing: no space, no time, no matter, no energy...nothing. Bertrand Russell, and many other atheists and agnostics, are willing to take this radical leap of faith.

On the other hand, a personal, immaterial, eternal mind is the likely stopping point. Every existing thing has a explanation for its existence, either in an external cause, or in the necessity of its own nature. As the saying goes, from nothing, comes nothing. It's either everything from absolutely nothing, or the self-existent mind. Which takes more faith to believe in?

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Anika Smith reports in ENV on the many factual errors in a New Scientist piece about the nasty minions who promote Intelligent Design.

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More on the flatfish flap from Casey Luskin on ENV...

Science News reports that a new look at the fossils of primitive flatfish offer evidence that these fish - well-known for having both eyes on one side of their head - started out symmetrical and gradually evolved their one-sided trait.

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You could ask two questions...

Since the eyes move during normal development, how do we know that the fossil intermediates found are specimens that had not completed their normal development yet?

Is the eye migration genetically preprogrammed (which would be necessary for Darwinism) or is it environmentally induced already being in the genetic code and then expressed? This question is likely the most important.

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ScienceDaily reports that when it comes to cellular communication networks, a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells. It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism higher up on the evolutionary tree, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered.

This treasure trove of diverse and novel tyrosine kinases took the study's lead author Gerard Manning, who heads the Razavi-Newman Center for Bioinformatics, by surprise since it was long thought that tyrosine kinases are restricted to multicellular animals where they handle communication between cells.

"We were absolutely stunned," says Manning. "Based on past work, we had expected maybe a handful of these kinases but instead discovered that this primitive organism has a record number of them.

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Of course, from an Intelligent Design perspective, we should not be stunned, but rather amazed and humbled by the intellect of the designer.

Critics of intelligent design sometimes claim they are defending the principles of American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in trying to ban discussions of intelligent design. In the words of one writer, "Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution... to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design." But would Thomas Jefferson himself agree? In this special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West explores the real views of Jefferson on intelligent design.

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Two new articles on the Louisiana Science Education Art are spot on with respect to what is going on. They clearly state what is in the bill, and what the other side is doing, and will do, to fight it.

John G. West in the New Republic

Roddy Bullock in WorldNetDaily

This list just in from ENV, via Casey Luskin...

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This story has made the rounds worldwide.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that Chris Comer, who resigned under pressure, says state neutrality on creationism amounts to religious advocacy.

The article reports that more than 130 Texas university science professors in December signed a letter to Scott calling evolution "a central pillar in any modern science education" that is supported by a "massive body of scientific education." Intelligent design is a religious idea that deserves no place in the science classroom at all," according to the letter, sent in response to Comer's resignation.

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Now...this is odd. There are, or may be metaphysical implications in IDT, but that is true for an atheistic (naturalistic) worldview as well. A point is eventually reached when matter, energy, space, and time emerge either from absolutely nothing, or a necessary, eternal, immaterial, personal mind, who exists through the necessity of its own nature.

Either absolutely nothing, or this mind brought matter, energy, space, and time into existence. Therefore both atheists and theists are dealing in metaphysics, with the theists having the more plausible arguments. This fact is lost on most.

Atheists play the "religion card". Often not willing to admit it, they have their own metaphysical (religious) beliefs. They often exercise quite a bit of faith, one example being the multiverse assertion, based on pure speculation. It's multiverse vs God. The atheist has no idea if there is an ensemble of universes, or, for that matter, what mechanism (which had to be finely tuned) generated the varying universes in the multiverse. It takes more faith to believe in the bloated multiverse theory, than to believe in one, eternal, immaterial, personal being, who exists necessarily.

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