Intelligent Design

The Center for Science and Culture

Media interview and round table discussion at popular scientific conference.
Media interview and round table discussion at popular scientific conference. Audience at the conference hall. Business and entrepreneurship symposium.

Key Resources for Parents and School Board Members

Are you a parent or a school board member interested in improving the teaching of evolution in your local schools? Below are resources you will find helpful as you try to do this, including materials you can print out and submit to your school board. These materials and resources describe why teaching “the full range of scientific views” about evolution Read More ›

How to Teach the Controversy Legally

Want to teach the scientific controversy over evolution but aren’t sure what is allowable? This short video clearly and concisely summarizes the legal framework for teaching about evolution. A great resource for teachers, school board members, and parents, this video features interviews with scientists and legal scholars and explains how to teach the controversy over evolution in a legally responsible Read More ›

Photo by Allie Smith

Teaching about Scientific Dissent from Neo-Darwinism

In their recent Opinion article in TREE1, Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch argue that teaching students that there is a scientific controversy about the ‘validity of evolution’ is ‘scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible’. In so doing, Branch and Scott assume that they have critiqued my position on the teaching of evolution. But they fail to define their terms and engage the Read More ›

Good News from Ohio: Teaching the Controversy

How about some very good news, to brighten your day?

Recently, I told you that the academic freedom of high school students and teachers in Ohio was in serious jeopardy. At stake was the adoption of a groundbreaking new science curriculum, that allows for the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory—a basic freedom that scientists themselves take for granted.

But many American science organizations oppose the Ohio curriculum and lobbied hard against it. They said—falsely—that it brought religion into the science classroom.

Well, on March 9, despite heavy pressure, the Ohio State Board of Education voted 13 to 5 to adopt the new curriculum. And that’s very good news.

In fact, this good news could make a difference right where you live. People in other states like Minnesota are considering doing what Ohio did. And don’t forget the Santorum amendment to the federal education law, which encourages this very thing.

Let me give you a good resource in this effort, a new book just published by Michigan State University Press, Darwinism, Design, and Public Education. It is edited by John Angus Campbell and Stephen Meyer, and the book promotes an educational proposal that Campbell and Meyer call “teaching the controversy.”

Read More ›

Ohio Votes 13-5 To Approve Lesson Plan Critical of Evolution

COLUMBUS, OH, MARCH 9 — Discovery Institute called it a victory for students, academic freedom, and common sense when the Ohio state board of education today voted 13-5 to adopt a model lesson plan on the “Critical Analysis of Evolution.” “The board’s decision is a significant victory for students and their academic freedom to study all sides of current scientific debates Read More ›

Group of Ohio Scientists Endorses Lesson Plan to Critically Analyze Evolution

MARCH 8 — Thirty Ohio scientists, including seven professors from The Ohio State University and eight biologists, have endorsed the state’s proposed model lesson plan on the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” being considered for final adoption by the State Board of Education on March 9. At the same time, a national statement by 300 scientists disputing a key claim of Read More ›

Letter from US Department of Education Regarding Academic Freedom in Teaching Challenges to Evolution

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY SECRETARY March 8, 2004 By facsimile (406-444-2893) and US Mail Ms. Linda McCullochSuperintendent of Public InstructionMontana Office of Public InstructionPost Office Box 202501Helena, Montana 59620-2501 Dear Superintendent McCulloch: Thank you for your recent letter to Secretary Paige regarding your question about high school science curriculum and differing scientific viewpoints under the Read More ›

DNA by Design

This paper will develop a design hypothesis, not as an explanation for the origin of species, but as an explanation for the origin of the information required to make a living system in the first place. Whereas Darwinism and neo-Darwinism address the former question, theories of chemical evolution have addressed the latter question of the ultimate origin of life. This essay will contest the causal adequacy of chemical evolutionary theories based upon “chance,” “necessity,” and their combination. Instead, a third type of explanation — intelligent design — provides a better explanation for the origin of the information present in large biomacromolecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. To paraphrase Sober, this paper will present a version of the design hypothesis that disagrees with strictly materialistic theories of chemical evolution and provides a better explanation for the observed complexity of the simplest living organisms. Read More ›

Don’t Let Dogma Censor Teaching

On Tuesday, the Ohio Board of Education will vote on final adoption of a model science curriculum that includes a lesson plan on the “critical analysis of evolution.” The lesson plan is intended to implement Benchmark H of Ohio’s science standards, which requires students to know “how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” But now Read More ›

Unable to Win Science Debate, Ohio Darwinists Turn to Legal Threats

SEATTLE, March 1 — Groups in Ohio trying to censor a proposed lesson plan on the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” are now making bogus legal threats rather than scientific arguments, according to legal experts at the Discovery Institute. On Feb. 23, the head of the Ohio Academy of Science told Ohio Gov. Bob Taft that the proposed lesson plan was Read More ›