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Articles by Robert Shedinger
Evolution News and Science Today
A way to tell that one is gaining the upper hand in a long-running debate is when one’s adversaries begin to police their own language so as not to be unintentionally associated with you. I have noticed this dynamic playing out over the last decade among members of the biological establishment, and I offer here three (almost hilarious) examples suggesting that, indeed, intelligent design may be gaining the upper hand.
Robert Shedinger: Darwin’s Sacred Cause is “Historical Fiction”
Episode 2042 With Michael Newton Keas Guest(s) Robert Shedinger Duration 00:14:45 Download Audio File (11 mb) Share Facebook Twitter/X LinkedIn Flipboard Print https://op3.dev/e/idthefuture.com/podcast-player/42948/2042.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:14:45 | On today’s ID the Future from our archive, historian of science Michael Keas concludes a two-part conversation with science-and-religion scholar Robert Shedinger about his research into the writing and work of 19th...
Evolution News and Science Today
Why should advocates of intelligent design care about a French Jesuit priest who died 70 years ago today, on April 10, 1955? Born in 1881, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin along with being a Jesuit priest was also a geologist and paleontologist who made several trips to China to participate in geological and paleontological work (he was part of the team that discovered Piltdown Man, later revealed to be a hoax).
Rescuing Evolutionary Theory from Darwinian Mythology
Episode 2039 With Michael Newton Keas Guest(s) Robert Shedinger Duration 00:19:20 Download Audio File (14.8 mb) Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flipboard Print https://op3.dev/e/idthefuture.com/podcast-player/42936/2039.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:19:20 | Does the public promotion of Darwin’s theory of natural selection match Darwin’s own private view of his theory?
Evolution News and Science Today
Editor’s note: This essay is republished with the permission of Professor Shedinger from the journal Agora: The Liberal Arts at Luther College. The seeds of my fall 2023 sabbatical go back a decade, to the fall semester 2013 when I taught for the first time a course on the relationship between science and religion. This had been a long-standing course at Luther College taught by Loyal Rue who had just retired.
Month: December 2024
features original reporting and analysis on the sciences with a particular interest in discovering design in nature and in the impotence of purely material theories like evolution. We also cover the impact of science on culture and promote scientific freedom and discernment.
Sorry, There Is No Religion-Science Conflict
A new unpublished paper titled “Science and Religious Dogma” by Matías Cabello has caught the attention of Jerry Coyne, who blogged about it at Why Evolution Is True. Coyne has questions about the paper’s methodology, but he nevertheless likes the paper because it supports the religion and science conflict thesis with data.
Shawn Otto and the “War on Science”
Several weeks ago, my college hosted a “distinguished lecture” by the noted science writer Shawn Otto titled “The War on Science” (the title of his latest book). I was unable to attend the lecture due to a previous engagement, but while I was perusing Otto’s book in the library, it became clear that I didn’t miss anything too important. With his book bearing a Foreword by Lawrence Krauss and a jacket endorsement by Bill Nye, we can easily guess where Otto is coming from.
Is Assembling Life Like Assembling LEGOs?
Skip to content I recently read Sara Walker’s new book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence. The book is addressed to a popular audience, and although the term is barely used, it is really about assembly theory in origin of life research. Walker asks questions like, What is Life? (with no definitive answer), and calls the origin of matter and the origin of life two hard problems in science.
Intelligent Design in a Non-ID Book
Skip to content I recently finished reading science writer Philip Ball’s new book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology. Ball is a gifted writer and science communicator, making this a pleasant volume to read. But what I found most fascinating is how often Ball, in describing this new biology, feels the need to appeal to design language despite his overt disavowal of any support for intelligent design.
history of science
luminet-cover Intelligent Design The Big Bang Revolutionaries Intelligent Design Hubble and Einsten are often credited, but the real heroes of the Big Bang revolution are the Russian Alexander Friedmann and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître.
What Happened at the Huxley-Wilberforce Debate?
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present an excerpt from the new book by Dr. Shedinger, Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. This article is adapted from Chapter 5. One of the better-known aspects of the Darwinian narrative concerns a debate over Darwin’s theory between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce at the British Association meeting at Oxford on June 30, 1860.
Demythologizing Darwin: More on Darwin’s Bluff
Under the weight of modern scientific evidence, Darwin’s theory of evolution is struggling. To better understand why, it’s helpful to peel back the mythological status of its founder, Charles Darwin, and see the 19th century naturalist for who he really was. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes his conversation with author and professor Dr. Robert Shedinger about his new book Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished.
Darwin’s Bluff: An Interview with Robert Shedinger
Why didn’t Charles Darwin finish and publish his promised sequel to On The Origin of Species? Is it possible to separate Darwin the Myth from Darwin the Man to find the answer? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a conversation with author and professor Dr. Robert Shedinger about his new book Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. Most Darwin scholars take for granted that he satisfied the question of the origin of species.
Does the World Need Another Book About Darwin?
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present an excerpt from the new book by Dr. Shedinger, Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. This article is adapted from the Introduction. What can anyone say that has not already been said about this seminal figure, Charles Darwin, considering the wealth of literature written about him?
In Science, How “Assumed Atheism” Harms Students
Skip to content Methodological naturalism is truly today a defining characteristic of science. Given this, are there any good reasons to make a meaningful distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism, as some still try to do? Since scientists can be religious believers, we are told that adherence to methodological naturalism does not necessarily consign them to the acceptance of metaphysical naturalism.
Darwin’s Bluff
Tucked away in Charles Darwin’s surviving papers is a manuscript of almost 300,000 words that he never completed. It was his sequel to The Origin of Species. It was the book he had promised would finally supply solid empirical evidence for the creative power of natural selection, evidence he admitted was absent from the Origin, which he repeatedly described as a “mere abstract.” Darwin soon abandoned his sequel, though he never revealed that decision to those who awaited its appearance.
Cellular Cognition? So Much for Darwinism!
Last week I asked, “Is the Cell a Machine, or More Like a Mind?” Now, following up in considering Daniel Nicholson’s challenge to the machine concept of the cell, I will examine his third and fourth points: intracellular transport and cellular behavior. According to Nicholson, writing in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, the machine conception of the cell (MCC) leads to what he calls a “power-stroke” understanding of how motor proteins work.
Is the Cell a Machine, or More Like a Mind?
In 2019 a paper appeared in the Journal of Theoretical Biology asking “Is the Cell Really a Machine?” The author, Daniel Nicholson of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, argues against the commonly held view of the cell as machine-like.1 If not a machine, then what? At least as we’re accustomed to thinking in our age of AI, the alternative to a machine is a mind. Does Nicholson then open up the possibility that the cell is more like an intelligent mind?
“Professor Dave” and the Art of Projection
Skip to content We have all heard about the psychological mechanism of projection, whereby someone who harbors insecurities about aspects of their personality or character will often accuse others of exhibiting their own perceived failures. For example, a person insecure about their own intellectual abilities might develop a penchant for accusing others of being stupid or ill-informed.
Joseph L. Graves as the “Black Darwin”?
Recently while browsing my library’s new book shelf, I came across Joseph L. Graves’s A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems (2022). Others have commented on the book already (see here and here).
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