1. Nobody wanted me in the pictures!
[Hat Tip: Greg Laden]
I'll be in Montréal, Québec, Canada this weekend attending the Atheist Alliance International (AAI) convention, Atheists Without Borders (Atheés Sans Frontières). 
The dominant feature of the city is Mont Royal (Mount Royal) a group of hills right in the middle of Montréal island. The hills were first scaled by Jacques Cartier in 1535. A wooden cross was erected in 1635. The giant illuminated cross that we see today was built in 1924.
1. Quebec City was founded in 1608. Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1608 and the Mayflower arrived in Massachusetts in 1620.
The video below shows Stephen Meyer explaining evolution to the people who attended the Four Nails in Darwin's Coffin event at Southern Medodist University. 
Martin Rees is the President of the Royal Society in the UK. This is a position of enormous influence. When Rees speaks you can assume that he is representing the position of the Royal Society, or at least it's leaders.He is equally scathing about Hawking's more recent comments about there being no need for God in order to explain creation. "Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I've know for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don't think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic," he said.I don't have time for a detailed explanation of this particular accommodationist position so I'll just note a few points.
Unlike many of the Fellows of the Royal Society he has presided over in the past five years, Lord Rees is not a militant atheist who goes out of his way to insult people of belief – Richard Dawkins once called him "a compliant quisling" for his tolerance of religion.
"I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains," Lord Rees said. "Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by."
His next popular science book is about these things that science still cannot explain, such as the origin of life on Earth and the scientific nature of human consciousness. This, he insisted, is what science is really about, and why it has the power to touch everyone of every culture.
[Photo Credit: BBC]
Jerry Coyne is to be congratulated for reading The Huffington Post. I can't be bothered, but I'm happy when he finds something interesting [CfI declares war on atheists].Atheists are getting a reputation for being a bunch of know-nothings. They know nothing of God, and not much more about religion, and they seem proud of their ignorance.The question before us is whether there is a God or there isn't. So far, I have not been convinced by any argument in favor of supernatural beings. Every single argument that I've encountered seems flawed. Many of them are stupid and nonsensical.
This reputation is a little unfair, yet when they profess how they can't comprehend God, atheists really mean it. To listen to the loudest atheists, you can hear the bewilderment. And they just can't believe how a thing like religion could appeal to any intelligent person. The mythological story told by atheists recounts how religion arose through vast ignorance and perversity. A plague upon humanity, really, infecting the dimwitted or foolish with viral memes about spirits and gods. If there's no arguing with irrational people or dumb viruses, what's to be done?
Astonished that intellectual defenses of religion are still maintained, many prominent atheists disparage theology. They either dismiss the subject as irrelevant, or, if they do bother to acknowledge it, slim refutations of outdated arguments for a medieval God seem enough. Atheists cheer on such bold leadership, but what is really being learned? Challenging religion's immunity from criticism is one thing; perpetuating contempt for religion's intellectual side is another. Too many followers only mimic the contempt, forgetting that you won't effectively criticize what you would not understand. The "know-nothing" wing of the so-called New Atheism really lives up to that label. Nonbelievers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of the freethought legacy.
This brings me to my challenge. I challenge all theists and all their accommodationist friends to post their very best 21st century, sophisticated (or not), arguments for the existence of God. They can put them in the comments section of this posting, or on any of the other atheist blogs, or on their own blogs and websites. Just send me the link. Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas. Under stress from modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, it has explored cosmological, ethical, emotional, and existential dimensions of religious life. Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints. There are philosophical atheists who have quietly and successfully kept pace. The discipline of atheology is quite capable of matching these theologies with its skeptical replies, so atheists need not be intimidated. Taking theology seriously enough to competently debate God should not be beneath atheism.Too bad he doesn't mention even one of those supposedly robust new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings. Could it possibly be because they don't exist?
1. They may also want to be saving themselves since many accommodationists have spent a lifetime studying theology. It must be embarrassing to be told that their life's work is no more important than studying fairy tales.
John Hawks found a paper analyzing the height of Charlemagne (742-814). Rühli et al. (2010) looked at measurements of Charlemagne's left tibia in order to determine his total height and robustness. The result indicates that he was 1.84 m tall (6' 0"). This is considerably taller than the average height of his male contemporaries at 1.69 m (5' 6"). Thus Charlemagne was taller than 99% of the men around him and qualifies as "great" in more ways than one.[Hat Tip: John Hawks: Charlemagne the Tall.
Rühli, F.J., Blümich, B., and Henneberg, M. (2010) Charlemagne was very tall, but not robust. Economics & Human Biology 8:289-290. [doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2009.12.005]
CSC's Stephen Meyer moderated the discussion after the film which included four serious challenges to Darwinian evolution. The first speaker was evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg who presented the challenge of population genetics to Darwin's Theory. He was followed by Biologic Institute's Doug Axe who spoke on the challenge of finding functional proteins, and CSC Fellow Paul Nelson who explained why evolving animal body plans by random mutation and natural selection is probably impossible. CSC biologist Jonathan Wells concluded the short presentations by explaining the challenge of ontogenetic information. The evening closed with a robust 40 minutes of questions from the audience.Ohmygod! They snuck in a ringer, Paul Nelson. I didn't know he was going to be there. No fair!
As far as I can gather from this short summary, the four nails are:1. Population genetics challenges Darwin's Theory. Not much of a surprise here since populations genetics was only developed in the 1920s and 1930s. That's at least sixty years after publication of the Origin of Species. The Modern Synthesis, on the other hand, was specifically developed to take advantage of the new understanding of evolution that arose from population genetics. The Modern Synthesis dates from the 1940s suggesting that Richard Sternberg still has a lot of learnin' ahead of him. Either that, or he is deliberately misleading his audience by referring to "Darwin's Theory." That would be wicked and, like Richard Dawkins', I don't want to consider that.1There you have it, folks. Lot's like more of the same-old, same-old, criticism of science that's come to characterize the Intelligent Design Creationist movement. They never offer any evidence for a designer and they never tell us how they explain the "challenges" based on Intelligent Design Creationism.
2. The Challenge of Finding Functional Proteins. This probably refers to Doug Axe's work on mapping protein folds to an adaptive landscape. He is fascinated by the appearance of peaks corresponding to low free energy wells for each of the main types of fold. While staring at these figures he finds it easy to imagine that God made all of these folds and that it is impossible for any of them to evolve from some intermediate state. Real scientists don't have a problem explaining those peaks from an evolutionary perspective. But then, real scientists understand evolution and that gives them an unfair advantage.
3. Evolving Animal Body Plans by Random Mutation and Natural Selection is Probably Impossible. Paul Nelson defines himself as a Young Earth Creationist [Paul Nelson Is Confused] so it's safe to conclude that there isn't much about evolution that he likes. It's probably also safe to assume that his understanding of evolution leaves a lot to be desired since his "nail" is restriced to natural selection. (His readings in evolution may have stopped at the same place as Sternberg's.) I can't imagine why he thinks that evolving body plans is impossible. Most of the arguments along those lines have been refuted decades ago. What's the "new challenge," Paul?
4. Challenge of Ontogenetic Information. Jonathan Wells is famous for The Icons of Evolution where he had ten (10) serious challenges to evolution.1 At least we're making progress—now we're down to only four and the first two weren't even mentioned in Icons. The word "ontogeny" refers to development. I assume that "ontogenetic information" refers to the program of development involving the differential expression of genes at different times. Maybe he's referring to Evo-Devo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology). He could be referring to one of the "icons" in his ten-year old book because he criticized the current molecular understanding of development in a chapter celled "Four-Winged Fruit Flies." If that's the challenge he talked about last night, then it's hardly new. West's ideas were refuted even before he published his book in 2000.
1. Not.
Naturopathic medicine is:Good. Now I know the difference between naturopathy and other forms of non-evidence based medicine (i.e. alternative medicine, quackery).
... a distinct system of primary health care that addresses the root causes of illness, and promotes health and healing using natural therapies. It supports your body's own healing ability using an integrated approach to disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention that includes:
o acupuncture/Asian medicine
o botanical medicine
o physical medicine (massage, hydrotherapy, etc.)
o clinical nutrition
o homeopathic medicine
o lifestyle counseling
[Hat Tip: Respectful Insolence: A highly revealing quote from a naturopath]
Yesterday's TorontoStar had an article on the parting of the Red Sea. Apparently, strong winds could account for making a pathway that the chosen people used to cross the sea ahead of the pursuing Egyptians. God wasn't necessary.
Arriving at the train station this morning I was greeted by an Anglican priest in full regalia. He and his buddies were handing out pamphlets urging us to attend church this Sunday. He was delighted to have his picture taken and took it all in excellent spirit, even though he knew I wasn't religious. 
