Okay, that'll probably be the last UD moderation joke, because my irresistible charm has had its predictable (non-random) effect. I have a nice discussion going with two regulars at Uncommon Descent, StephenB and the original poster, Thomas Cudworth. I'll post my contribution below as usual, and you can read the rest of the conversation in the growing thread at Uncommon Descent.

My comment on Uncommon Descent yielded a single response, from one StephenB, who had two things to say.

I very seldom read Uncommon Descent, for lots of reasons, two of the most prominent being that I am angered and sickened by culture-war rhetoric and I am uninterested in "design" as an explanation.

In Berlin findet von heute an bis zum 1. Juni das DMY International Design Festival (ehemals “Designmai”, darf aber aus rechtlichen Gründen nicht mehr so heißen) statt. Von Kitsch bis Kunst und darüber hinaus gibt es viel zu entdecken auf der Leistungsschau der kreativen Köpfe. The post DMY: Design in Berlin, im Mai appeared first on iRights.info.

1. A nice new Tangled Bank went up yesterday at The Beagle Project Blog, which is a cool site worth visiting at other times, too. Last week saw the unveiling of the Evangelical Manifesto, "an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for," which seeks "to rally and to call for reform." The document has sparked some pretty intense discussion among Christians I know.

Several weeks ago, a commenter (Donald) asked an interesting question about natural selection and genetic variation, and I promised to address it because I want the issue to be a theme on QoD in the coming months. Here's Donald: The blog article that Donald is citing is at The Wild Side by Olivia Judson, and the figure of 100,000 deleterious mutants for every helpful one is widely referenced.

Quiz 2. (Directions, and rationale, can be found in a previous post.) Ready? Which organism has the larger genome? This one? Or this one? 1 2 3 Which of these organisms displays the greatest "degree of advancement"? Which would require the most "information" to build and maintain? What predictions would design theorists such as William Dembski and Hugh Ross offer us in this exercise? Think, people.

It's Opening Day, and it mustn't pass without mention here at QoD, especially since probability, randomness and the supernatural are such central topics around here. Manny connects, game 2 in Japan. Image from Boston Globe online. I've already confessed that Stephen Jay Gould is one of my favorite authors, and some of his essays I mark for repeat visits.

Now this is interesting. I can think of plenty of interesting Shakespearean scenes involving conflict and disputation. [Takes a bow] But I couldn't recall the word 'disagree' anywhere in, say, Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, or even Macbeth.

Here at Calvin we used to have a super-cool club called SNUH, which sought to discuss and enjoy The Simpsons. I was a guest speaker there twice, but their biggest catch by far was Prof. Tony Campolo, who came to Calvin three years ago, specifically in response to an invitation from the wacky SNUH.