Advocacy against Materialism and Neo-Darwinism: 2023 (part 2)


Article "On the BBC, a New Openness to Teleology in Biology?" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (August 2, 2023) about a great review by Richard Buggs on a very surprising new openness in BBC nature documentaries to non-Darwinian processes and teleology in the history of life.

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Fossil Tunicate Confirms Cambrian Explosion" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (August 4, 2023).

 

Photo: Megasiphon thylakos holotype, after Fig. 2 in Nanglu et al. 2023, fair use
Photo: Megasiphon thylakos holotype, after Fig. 2 in Nanglu et al. 2023, fair use

Photo: Trilobite Redlichia, Cambrian of China, Dlloyd via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo: Trilobite Redlichia, Cambrian of China, Dlloyd via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Article "Fossil Friday: Did the Cambrian Explosion Really Happen?" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (August 11, 2023) about bad science used by Darwinists to get rid of the inconvenient Big Bang of life in the Cambrian Explosion.


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Imagining Eggs in the Famous Archaeopteryx Fossils" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (August 18, 2023) about a case of real junk science.

Photo: Archaeopteryx Berlin specimen, M Jorge Guimaraes via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Photo: Archaeopteryx Berlin specimen, M Jorge Guimaraes via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

On August 9 Matt Fradd recorded a one hour interview with me for his highly popular Catholic YouTube channel and podcast Pints with Aquinas. Currently the full video is only available for paying supporters at Locals, but two short clips have been publicly released on YouTube.


Photo: Ashaninkacebus molar, after Fig. S4 Marivaux et al. 2023, fair use
Photo: Ashaninkacebus molar, after Fig. S4 Marivaux et al. 2023, fair use

Article "Fossil Friday: Did Monkeys Raft Four Times Across the Atlantic?" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (August 25, 2023) shows how the evolutionary narrative of seafaring monkeys is getting even more ridiculous.


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom on Origin of Multicellular Life Turns Out to Be Wrong" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 1, 2023).

Photo: Charnia masoni, by Verisimilus at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Charnia masoni, by Verisimilus at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Edaphosaurus pogonias, by Jonathan Chen, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Edaphosaurus pogonias, by Jonathan Chen, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Study Debunks Textbook Wisdom on the Evolution of Mammalian Gait" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 8, 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Venetoraptor Is Not the Archaeopteryx of Pterosaurs" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 15, 2023).

Image: Venetoraptor gassenae, modified from Müller et al. 2023 fig. 1, fair use
Image: Venetoraptor gassenae, modified from Müller et al. 2023 fig. 1, fair use

Photo credit: Umberto Salvagnin from Italy, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit: Umberto Salvagnin from Italy, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

 

Article "Chameleon Vision — A Unique Marvel of Design" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 20, 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Jellyfish Body Plan and Life Cycle Originated in the Cambrian Explosion" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 22, 2023).

Photo: Burgessomedusa, Royal Ontario Museum, fair use
Photo: Burgessomedusa, Royal Ontario Museum, fair use

Bill Needle has produced yet another inept response to one of my articles titled “Bechly's Waiting Time Bullshit!” at his Marmotism blog (September 23, 2022), with which he again illustrates the extremely lowly level of opposition the ID movement faces today. Gutter language and straw man are all they have to offer. Pitiful and despicable!

Photo: Replica of birthing ichthyosaur fossil, Stephen O'Connor via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Photo: Replica of birthing ichthyosaur fossil, Stephen O'Connor via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Ichthyosaur Birth, Another Evolutionist Just-So Story Falls Apart" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (September 29, 2023).


 

Article “The Cambrian Explosion as Evidence for Intelligent Design” in Salvo Magazine #66 (Fall 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (October 6, 2023).

Photo: Confuciusornis, by Tommy from Arad, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Confuciusornis, by Tommy from Arad, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Gutter language blogger Bill Needle produced another piece of prose titled “Bloviating Bechly's Shitgibbon "Challenge"!", talking to himself (and his only reader, me) at his lonely Marmotism blog (October 9, 2023). This time he really reached a new peak of stupidity and incompetence, which is not just ridiculous but embarrassingly pathetic. Not only does he totally fail to understand and correctly describe my challenge, but he still hasn't grasped that I am not disputing common descent, he has not grasped that the completeness of the fossil record depends on the hierarchical level you look at, and he is dumb enough to issue a challenge to me to come up with an ID mechanism, obviously totally ignorant of the fact that I already did, based on quantum biology (and by the way it is not "God diddit"). This guy simply must be a joke, where is the hidden camera?

Photo credit: Ninjatacoshell, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit: Ninjatacoshell, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Rapid Elongation of Plesiosaur Necks Points to Intelligent Design" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (October 13, 2023).


 

Interview with me by Andrew McDiarmid titled "Gunter Bechly on Why Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom Was Wrong" for episode 1813 of the ID the Future podcast (October 16, 2023).


This podcast is also featured in the article “Günter Bechly on Why Seventy Years of Textbook Wisdom Was Wrong” by Andrew McDiarmid for Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (October 17, 2023).

Photo: Fossil algae, Ediacaran Lantian Formation, Zhang et al. 2021: fig. 4, fair use. Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2021.110449
Photo: Fossil algae, Ediacaran Lantian Formation, Zhang et al. 2021: fig. 4, fair use. Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2021.110449

 

Article "Fossil Friday: New Study Challenges the Artifact Hypothesis" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (October 20, 2023), about another study that corroborates the abruptness of the Cambrian Explosion.


 

Article "Fossil Friday: New Study Confirms Discontinuities in the History of Plants" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (October 27, 2023).

Photo: Fossil water lily, Lower Cretaceous of Brazil, by G. Bechly
Photo: Fossil water lily, Lower Cretaceous of Brazil, by G. Bechly

Photo: Ichthyosaur vertebra, Liassic Germany, by G. Bechly
Photo: Ichthyosaur vertebra, Liassic Germany, by G. Bechly

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Triassic Kraken Hypothesis Provoked Scornful Darwinist Revenge" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (November 3, 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: How the Caterpillar Got Its Legs, or Not" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (November 10, 2023) about the origins of insect metamorphosis.

Photo: Caterpillar in Baltic amber, by Manukyan Andranik via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 International
Photo: Caterpillar in Baltic amber, by Manukyan Andranik via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 International

Photo credit: Andreas Drews, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit: Andreas Drews, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Protists Add to the Cambrian Explosion" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (November 17, 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Cambrian Bryozoa Come and Go" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (November 24, 2023).

Photo: Fossil bryozoan, Carboniferous of Ohio, James St. John via Wikimedia, CC BY 2.0 DEED
Photo: Fossil bryozoan, Carboniferous of Ohio, James St. John via Wikimedia, CC BY 2.0 DEED

Images: Chimerarachne yingi, Gonzalo Giribet and Junnn11 via Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
Images: Chimerarachne yingi, Gonzalo Giribet and Junnn11 via Wikimedia, CC0 1.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

 

Article "Fossil Friday: The Mess of Arachnid Phylogeny, and Why I’ve Become More Skeptical of Common Descent" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 1, 2023).


Article "A Few Thoughts on the Cronin-Tour Debate" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 6, 2023) with my thoughts on the recent debate about science and the origin of life between James Tour and Lee Cronin at the Harvard Faculty Roundtable.

Photo: Lee Cronin, via YouTube (screenshot, fair use)
Photo: Lee Cronin, via YouTube (screenshot, fair use)

Photo: Neuropteran larva from Burmese amber, Haug et al. 2019 fig. 1, fair use
Photo: Neuropteran larva from Burmese amber, Haug et al. 2019 fig. 1, fair use

 

Article "Fossil Friday: A Cretaceous Insect Chimera Illustrates a Design Principle" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 8, 2023).


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Scansoriopterygidae, Bizarre Bird-Like Dinosaurs, Illustrate Darwinist Trickery" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 15, 2023).

Photo credit: Yi qi, Xu et al. 2015 fig. 1a, fair use
Photo credit: Yi qi, Xu et al. 2015 fig. 1a, fair use

Obviously, even humble alternatives like quantum idealism can trigger hardcore materialists so big time that they engage in hilarious tirades of vulgarity and irrational propaganda like this newest posting by blogger Bill Needle titled “Bechly's Hilariously Strange Loopiness!” at his Marmotism blog (December 19, 2023), featuring a dozen f-words but not a single argument. I hope this highly disturbed psychopath is just a keyboard lion and not a real threat to public safety.

Image: Tetrapodophis, photo Tischlinger in Gramling 2016, fair use
Image: Tetrapodophis, photo Tischlinger in Gramling 2016, fair use

 

Article "Fossil Friday: Is the Four-Legged Snake Tetrapodophis a Missing Link or Not?" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 22, 2023).

 


 

Article "Fossil Friday: Fossil Bird Tracks Expand the Temporal Paradox" at Discovery Institute's site Evolution News (December 29, 2023).

 

Photo: Trisauropodiscus and bird tracks, Abrahams et al., CC-BY-4.0
Photo: Trisauropodiscus and bird tracks, Abrahams et al., CC-BY-4.0

Speaking engagements and other scheduled events for 2023:

  • March 12, 2023 (via Zoom): Keynote speech “Scientific Evidence against Neodarwinism and for Intelligent Design” and Q&A for the International Conference on Islam, Science and Atheism in Lahore, Pakistan organized by IDP (98 live and 55 online participants).
  • June 1-3, 2023 (via Zoom): Two invited lectures about “The Waiting Time Problem and a New Argument against Neo-Darwinism” (Thursday June 1, 12:30) and “Discontinuities in the Fossil Record: A Problem for Neo-Darwinism” (Friday June 2, 12:45) for the Catholic conference Faith and Science in the Age of Secularisation in Krakow, Poland (about 150 live participants). I also presented my personal testimony (June 1, 18:30) and participated at the Q&A panel session (June 3, 13:45). See this article about the conference at Evolution News.
  • June 9-10, 2023 (via Zoom): Two invited lectures about “Discontinuities in the Fossil Record as Evidence against Neo-Darwinism and for Intelligent Design” (Friday evening) and “Evidence from Modern Physics against Materialism and for a Universal Mind” (Saturday morning) at the cultural week Regoliamoci! in Sardinia (Italy) organized by CIID. Cancelled by the education department because of bias against ID!
  • June 29 (via Zoom): Online Q&A for the Summer Seminars of Discovery Institute.
  • August 9 (via Zoom): Recording of an interview by Matt Fradd for his YouTube channel and podcast Pints with Aquinas.
  • October 6: Recording of an interview by Andrew McDiarmid for the ID the Future podcast.