At least nine states currently have state or local policies that protect, encourage, and sometimes even require teachers to discuss the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.
In a Fox News interview this morning, David Coppedge and his attorney, William J. Becker Jr., explained the suspicious circumstances surrounding Coppedge’s firing from Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) last year. As we saw yesterday, Darwin-defenders are claiming Coppedge was let go merely because “the mission that he was working on was winding down and he was laid off.” But does it make sense that Coppedge would be the one laid off from his team in that situation? Coppedge explains in the interview why his layoff was suspicious: There were only two of us let go at that time of a team of six, and I was the most senior in the group, with the most experience and history on the team, and the other was near retirement. The Fox News anchor then observes that JPL’s lawyers …
Trial begins this week in a lawsuit over whether NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) unlawfully discriminated against an employee for discussing the scientific theory of intelligent design (ID) at work. The jury trial is set to begin Wednesday, March 7. David Coppedge, a 14-year JPL veteran and team lead computer administrator on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, was reprimanded and demoted after lending ID-related DVDs to coworkers. By contrast, anti-ID workers at JPL faced no similar restrictions on expressing their views. After Coppedge filed suit to protect his free expression rights, JPL terminated him. “Evidence shows that taxpayer-funded JPL harassed, demoted and terminated Coppedge after he expressed a pro-ID scientific viewpoint disliked at JPL and wrongly labeled as …
Hot-button scientific topics have been politicized. Not by Republicans, however. ENV’s David Klinghoffer has a piece in The American Spectator looking at the manipulation of science for political gain by liberals. One way this goes on is for liberals to demonize conservatives as anti-science, and mock them for their skepticism on controversial science issues like climate change and the teaching of evolution. In the religious world you will sometimes read articles or hear sermons trying to understand the mindset of unbelievers and lamenting the lure of apostasy. The funny thing is, in entirely secular venues you will also find people worrying about the power of heresy to seduce the unwary from the true path. In the secular world, that path is called …
A bill approved yesterday by the Indiana Senate to allow the teaching of creationism in public schools is being criticized as bad science education by Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading intelligent design think tank. If made law, Indiana Senate Bill 89 (SB89) would allow creationism, a religious view on the origin of species, into the Hoosier state’s biology classrooms. In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down similar legislation as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Instead of scrapping SB89 in deference to legal precedent, the Indiana Senate has amended the bill to allow more religious views on origins, as if more religion could cure the original problem. “Instead of injecting religion into biology classes, legislators should be working to …
Learn about Alfred Russel Wallace’s fascinating journey of discovery starting Saturday, January 21, with the online premiere of the new documentary short Darwin’s Heretic at www.darwinsheretic.com. Everyone seems to know that Wallace co-discovered the engine of modern evolutionary theory, natural selection. What they forget is that Wallace grew critical of the evidence that purportedly showed natural selection to be a blind, unguided process, and instead came to embrace and champion the idea of design and purpose in nature: what we today call intelligent design.= The 21-minute film is based on Discovery Institute Fellow and University of Alabama Birmingham Professor Michael Flannery’s biography Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life (Discovery Institute …
Most Americans support the Santorum Amendment’s approach to teaching evolution. A backgrounder on Rick Santorum and Intelligent Design is now available. With his near-win in Iowa and his recent rise in the polls, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is facing new scrutiny about his views on intelligent design and evolution. Reporters and others have expressed particular interest in the so-called “Santorum Amendment” authored by Senator Santorum, which was adopted in revised form in the Conference Report of the landmark No Child Left Behind Act. A media backgrounder on Rick Santorum, evolution, and intelligent design is available to download at: http://www.discovery.org/a/18071. The Santorum Amendment won overwhelming bipartisan support in the United …
The Center for Science & Culture at Discovery Institute announces two intensive 9-day seminars for college students during the summer of 2012. Help us educate the next generation of scientists and scholars. Applications are now being accepted for two summer seminars on intelligent design in the natural sciences and the social sciences. This is the CSC’s annual program aimed at upper level college and graduates students who are willing to follow the evidence where it leads. If you are not a candidate for this program, but know students who might be, please help us by referring students to www.discovery.org/summerseminar and encourage them to apply as soon as possible.As we reported last year: While Darwinism maintains a monopoly on America’s science …
Urgent Action Required: Contact the leaders of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and demand they make things right. The Facts According to a discrimination lawsuit filed in California Superior Court, supervisors at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) illegally harassed, demoted and retaliated against computer systems administrator David Coppedge without warning after he occasionally loaned pro-intelligent design science videos to some of his colleagues. Coppedge’s actions were deemed inappropriate even though his colleagues were apparently allowed free rein to attack intelligent design in the workplace. After Coppedge filed his discrimination lawsuit, his position was suspiciously terminated by JPL in January 2011. On Nov. 18, 2011, a judge ruled that Coppedge’s case …
The AP story claims that the California Science Center is claiming that Discovery Institute issued "false and misleading press releases" in "an effort to drum up controversy."
Over at Access Research Network Dr. David Tyler weighs in with a review of Jonathan Wells’ The Myth of Junk DNA. Demolishing Junk DNA as an icon of evolutionFor many of us, an important characteristic of science is self-correction. We are proud of the way new findings catalyse re-evaluation and, if corrections are needed, the development of new knowledge. If you are like this, be prepared to be shocked when you read Jonathan Wells’ latest book. The concept of Junk DNA was widely held by evolutionary biologists during the 1990s, but only a few were prepared to expose the hypothesis to tests of its validity. Yet this is when publications started to accumulate that reported functionality in genetic material widely regarded as “nonsense”. Instead of alerting …
The Myth of Junk DNA is a well-written book that manages to accomplish two separate tasks: to silence the Darwinists who claimed that recent genomic discoveries supported their dystopic version of The Signature in the Cell; and to bring all of us up-to-date on the breath-taking mysteries being decoded from this ancient script.