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Entries from March 2008

Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Burger

March 27th, 2008 · 6 Comments

This article by Dr Jurie van den Heever is my favourite. He is a senior palaeontologist at Stellenbosch University and an expert on Karoo fossils. I translate pieces of it below. (Shall I try to put up a better scanned version of the article when I get back home?)

The article starts out discussing Andrew Snelling. [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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Batten Seminar Coverage in By

March 25th, 2008 · 5 Comments

We’re approaching the end of the Batten blog arc. (”At last!”, I hear some people say?) After this one, there will likely be only two more posts. This is all as a result of a weird urge for thoroughness.
So today, for thoroughness, I’m sharing an article published in the By on 15 March. The By [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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Batten Seminar Coverage in Die Matie

March 25th, 2008 · 21 Comments

A letter published in Stellenbosch University’s independent student newspaper, Die Matie, 19 March 2008, Letters, Page 13 (a pdf can be downloaded from Die Matie’s archives):
Creationist’s message misleading
THE RECENT talk titled “Evolution – a Dark age for Science and Society?” by dr Don Batten is an example of a particularly worrying type of anti-science rhetoric.
[...]

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Batten #8: The Incorrect Calculation

March 22nd, 2008 · 1 Comment

Hat tip to Auke for his transcript.
{ } description of non-verbal events, actions.
[ ] time stamp, minutes:seconds, from Auke’s audio recording.
< > word unclear, sounds like.
Please keep in mind this is a transcript of a live talk, not something Dr Batten thoughtfully and carefully wrote himself.
Now here is the piece that I explained in Incorrect [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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Batten #7: Natural Selection

March 21st, 2008 · 96 Comments

Hat tip to Auke for his transcript.
{ } description of non-verbal events, actions.
[ ] time stamp, minutes:seconds, from Auke’s audio recording.
< > word unclear, sounds like.
Please keep in mind this is a transcript of a live talk, not something Dr Batten thoughtfully and carefully wrote himself.

You know, if you got a mutation that put feathers [...]

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Batten #6: “Information”

March 20th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Hat tip to Auke for his transcript.
{ } description of non-verbal events, actions.
[ ] time stamp, minutes:seconds, from Auke’s audio recording.
< > word unclear, sounds like.
Please keep in mind this is a transcript of a live talk, not something Dr Batten thoughtfully and carefully wrote himself.

[28:58] I want to show you why evolution is an impossible [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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Batten #5: Junk DNA, Vestigial Organs, Kinesin, Intelligent Design

March 19th, 2008 · 3 Comments

Hat tip to Auke for his transcript.
{ } description of non-verbal events, actions.
[ ] time stamp, minutes:seconds, from Auke’s audio recording.
< > word unclear, sounds like.
Please keep in mind this is a transcript of a live talk, not something Dr Batten thoughtfully and carefully wrote himself.

A Japanese scientist suggested this was a rotary motor and [...]

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Batten #4: Intelligent Design and ATP Synthase

March 18th, 2008 · 4 Comments

Hat tip to Auke for his transcript.
{ } description of non-verbal events, actions.
[ ] time stamp, minutes:seconds, from Auke’s audio recording.
< > word unclear, sounds like.
Bold: my additions/corrections.
Please keep in mind this is a transcript of a live talk, not something Dr Batten thoughtfully and carefully wrote himself.

[11:13] Well what about biology, we got a lot [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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Batten #3: Science versus Wishful Thinking

March 17th, 2008 · 4 Comments

I’m going on holiday, so I’m now posting daily sections of the talk with only brief comments in between. Think of this as audience participation time. (Hopefully not audience speculation time though, I’d love it if my comments remained the least informed of the lot. )
Hat tip to Auke for his transcript. Key:
{ } [...]

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Batten #2: Transitional Fossils and Quote Mining

March 16th, 2008 · 23 Comments

Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 — May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation. (Wikipedia) He and Niles Eldredge developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a theory that states that phenotypic [...]

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Categories: Religion and Science
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