Intelligent Design

The Center for Science and Culture

Fatuous Filmmaking

To put the upcoming seven-part PBS series “Evolution” in perspective, think fat. Dietary fat. For decades folks in white coats have confidently assured the public that shunning fatty foods — bacon and eggs, butter, steak — would make for longer, healthier lives. Well, guess what? In “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” published in the March 30 issue of the Read More ›

PBS’ “Evolution” generates a debate

Larry Witham discusses the PBS series “Evolution” in an article published for The Washington Times: The PBS documentary “Evolution” has generated a cultural debate that its producers expected. … The Discovery Institute, a public policy organization in Seattle, commissioned a public poll finding that eight in 10 Americans said a public television program on evolution should present scientific arguments for Read More ›

PBS’s ‘Evolution’ series is propaganda, not science

“It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” Leading Darwinist Richard Dawkins The wicked and insane will presumably have to fend for themselves, but for the rest of us, PBS has undertaken a massive new Read More ›

Evolution for the masses

America is the most scientifically advanced nation on Earth, yet a majority of its citizens reject Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Gallup polls have shown that about 45 percent of Americans believe God created living things in their present form a few thousand years ago; about 40 percent believe that things evolved over a long time with God’s guidance; while Read More ›

Getting-the-Facts-Straight

Getting the Facts Straight

Accuracy and objectivity are what we should expect in a television documentary – especially in a science documentary on a publicly-funded network. But the PBS Evolution series falls far short of meeting these basic standards. It distorts the scientific evidence, ignores scientific disagreements over Darwin’s theory, and misrepresents the theory’s critics. The series also displays a sharply biased view of Read More ›

Darwinism in Denial?

Fifteen years or so ago, “nuclear winter” – the theory that the soot and ash of World War III could end human life by darkening the atmosphere and lowering global temperatures – enjoyed its moment in the shade. As science, nuclear winter contained more errors than my last high school chemistry test, but that didn’t deter its supporters. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton wrote that, even if wrong, nuclear winter “serves us well” as an “idea.” Read More ›
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Organic Farming
Photo by Joshua Lanzarini at Unsplash

ID as a Theory of Technological Evolution

1. Nature and Art In Book II of the Physics Aristotle remarks, “If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature.” Aristotle is here contrasting nature and art. Nature provides the raw materials (here wood); art provides the means for fashioning those materials (here into a ship). For Aristotle, art consists in the Read More ›

The Meaning of Intelligent Design

I don’’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose. Clarence Darrow, Toronto, 1930 There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1955 For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as Read More ›

Some Scientists Seek to Unseat Darwin’’s Theory

If William Dembski sometimes sounds more like a revolutionary than a mild-mannered mathematician from Baylor University, that’s fine with him. It suits his vision for the future of science. Dembski, a Christian and a leading proponent of intelligent design theory, will tell anyone who’ll listen that Darwinism is finished as science’s unifying framework, that its chief value to many scientists Read More ›

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Fluorescent marquee saying
Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

The Meanings of Evolution

“Evolution and the theories of evolution are fundamentally different things,” testified zoologist Maynard M. Metcalf, the first expert witness for the defense in the 1925 Scopes trial. Metcalf’s observation at the “trial of the century” officially marked the beginning of public discussion of the different meanings of evolution for the purposes of science education. “The fact of evolution is a …