Tag: Charles Darwin | Page 7

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Author
Eric Cassell

Date
April 18, 2022

Tagged
aircraft navigation, altruism, Animal Algorithms, animal navigation, ant colonies, army ants, Artificial Intelligence, biomimetics, Boeing 737, Charles Darwin, complex systems, constrained optimization, Convergent evolution, design trade-offs, eusocial behavior, evo-dev, Evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, eye evolution, eyes, Hank Hanegraaff, insect architecture, integrated systems, methodological materialism, Natural Selection, navigation systems, orphan genes, purpose, selection pressure, social insects, spider silk, spiderwebs, suboptimal design, teleology, teleophobia, termite altruism, termite mounds, termites, top-down engineering, wasps}

Hank Hanegraaff and Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 2

_{Eric Cassell

April 18, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, radio host Hank Hanegraaff continues his conversation with Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell. Here they look at more insects with strikingly sophisticated innate behavior, suggesting intricate algorithms encoded into their brains from birth, all of which cannot be effectively explained by reference to Darwinian evolution. Cassell and Hanegraaff touch on wasp martial arts; termite altruism and termite architectural skills, including a cooling system that has inspired a human design; interdependent social caste systems that enhance fitness; and spiderweb architecture and the extraordinary properties of spider silk, including the different kinds of silk and the spider’s ability to employ different types precisely tailored for different needs. Cassell looks at evolutionary explanations for these innate abilities that appeal to the ideas of convergent evolution and selection pressure, and he shows why these don’t get us very far. He suggests the path forward is to set aside the dogmatic insistence on restricting ourselves to only naturalistic explanations and instead to consider the possibility of intelligent design. Hanegraaff and Cassell wrap up their discussion by taking on some common objections against the theory of intelligent design. The interview is presented here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. Find the original at Hank Unplugged. Pick up your copy of Cassell’s book here.

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Author
Eric Cassell

Date
April 13, 2022

Tagged
aircraft navigation, altruism, Animal Algorithms, animal navigation, ant colonies, army ants, Artificial Intelligence, biomimetics, Boeing 737, Charles Darwin, complex systems, constrained optimization, Convergent evolution, design trade-offs, eusocial behavior, evo-dev, Evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, eye evolution, eyes, Hank Hanegraaff, insect architecture, integrated systems, methodological materialism, Natural Selection, navigation systems, orphan genes, purpose, selection pressure, social insects, spider silk, spiderwebs, suboptimal design, teleology, teleophobia, termite altruism, termite mounds, termites, top-down engineering}

Hank Hanegraaff Interviews Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 1

_{Eric Cassell

April 13, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future radio host Hank Hanegraaff interviews Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell about insects and other small-brained animals with innate behaviors of astonishing sophistication — desert ants, leafcutter ants, honey bees, spiders, monarch butterflies, and many more. These appear to be hard-wired from birth with complex algorithms coded into their neural networks, and some of the algorithms seem to involve complex mathematics. Also mysterious: many of these innate abilities are do or die. So how could they have blindly evolved one small Darwinian step at a time? Also, how would genetic mutations generate the ability to make navigational calculations (as in the case of some birds) that for humans require spherical geometry? Listen in to learn more about this and other wonders of the animal world. Pick up your copy of Cassell’s book here. (The interview is presented here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff.)

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Author
Casey Luskin

Date
April 6, 2022

Tagged
Adam Shapiro, adaptation, argument from ignorance, Casey Luskin, Charles Darwin, civil rights, Constitutional rights, Covid, Darwinian Evolution, Darwinism, DNA, Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Erasmus Darwin, Establishment clause, Evolution, Free Exercise clause, genetic information, God, God of the gaps, Günter Bechly, ID 3.0, Intelligent Design, intelligent design research, Journal of Molecular Biology, nanomachines, natural laws, Natural Selection, Natural Theology, Nature Nanotechnology, Ola Hössjer, Ola Hossjer, overlapping genes, problem of pain, reading frames, religious establishment, religious freedom, the journal Nature, The Origin of Species, The Waiting Times Project, Theism, waiting time problem, William Paley}

Casey Luskin and Adam Shapiro Debate Intelligent Design, Pt. 2

_{Casey Luskin

April 6, 2022

Uncategorized}

This ID the Future continues the debate between design theorist Casey Luskin, an editor of The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and science historian Adam Shapiro, co-author of Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Justin Brierley, of the popular British debate program Unbelievable?, hosts. In this second half of the conversation, Shapiro argues that intelligent design’s popularity seems to have waned. Casey Luskin counters, arguing that the number and frequency of New York Times articles on ID is a superficial metric and that the ID research program is exploding, with the number of peer-reviewed ID papers growing every year, and the number of interested graduate students, ID hubs, and conferences expanding around the world, including ID conferences attended by high-level scientists, including Nobel Laureates. Luskin and Shapiro also discuss religious and academic freedom as it relates to the teaching of evolution and intelligent design in the classroom. Shapiro is actually more sanguine than Luskin about the freedom of high school biology teachers to teach intelligent design. Luskin, who has both a PhD in geology and a law degree, strongly advises high school biology teachers in public schools against teaching ID in the classroom. Instead, he says, the better and legally safer approach is to teach evolutionary theory comprehensively, covering both the evidence for it but also some of the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature against it. Luskin and Shapiro also part company on the nature of the intelligent design argument, with Shapiro suggesting that in practice it often amounts to a presenter highlighting some amazing feature in biology and then giving glory to God. Luskin pushes back, reiterating that intelligent design is an argument based on positive evidence, and is an argument to the best explanation–intelligent design–one that employs standard methods of scientific reasoning. This program is presented here with permission of Justin Brierley. To see this and other Unbelievable? episodes, go here. The first half of this conversation can be found here.

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Author
Richard Weikart

Date
March 21, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, anti-Semitism, assisted suicide, biological determinism, biological evolution, Charles Darwin, Columbine shooting, Darwinian Racism, Darwinism, environmental determinism, Eric Harris, Eric Metaxas, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Euthanasia, Evolutionary Ethics, fatalism, Free Will, Friedrich Nietzsche, From Darwin to Hitler, genetic determinism, Gilroy Garlic Festival, Gypsies, Holocaust, human evolution, imago dei, Marxism, Materialism, Mein Kampf, Might is Right, moral relativism, Natural Selection, Nazis, Nazism, Peter Singer, postmodernism, racism, Ragnar Redbeard, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, Slavs, Social Darwinism, struggle for existence, struggle for living space, white nationalism}

Eric Metaxas and Richard Weikart Spotlight Darwinian Racism

_{Richard Weikart

March 21, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future brings listeners a lively conversation between radio host and bestselling author Eric Metaxas and historian Richard Weikart about Weikart’s new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Weikart provides a quick flyover of the evidence that the outlook of Hitler, the Nazis, and contemporary white nationalists is significantly shaped by Darwinism and the arguments of early Darwinists. Metaxas and Weikart then contrast the Darwinian foundation for morality with the Judeo-Christian foundation, which holds that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore possess inherent worth, regardless of race and regardless of one’s “fitness.” This episode is reposted here, with permission, from The Eric Metaxas Show. Check out Weikart’s new book here.

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Author
Michael Behe

Date
March 16, 2022

Tagged
bacteriophage, Casey Luskin, cells, Charles Darwin, Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, cryo-electron spectroscopy, Darwinism, DNA, double helix, Escherichia virus T4, Evolution, genetic code, genetic information, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, irreducibly complex, Lyle Jensen, Michael Behe, Molecular Machines, mousetrap, myoglobin, Natural Selection, Neo-Darwinian synthesis, Neo-Darwinism, Proteins, protoplasm, purposeful arrangement of parts, Ronald Fisher, viruses, x-ray crystallography}

Behe: Bacteriophage—The New Poster Child for Darwin’s Doom

_{Michael Behe

March 16, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe argues that Darwinism was built on a foundation of ignorance. Through no fault of Darwin’s, neither he nor anyone else in his day had a clue about the nature of cellular life and biological information, says Behe. Even the biologists of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis in the first half of the twentieth century were fairly clueless about the foundation of life, Behe says. When researchers did finally begin to unravel the sophisticated foundations of life, earlier notions of how evolutionary processes might have invented the great diversity of life forms on earth were exposed as causally inadequate. Behe says that in fact all the attempts to rescue the idea of mindless macroevolution have been exposed as inadequate by our growing understanding of molecular biology, but evolutionary theory blithely sails along anyway, thanks to institutional inertia. A key defeater of the theory, Behe says, is captured by his concept of irreducible complexity. He explains the idea with a simple illustration, a mousetrap, and then applies it to a marvelous molecular machine that researchers have only recently come to appreciate, the Escherichia virus T4 bacteriophage. As he argues, this bacteriophage powerfully bespeaks the purposeful arrangement of parts, rather than mindless evolutionary processes. The occasion for his conversation with host Casey Luskin is his contribution to the recent Harvest House anthology, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Image Credit: Dr. Victor Padilla-Sanchez: Atomic structural model of bacteriophage T4 in UCSF Chimera software using pdbs of the individual proteins.

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Author
Richard Weikart

Date
February 16, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, Alt Right, biological evolution, Bronx Zoo, Charles Darwin, Darwinian biologists, Darwinism, David Livingstone, E.O. Wilson, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Euthanasia, Evolution, evolutionary psychology, genocide, Herbert Spencer, human zoos, immigration policy, John G. West, living space, Natural Selection, Nazi Germany, Nazi physicians, Nazis, Nazism, Ota Benga, racial struggle, racism, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, Scopes Trial, Social Darwinism, Stephen Pinker, sterilization, struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, The Descent of Man, The Origin of Species, transhumanism, white nationalism, white nationalists, Whoopi Goldberg}

Darwinian Racism Webinar, Pt. 2

_{Richard Weikart

February 16, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future features the second half of a recent webinar spotlighting historian Richard Weikart and his new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Here Weikart fields questions from the webinar audience. Along the way Weikart touches on the connection between Darwinism and scientific racism, the objection that Darwinism, properly understood, doesn’t support scientific racism (much less Nazi racism), the racism inherent in Darwin’s own writings and those of prominent early Darwinists such as Ernst Haeckel, and more recent manifestations of Darwinian-inspired scientific racism both academic and populist. This and much more is explored in Weikart’s new book, available here. And for scientific reasons to reject Darwinism along with its racists implications, jump over to Evolution News and Science Today.

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Author
Cornelius Hunter

Date
February 7, 2022

Tagged
bad design, book of Job, Casey Luskin, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, Cornelius Hunter, Creation, Darwin’s notebooks, Darwinism, deism, dysteleology, Epicureans, Evolution, fall of man, God, HMS Beagle, human finitude, Intelligent Design, Judeo-Christian theology, Junk DNA, Kenneth Miller, metaphysics, natural evil, Natural Theology, Naturalism, Nick Matzke, perfect adaptation, philosophy of science, Problem of Evil, rationalism, science stopper, the Fall, The Origin of Species, theological assumptions, theological utilitarianism, Trinity, upland goose, utilitarianism, vertebrate eye}

Darwin’s Rhetorical Foundation of Sand: Theological Utilitarianism

_{Cornelius Hunter

February 7, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future, biophysicist Cornelius Hunter explores Charles Darwin’s theological arguments for his theory of evolution. By theological, Hunter doesn’t mean that Darwin was arguing for theistic evolution. He means that Darwin received what is known as theological utilitarianism from the intellectual culture of his youth, which had strong deistic tendencies and expected everything in creation to be perfectly adapted, and he made a case against it, presenting mindless evolution as a better explanation for his observations of the biological world than theological utilitarianism. But one problem with this approach, according to Hunter, is that it assumed that theological utilitarianism is THE alternative to blind evolution. In fact, there are other alternatives, including an orthodox Judeo-Christian understanding of God’s relationship to his creation. In Hunter’s conversation with host Casey Luskin, he unpacks the differences in this other understanding of God and shows how Darwin’s tunnel-vision fixation on theological utilitarianism led him into multiple problems. Hunter further shows that this basic theological mistake of Darwin’s also crops up in later defenders of Darwinism. Hunter and Luskin end the discussion by making what may strike some as a surprising claim: Evolutionary theory, argued in the way that Darwin and many of his followers argue the case, is fundamentally theology-based, whereas the theory of intelligent design, which points to a design of life and the cosmos, is strictly science-based. The occasion for the interview is Hunter’s chapter on this subject in the recent anthology co-edited by Luskin, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. Check it out.

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Author
Andrew McDiarmid

Date
February 2, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, Adrian Desmond, Aryan race, Charles Darwin, colonial slavery, Columbine High School, Columbine shooting, compulsory sterilization, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Darwinian Racism, Darwinism, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Evolution, genocide, human evolution, James F. Moore, Natural Selection, Nazi Ministry of Education, Nazi SS, Nazis, Nazism, neo-Nazis, Nordic race, racial extermination, racism, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, struggle for existence, The Descent of Man, Third Reich, white nationalism}

New Book on How Darwinism Fueled Nazi Racism, White Nationalism

_{Andrew McDiarmid

February 2, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future features the newly released Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism by distinguished historian Richard Weikart. Here Andrew McDiarmid reads from the introduction and chapter one. Weikart begins his book by revisiting the harrowing Columbine High School mass shooting and underscoring the curious fact that one of the mass shooters, a white nationalist, claimed inspiration from not just Adolf Hitler but also Charles Darwin. Since Darwin was a peaceable Victorian English gentleman and naturalist, what possible connection could there be between Darwin on the one hand and Hitler and contemporary white nationalism on the other? Weikart shows that the connection is in fact quite clear from the writings of Hitler, Darwin himself, and early Darwinists, and that the connection has continued to fuel scientific racism down to the present, despite the fact that the racist notions that Darwin and Germany’s Ernst Haeckel used to support the case for apelike-primate-to-human evolution have long since been debunked. Weikart’s revelatory new book is now available for purchase.

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Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 26, 2022

Tagged
Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, DNA, Eugenics, Evolution, Fossil Record, Francesco Redi, Francis Crick, Friedrich Max Müller, genetic information, Hank Hanegraaff, human evolution, human language, Intelligent Design, Louis Pasteur, Mel Brooks, Michael Denton, Miller-Urey experiment, Naturalism, Neil Thomas, Neo-Darwinism, Niles Eldredge, Noam Chomsky, origin of life, panspermia, physicalism, Punctuated Equilibrium, Richard Dawkins, Robert Cornish, Scopes Monkey Trial, sociobiology, spontaneous generation, Stephen J. Gould, substance dualism, Taking Leave of Darwin, The Descent of Man, Theism, Thomas Aquinas, William Harvey, Young Frankenstein}

Neil Thomas Talks Darwin, Aquinas, OOL and … Young Frankenstein

_{Neil Thomas

January 26, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future, Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas continues a lively conversation with radio host Hank Hanegraaff. In this second in a three-part series, the two touch on the fossil record’s challenge to Darwinism, Gould and Eldredge’s rescue attempt, the question of whether Darwin’s best known contemporary defender is dishonest or merely self-deluded, the wishful thinking surrounding origin-of-life studies, the failed attempts to reduce the mind to mere brain chemistry, and the morally repugnant pro-eugenics ideas rooted in Darwinism and touted in the textbook at the heart of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. The conversation is posted here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. Get Neil Thomas’s book here.

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Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 24, 2022

Tagged
agnosticism, Alfred Russel Wallace, Atheism, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Darwinism, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, fundamentalism, George Eliot, God, H.M.S. Beagle, Hank Hanegraaff, Hank Unplugged, John Milton, Karl Marx, Lawrence Krauss, Mary Ann Evans, memes, methodological materialism, Miracles, Naturalism, Neil Thomas, Oxford University, Paradise Lost, Richard Dawkins, Robert Chambers, Samuel Wilberforce, Satan, Taking Leave of Darwin, theistic evolution, Theory of Evolution, Thomas Huxley, vera causa, William Empson, William Thorpe}

Neil Thomas and Hank Hanegraaff: An Autopsy for Darwinism

_{Neil Thomas

January 24, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future kicks off a three-part series featuring Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas interviewed by radio host Hank Hanegraaff. In this first part, Hanegraaff begins by lauding Thomas’s book and underscoring how influential Darwin’s theory of evolution has been on Western culture. Then Thomas sketches the cultural milieu and individual motivations that he’s convinced drew Darwin toward his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Here the focus is not on the various evidential weaknesses of Darwin’s theory (which Thomas does cover in his book) but on a question that puzzled Thomas once he became convinced of just how evidentially weak the case for Darwinism was: How was it that a theory so poorly supported by the evidence (such that even some of its most ardent supporters found themselves rejecting key aspects of it) nevertheless came to dominate the academy? Tune in to find out what Thomas ultimately concluded from his autopsy of the theory and its early reception, and stay tuned for episodes two and three. This audio material is used by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. Thomas’s book is available here.