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Showing posts from October, 2021

Dogma and the Universe

This post is partly in response to a blog post on Evolution News from a couple of years ago, recently recycled here (and prompted by a recent post at the Sensuous Curmudgeon). Self-appointed spokesmen for science often use the enormous size of the cosmos, with its billions of galaxies, as a club to beat up on Christianity. They say people in the Western tradition had to wait for modern science to grasp that the universe was huge, and had to shed historic Judeo-Christian views to do so. Not true. The author, self-appointed spokesmen for ID, Mike Keas, cites an essay that CS Lewis wrote in 1943. CS Lewis is something of a hero to a lot of Christians, and it is interesting to note he utter rejected creationism! However, this essay is on another subject. Keas says: C.S. Lewis in his 1943 essay “Dogma and the Universe” demolished Nye’s way of thinking. Lewis begins with an analogy. Lewis' essay can be found here (it looks like it was scanned, and contains some errors that I will try

Plant Galls And The Discovery Institute

Galls are structures on plants that benefit the parasite, but are detrimental to the plant. Here is a great paper that demolishes evolution, because how could plants possibly evolve to have structures that are detrimental to them? And here is the Discovery Institute's take on that paper. The new paper is typical of Lönnig’s writings, with an abundance of details and references. As you listen to his podcast on carnivorous plants, or read his new article on plant galls, I suggest the following exercise: Try to imagine hypothetical species that would falsify Darwin, using his own criteria, in a more spectacular way. The only problem is... plant galls are caused by the parasites , not the plants. It is the parasites that have evolved the ability to cause galls, not the plants. How Could The Author Get It Wrong? Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, author of the article, actually spent 25 studying plant genetics and mutations and has a Ph.D. in genetics - or so the DI assure us. His paper has "