Posted on October 2 at 3:32 a.m.Suggest removal

Scott:
With all due respect, I consider the NCSE's caricature of ID to be a gross mischaracterization of the way I - and other scientifically-minded people - think about intelligent design. As a "scientifically-minded person" I have absolutely no problem invoking known causes for observed effects.

On your second point, I would simply direct you to one of the questions in the museum's response lecture to "Darwin's Dilemma" last Tuesday:
Lecture attendee: "If a precambrian rabbit wouldn't falsify Darwinian/Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, can you think of anything that would?"
Dr. Stephen Westrop [curator of SNOMNH invertebrate paleontology]: "As a paleontologist, I am comfortable with saying that natural selection is already well established and the find of such a rabbit, though forcing us to push many of our phylogenetic dates much earlier, would not falsify the theory."

Would you consider Dr. Westrop's science to truly be welcoming question and open to scrutiny?

I hope that you were able to attend our screening, and if not I would more than happily accomodate another viewing for you. We welcome scrutiny, and would like to extend an open invitation for you and your entire Society to attend our next meeting at 5pm on October 12th in Gaylord 2020. We intend to simply discuss this past week and whatever else comes up. Please don't hide behind blog posts like most of our biology faculty did this week. Open your ideas for scrutiny, and we will open ours.

Sincerely,
Josh Malone
President
IDEA Club

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Posted on September 24 at 2:35 a.m.Suggest removal

@ Cambrian:
To be fair, it looked like Mr. Sims was just trying to balance out the Jerry Coynes and Richard Dawkins attitude of reverence toward neo-Darwinism and highlight that, just as gravity itself is open to inspection (unless you take Newton over Einstein), evolution ought to be on the table. We can't have a "no touching allowed" policy to the way we view biological origins. At the end of the day, every hypothesis will be shown to be wrong or insufficient to some measure.
[I will say, though, that I find this common anti-evolution "argument" to be as absurd as the evangelical atheists. But give Sims a break; that wasn't the tone of his article.]

Now, I must say that accusing the ID camp of pseudoscience in a video which you have not viewed seems somewhat presumptuous, particularly when a paleobiologist like Simon Conway Morris appears in it. Could you not be jumping the gun a bit? Just give them a chance. They're not going to be beating you down with a text. I think they are legitimately trying to analyze the evidence.

The major problem with the museum's response was not that they distanced themselves, but that they totally mocked the DI in the name of "tolerance." What a joke! Everyone knows they wouldn't be tolerating this if there wouldn't be PR repercussions. Apart from the academic freedom rants, the museum could sweep this out of their door and the university would probably look the other way. It's one thing to distance yourself from an idea. It's another to pretend that you actually respect it.

If they're wrong, engage their ideas and tell them why they're wrong (don't accuse them of blind, theological allegiance). If they're right, you shouldn't care who they offend in the interest of scientific progress.

PS-The soft-bodied argument might work if most of the Cambrian fauna wasn't soft-bodied. Or if they didn't find fossilized embryos. Checks it: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content...

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Posted on November 16 at 2:28 p.m.Suggest removal

“I really love Laura and I care for her, but I care for her enough that I don’t want to think of her in a purely physical way at this point because that would be my tendency,”

It doesn't sound like Malone is exactly "oppressing" her; in fact, I respect him for wanting to treat her as more than an object for his sexual entertainment. A desire to love her for who she is as a person, rather than just for how she turns him on, seems to have a dignifying effect on her. I don't understand how treating a woman as a rational, relational human being is "outdated" in any sense. If it is, then I would question whether campaigns for women's rights and dignity this century have really been effective.

Bravo, Jon, for cherishing and honoring Laura by exhibiting a level of self-control which many of us are afraid to attempt.

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Posted on November 16 at 2:02 p.m.Suggest removal

Rhology: Why do you stop there? Why would you be okay with abortion in the case of rape? I agree that it is a hard and deeply sensitive issue, but would you be okay with a mother "aborting" her 2 year old daughter who was conceived in rape? What's the difference?

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