Francis Collins is an unusual scientist. A physical chemist and doctor who rose to prominence as the leader of the Human Genome Project, he has recently been appointed by President Barack Obama as head of the NIH, the largest biomedical funding and research organization in the country. Collins is unusual because along with this undoubtedly [...]
These days I usually steer clear of creationists. The reason is that I know that I am not going to change any “pure” creationist’s mind in a couple of hours. Creationists almost by definition have closed minds. They start with a religious premise that is assumed to be true and then try to weave evidence [...]
While acrimonious spats continue to happen over science and religion in the United States, one of the saddest side effects of these in my opinion is the increasing tendency for some people to regard science as “just another point of view”. This is apparent in the way athesists for example are regarded as a group [...]
A pretty amazing debate has been going on in the webpages of Amazon.com. But first, a little about what it is about. The webpage is the one displaying Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box”, a book that has stirred up unnecessary muck, although not unpredictably. Behe is a biochemist with some credible credentials, but incredible assertions. [...]
A disturbing article from the latest issue of Nature (subscriber link) documents the audible noises that creationist groups in Europe have been starting to make, to try to force creationism into science curricula. The trend is most evident in Turkey, and Italy also is in the throes of a similar debate. While the movement is [...]