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Crumbling Icons

http://www.boundless.org/2000/departments/pages/a0000367.html About 10 years ago, I came across a delightful article in the Italian journal, Rivista di Biologia. Titled “Be Cautious, Mr. Bates,” the article challenged the Darwinian explanation of how the Viceroy butterfly came to look so much like the Monarch. The most interesting part of the article was the way the authors chided biology professors for presenting speculative Read More ›

Intelligence by Design:

Biologists might consider Darwin’s theory of evolution to be well- established. But Phillip Johnson considers it nothing less than a fraud. The Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer has spent the past few years challenging what he considers to be the fallacies in Darwinian theory. “Most scientists are fair-minded,” Johnson said. “But they deal with only a limited sphere – their own experiments Read More ›

Design Interference:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/014/18.20.html Baylor University in October terminated well-known Intelligent Design scientist William Dembski as head of the Michael Polanyi Center for Complexity, Information, and Design. The center was placed in limbo, without a name or certain future at the university in Waco, Texas. Dembski, who retains his Baylor professorship, says he was overwhelmed by politicking within Baylor. The Polanyi Center’s critics Read More ›

Fishing for votes

As any statistician knows, Vice President Al Gore’s plan to recount votes in Democratic-majority counties has been intrinsically unfair. During the last three weeks, Gore’s lawyers mounted a full-court press to force hand recounts in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. Most recently, they sought a court order to hand count some 10,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County that did not Read More ›

The Other H’s

When the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) unveiled its draft biological opinion of the Columbia River hydropower system on 27 July, it was accompanied by a broader strategy written by nine federal agencies covering all the factors implicated in salmon decline. Fisheries scientists have long identified these factors as the “four H’s”: hydropower dams, harvesting, habitat degradation, and hatchery misuse. Read More ›

Can Science Rescue Salmon?

PORTLAND, OREGON–For now, at least, the dams will stay, as the controversy swirling around them escalates. At a press conference on 27 July, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released a long-awaited plan to save the Columbia River’s endangered salmon by restoring fish habitat, overhauling hatcheries, limiting harvest, and improving river flow. What the plan did not do, however, was Read More ›

vintage-clock-hanging-on-a-chain-on-the-background-of-old-bo-270967720-stockpack-adobestock
Vintage clock hanging on a chain on the background of old books. Old watch as a symbol of passing time. Concept on the theme of history, nostalgia, old age. Retro style.
Image Credit: Tryfonov - Adobe Stock

Contrary to calendar, 20th century is history

It turns out that Jesus was really born between four and six B.C., not in the year 0, as you might expect. A sixth century monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who was given responsibility for settling a dispute over the date of Easter, miscalculated the chronology of Jesus's life and placed his birth several years late. This scholarly error, which was perpetuated in later calendars, means - if we take the middle range of the error - that we already are entering the 21st century, and, for that matter, the Third Millenium. Of course, there was some good to the 20th century, and some necessary change. For example, we probably did need a civil service to replace the political spoils system, though we later got carried away and let bureaucracies regulate away many of our freedoms. We did need civil rights protection through central government action in order, finally, to right the great wrong of slavery and to fulfill the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. But the best intellectual innovations of the 20th century were in the fields of science and technology - medicine and communications, notably. Most of the others were of lesser significance or were baneful. The 20th century brought us the scourges of fascism and communism, and it also brought us what Alexis de Tocqueville correctly foresaw as the "democratic tyrannies" of socialism and the welfare state. Specialization and expertise flourished, bringing benefits in some areas, but also contributing to the depreciation of the liberal arts. Over-emphasis on expertise also tempted leaders in one field to claim authority in others, which is always a moral usurpation. Some generalists claimed the label of science for arts and crafts that did not deserve it. This holds true for several of the "social sciences," but especially for something that grandly calls itself "political science." Even economics claimed more scientific stature than it deserved, guided by the conceit that the qualitative can always be quantified. What the experts and pseudo-experts did was separate ordinary people from their government and culture, robbing them of their authority and undermining their morale. Read More ›

The Essentials Of Self-Preservation

The word “decadence” derives from the medieval Latin de cadere — to fall away, by implication from some previous height or standard of virtue or excellence. Some years ago, literary critic Robert Adams fleshed out this meaning and its application to human affairs. In Decadent Societies, he described historical decadence as the process whereby “societies that without suffering a grievous wound Read More ›

Photo by Daniel Lincoln
man standing near hole
Photo by Daniel Lincoln via Unsplash

Burying the Engine

When my children are grown, I hope they think of themselves as environmentalists, if that means they are filled with wonder at the sight of a bald eagle and the workings of a wetland. And I hope they think of themselves as humanists, if that means they are equally filled with wonder at the sight of a Van Gogh painting and the workings of the New York Stock Exchange or even an internal combustion engine. Read More ›

Coming Soon: The C.S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia

Zondervan’s landmark Lewis reference volume is scheduled for release on 1 June 1998. The C. S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia offers a wealth of information and insights from about 40 contributors. (For an annotated list of contributors who subscribe to The Lewis Legacy, see p. 13.) Among other features, this book includes a unique 4-column timeline of events in Lewis’s life, Read More ›