Balancing Lives, Economics, and Public Policy in This Plague

borders, calculus, Congress, constitutional rights, coronavirus, COVID-19, Culture & Ethics, Economics, elderly, epidemiology, ethics, euthanasia, experts, governors, health, incubation period, Medicine, neurosurgeon, polis, Politics, President, Principle of Double Effect, probabilities, psychology, public policy, scientists, Senate, social distancing, sociology, Thomas Aquinas, triage, ventilators
I am a physician, and while I don’t treat coronavirus patients personally (I’m a neurosurgeon), I work in a regional coronavirus center and have first-hand knowledge of the medical impact of this pandemic. The danger the virus poses to life is substantial — in vulnerable people, it causes severe pulmonary compromise, often requiring the patient to be placed on a ventilator, and a substantial portion of these ventilated patients will die. The virus is highly contagious, and has a rather long incubation period, which helps it spread — people who have it continue to walk around and spread it for quite a while before they become sick and realize that they are contagious.  A Framework for the Wisest Decisions For a variety of reasons, the coronavirus plague is devastating to…
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With a Hopeful Message About Life’s “X Factor,” Episode 5 of Secrets of the Cell Is Well Timed

accidents, Charles Darwin, Culture, Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Michael Behe, philosophers, philosophy, scientists, Secrets of the Cell, theology, X Factor
Michael Behe is a biochemist, leading proponent of intelligent design, and a wise guide to understanding the wonders of life with its mysterious “purposeful arrangement of parts.” The new series from Discovery Institute, Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, concludes today with a last consideration of the “X Factor” that appears to lie behind the wonderful, irreducible complexity of biology. That “X Factor,” he explains, is an intelligence inconceivably beyond our own: Secrets distills the argument for intelligent design in five-to-eight minute episodes, five in all. I’m sure ID has never been presented more accessibly, in a way anyone can easily understand. Share Secrets of the Cell with your family, friends, and social media network! What a remarkable thing that the design of the universe was almost universally appreciated,…
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Is Joe Blow “Anti-Intellectual”?

AIDS, anti-intellectual, babies, climate change, conception, Darwinists, DDT, eugenics, Evolution, fossil fuels, gender, global cooling, global warming, Jeffrey Epstein, life, malaria, materialism, men, moral purity, Paul Ehrlich, polar bears, polar ice caps, schoolchildren, schools, science consensus, scientists, Skeptics, Steven Novella, truck driver, women, Y2K, Yale University
It’s a common claim among Darwinists that people who question “expert” scientific opinion on such topics as evolution, global warming, and the mind-brain relationship are “anti-intellectual” science deniers. Steven Novella, a Yale neurologist and credulous Darwinist and materialist makes the claim in a recent post: As science-communicators and skeptics we are trying to understand the phenomenon of rejection of evidence, logic, and the consensus of expert scientific opinion.  Ironically, Novella, who considers himself a skeptic, decries the skepticism of people who don’t agree with him. Purity and Consensus How can it be, scientific experts ask, that so many people doubt scientific experts? Novella: There is, of course, no one explanation — complex psychological phenomena are likely to be multifactorial. Decades ago the blame was placed mostly on scientific illiteracy, a…
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Where Science and Faith Meet: Westminster Conference, April 3-4, in Philadelphia

betrayal, biology, cosmic fine-tuning, cynicism, Daniel Reeves, design detection, Early Church, faith, Faith & Science, foresight, Intelligent Design, John West, Marcos Eberlin, Melissa Cain Travis, nanomachines, Parents, Philadelphia, reproduction, science, scientific evidence, scientists, Secularism, Stephen Meyer, students, teachers, Vern Poythress, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, youth track
It’s possible to simplistically sweep aside challenges to a materialist picture of reality. Proponents of atheism do this all the time. And it’s possible to sweep aside challenges, or what seem to be challenges, to a theistic understanding. People do this, too, all the time. Neither is intellectually satisfying. And the latter sets a trap for young people. Parents and educators might feel it’s the safest way to take shelter from claims by scientists and other academics that are thought to engender cynicism and undermine faith. But what happens when young people grow up, are immersed in a university or secular culture, and realize how little they were prepared for or exposed to counterarguments against their family’s religious tradition? The resulting sense of betrayal has been reported many times. Youth…
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Say Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

American Humanist Association, apostles, Austria, birthday gift, Brazil, Charles Darwin, Darwin Day, David Gelernter, Debating Darwin's Doubt, digital download, Evolution, Facebook, Foresight (book), Intelligent Design, Israel, Italy, Marcos Eberlin, Nobel Prize, scholars, scientists, South America, Yale University
Today, February 12, is Charles Darwin’s birthday. For the past two decades, secularists and atheists have celebrated “Darwin Day” almost like a religious holiday. Tonight, for example, the American Humanist Association will hold an event where they promise you can “Discover how Darwin’s apostles… launched a campaign for truth.” I’m not kidding — they really do refer to “Darwin’s apostles”! Meanwhile, the official Facebook page for Darwin Day posts statements like this: “Using scientific logic, we can be as sure of God’s nonexistence as we are of the nonexistence of the aether, phlogiston or werewolves!” The Cult of Darwin While some continue to worship in the cult of Darwin, here is some good news in time for Darwin’s birthday: The number of prominent scientists around the world who are leaving Darwin behind…
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ID Inquiry: Robert J. Marks on Information and Intelligent Design

Evolution, ID The Future, information, Intelligent Design, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, Podcast, Robert J. Marks, scholars, scientists, Walter Bradley Center
On a classic episode of ID the Future, hear an installment in our ID Inquiry series, in which ID scientists and scholars answer your questions about intelligent design and evolution. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Robert J. Marks discusses information and how it relates to intelligent design. Dr. Marks is the director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence and co-author of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. Got a question for an ID scientist? Contact us here. Photo: Robert J. Marks at the launch of the Walter Bradley Center, by Nathan Jacobson. The post ID Inquiry: Robert J. Marks on Information and Intelligent Design appeared first on Evolution News.
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#8 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Remembering Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019)

ancient Greeks, Boalt Hall School of Law, Casey Luskin, censorship, Center for Science & Culture, Christians, creationism, Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Nemesis, Darwinism, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Genesis, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design 101, John Mark Reynolds, Kansas State Board of Education, materialism, naturalism, objective education, Phillip E. Johnson, scholars, Science (journal), scientists, Sunday School, Supreme Court, The Wedge of Truth, UC Berkeley
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on November 3, 2019. Author’s note: With great regret, we recognize the passing of Phillip Johnson, a key guiding spirit of the intelligent design movement. He died peacefully overnight this weekend, at age 79, at his home in Berkeley, California. I am publishing below…
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#9 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Ben Shapiro May Have Done the Best Interview with Stephen Meyer

academia, Ben Shapiro, Big Bang, biology, cosmic fine-tuning, cosmology, Education, education policy, Evolution, Intelligent Design, interview, journalists, materialism, media, multiverse, quantum cosmology, scientists, Stephen Meyer, strengths and weaknesses, The Daily Wire, The Return of the God Hypothesis, young people
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on March 25, 2019. Ben Shapiro’s Sunday Special interview with Stephen Meyer is up and viewable now at YouTube. This might be the best interview with Meyer that I’ve ever seen. Check it out: Why might it be the best? Partly because of the…
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Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of the Scientists

child prostitution, Culture & Ethics, Darwinism, Emily Kurlinski, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Egnor, Money, scientists, silence, thought police
On a new episode of ID the Future, neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor discusses the code of silence that kept numerous scientists tied to consensus and silent on Jeffrey Epstein when they should have spoken out. Download the episode or listen to it here. Talking with host Emily Kurlinski, Egnor says that even when it was already widely known that Epstein was involved in child prostitution, his funding was still widely sought and received by scientific institutions, and he entertained scientists who willingly accepted his money. Anyone who’d spoken up, says Egnor, would likely have lost his career. There is a striking parallel. Egnor offers examples of scientists who were open to intelligent design but either kept silent to protect their career or who stepped forward and suffered the consequences at…
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Heal a Divided Heart: Join Us for the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith

college, Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Eric Metaxas, faith, Faith & Science, John West, professors, registration, religious leaders, science, scientists, Stephen Meyer
Think about the implications of this statistic: “55 percent of American adults now believe that science and religion are often in conflict”: Given the prestige of science in our culture, and the diffidence of many religious leaders and teachers in thinking independently about what they’ve been told “Scientists Say,” that means a lot of Americans are on a track like the one the young woman John West wrote about this morning was on.  In a powerful statement, she said that she had her heart broken as a college student — not by a boy, but by her own professors. They told her she had to choose between science and faith. She could not have both. Providentially, she ended up on the video crew assigned to record the 2019 Dallas Conference…
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