April 25, 2010
You remember that documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed“? That was the one that came out a year or two ago, hosted/narrated by Ben Stein, that looked at incidents where educators and scientists were ridiculed, denied tenure, and sometimes fired simply for believing that there might be evidence of design in nature. Well, here’s another […]
Tags: California Science Center, California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, Caltech, Casey Luskin, Cassini mission, Cassini-Huygens, Center for Science and Culture, creationism, David Coppedge, Discovery Institute, Expelled, FEHA, First Amendment, free speech, ID theory, Intelligent Design, intelligent design creationism, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, NASA, origin of the universe, Privileged Planet, Religion, religious discrimination, Science, Unlocking the Mystery of Life, William Becker
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |
April 22, 2010
Seven TRILLION electron volts! (7,000,000,000,000 eV) Or, 7 teraelectron volts. (7 TeV) Holy bug-zapper, Batman, that sounds like a lotta juice! If only we could bottle it, that would be one great “alternative” source of energy. Hold on, cowboy! We’re talking electrons, here. You know how small those things are, right? Fact is, one mosquito […]
Tags: black holes, CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, extra dimensions, Higgs-boson, high-energy physics, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, mini black hole, particle accelerator, particle physics, proton beam, quantum physics, Science, supersymmetry, teraelectron volt
Posted in Science |
April 19, 2010
Heavy Thinking =========== Are You a Problem Thinker? It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone – “to relax,” I told myself – but […]
Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Dennis Prager, Edmund Burke, heavy thinking, humor, Politics, problem thinking, Thinkers Anonymous, Thomas Sowell, William F. Buckley
Posted in Politics, Uncategorized |
April 17, 2010
“[D]reams of perfecting human society always runs smack into human nature.” — Thomas Lifson, editor and publisher at American Thinker When I hear people from other countries bad-mouthing the U.S., it bugs me. Don’t they see that we’re the good guys? Can’t they see what a great society we have here? But, what really bothers […]
Tags: America's shame, American exceptionalism, anti-Americanism, Dinesh D'Souza, evils of America, Gore Vidal, Hoover Institution, human society, international politics, moral superiority, morality, Politics, President Obama, progressives, Richard Higgs, right-wing bias, utopian standard, utopianism
Posted in Politics |
April 14, 2010
Consider the following facts: 1) Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring that 1/3 of the electricity produced in California by 2020 must be from “renewable sources”; solar and wind energy are the favored options. 2) The best location in CA for wind farms and solar plants (which need a LOT of relatively flat land, by […]
Tags: alternative energy, climate change, Congress, desert preservation, energy production, environmentalism, global warming, legislation, Mojave Desert, Nuclear energy, nuclear power, Politics, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Senate, solar energy, solar panels, solar power, wind energy, wind farm, wind power, wind turbines, windmills
Posted in Politics |
April 13, 2010
Last time (Part 1 & Part 2), Beckwith & Koukl demonstrated how the evolutionary approach to explaining morality actually denies it. Now, for an even bigger problem… Why Should I? This third observation uncovers the third and most serious objection to the idea that evolution is adequate to explain morality. One question can never be […]
Tags: Apologetics, Bongo, chimpanzee, chimps, Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, Francis J. Beckwith, Frank Beckwith, Greg Koukl, Intelligent Design, moral animal, moral behavior, moral code, moral relativism, morality, Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, objective morality, origins of morality, oughtness, Paleoanthropology, prescriptive vs descriptive, relative morality, Religion, Robert Wright, Science, transcendant morality, why be good
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |
April 12, 2010
In my last post (Part 1), Koukl & Beckwith explained why morality entails more than mere conduct; motive and intent are also parts of the equation. Denial by Neo-Darwin This leads us to the second problem, which runs much deeper than the first. When morality is reduced to patterns of behavior chosen by natural selection […]
Tags: Apologetics, Beckwith, Bongo, chimpanzee, chimps, Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Koukl, moral animal, moral behavior, moral code, morality, Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, objective morality, origins of morality, Paleoanthropology, Religion, Robert Wright, Science, transcendant morality
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |
April 11, 2010
Every once in awhile, you hear someone trying to describe how evolution/Darwinism — really, the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis — explains “morality”. Often the explanations involve recent observations of “morals” (or the rudiments thereof) among one or another type of animal — elephants, whales, birds, cats, dogs, apes, etc. But, IMHO, there is always something missing. The […]
Tags: Apologetics, Beckwith, Bongo, chimpanzee, chimps, Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Koukl, moral animal, moral behavior, moral code, morality, Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, objective morality, origins of morality, Paleoanthropology, Religion, Robert Wright, Science, transcendant morality
Posted in Religion, Science, Science & Religion |
April 8, 2010
Is it time for Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), to step down? It has been a tough tenure — one year and two months, as of this writing — for the former Lt. Governor of Maryland and former chairman of GOPAC. From the very beginning, conservative leaders (e.g., Ken Blackwell and […]
Tags: Fred Thompson, Jim Bunning, Judd Gregg, Karl Rove, Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell, party schisms, political fundraising, Republican National Committee, Republican scandal, resignation, RNC, Sarah Palin, Voyeur club
Posted in Politics |
April 4, 2010
Have you ever been a member of a group (e.g., Boy Scouts, Democratic Party, teachers’ union), or do you self-identify with some group (e.g., skeptics/ agnostics, Christians, political conservatives)? I suspect the answer is, “Yes, several.” Now, have you ever seen or heard someone from your group — or, at least, whom outsiders associate as […]
Tags: 9/11 widows, agnostics, Ann Coulter, atheists, Christians, Christopher Hitchens, conservatives, Democrats, embarrassing statements, extremists, Golden Rule, hatemongers, ideological stereotypes, idiots, labels, liberals, making assumptions, mislabeling, nutjobs, political parties, Politics, progressives, Religion, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, skeptics, Westboro Baptist Church
Posted in Politics, Politics & Religion, Religion, Uncategorized |