The Center for Science and Culture
Publicity of “political correctness” (PC) on the nation’s campuses has alarmed many within and beyond academia. Attempts to silence students and faculty who defy campus ideological fashion have raised questions about the extent to which universities remain havens of free inquiry. Yet to date concern about PC has centered primarily upon the humanities and the social sciences where ideological uniformity Read More ›
The Clinton Administration recently issued a new set of rules permitting federally funded research on embryonic stem cells. The guidelines were hailed in many quarters as a victory for “science.” But what kind of science? Astonishingly, some supporters are offering arguments that echo the ideas of the racist scientists who paved the way for the Third Reich. The medical value Read More ›
We count on scientists to tell us what they know and do not know–not just what they want us to hear. But when it comes to the origin and evolution of life on earth, spokesmen for official science–and science education–have been far less forthcoming than we might wish. When writing in scientific journals, leading biologists candidly discuss many scientific difficulties Read More ›
Science teaching, and the teaching of evolution in particular, continue to be a flashpoint in American education. Hoping to correct the problem, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation just released a report (with the American Association for the Advancement of Science), “Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States.” Written by Lawrence Lerner, the report recommends increased emphasis in America’s Read More ›
University of California at Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson enjoys taking on the theory of evolution … even if it means swimming against the tide in a place not exactly known as a bastion for anti-Darwinist views. He has written a new book, which has sold nearly 50,000 copies, aimed at giving parents and students material to counter Darwinism in Read More ›
Note: The Simpson’s, television’s popular prime-time cartoon known for its satirical commentary on various social issues, recently took a shot at the creation-evolution debate by featuring Stephen Jay Gould prominently in one of its episodes. Here is Bill Dembski’s review and observations of that episode. For those of you who regularly watch the Simpsons, you’ll know that to have one’s Read More ›
In a retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books, Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin tells how he first met Sagan at a public debate in Arkansas in 1964. The two young scientists had been coaxed by senior colleagues to go to Little Rock to debate the affirmative side of the question: “RESOLVED, that Read More ›
Traditional approaches that fail to take account of new findings in molecular cell biology cannot survive the present day. Materialistic explanations for the origin of information have been systematically eliminated over the past forty years. Has origin-of-life research brought us to the brink of a new scientific revolution? Despite the now well-documented influence of Christian thinking on the rise of Read More ›