I’ve been asked to respond to criticisms of my paper “Converting Matter into Mind” (PSCS, Dec 90). My reaction to these criticisms is this: “Yes, I could have been more careful in some details and choice of terminology, but the substance of my position is unaffected.” The critics were guilty of two faults. First was a failure to read my Read More ›
The controversy between Christianity and Darwinism involves a number of complex issues. One of these is a conflict over design. According to the received view, the root of the conflict is that Darwinism undermines the argument that God’s existence can be proved from design in living things. It seems to me that there is a basic conflict between Christianity and Read More ›
Introduction In the Foundations of Cognitive Science Herbert Simon and Craig Kaplan offer the following definition: Cognitive science is the study of intelligence and intelligent systems, with particular reference to intelligent behavior as computation. Since this definition hinges on the dual notions of intelligence and computation, it remains scientifically unobjectionable so long as one declines to prejudge the relation between Read More ›
Just six months ago on the eve of her 10th anniversary in office British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seemed invincible. Today she looks politically vulnerable and there is something that Mr. Bush and Mr. Mulroney of Canada could — and should — do to help. Mrs. Thatcher’s political isolation has come about in part because of her dispute with European Read More ›
The right-to-life movement has mastered a powerful new tool of persuasion: medical technology. A recently developed science called fetology has greatly enhanced knowledge of the human unborn, and harbors an implied challenge to the legal practice of abortion. “Now for the first time, we have the technology to see the abortion from the victim’s vantage point,” says Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Read More ›
Few religious conferences ever rate coverage from media like Time, National Review, and local television. But then most religious conferences rarely invite prominent atheistic critics of Christianity. But a recent gathering in Dallas did precisely that. “Christianity Challenges the University: An International Conference of Theists and Atheists,” sponsored by Dallas Baptist University (DBU), brought some 40 of the world’s finest Read More ›
Dear Editor, Abraham Lincoln is often credited for the old maxim that “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” If this statement is true then matters do not sit well for a few of the more extreme Darwinists who Read More ›
Getting There First: An Evolutionary Rate Advantage for Adaptive Loss-of-Function Mutations Michael J. Behe Biological Information: New Perspectives, edited by R. J. Marks II, M. J. Behe, W. A. Dembski, and B. L. Gordon. World Scientific Publishing, Hong Kong, 450-473. Abstract: Over the course of evolution organisms have adapted to their environments by mutating to gain new functions or to Read More ›