I was treated to a –sadly– all too typical story in the aftermath of the great 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution conference the other night at SMU. An SMU staffer told me about what happened to a student that wanted to let his friends know about the event. Earlier this week the student asked his science professor if at the end of class he could make a quick announcement and the prof said no problem. At the end of the class the student stood up and very quickly announced the name of the event and that students could come and hear about some of the flaws in Darwin’s theory. At that point the professor put his hand on the student’s shoulder and said, in front of the whole class: “Hold on, if I’d known you were going …
The Nova series on PBS airs a documentary tonight titled, What Darwin Never Knew. You mean like, how life evolved? Naw, of course not. The focus is evolutionary developmental biology, or evo devo, and needless to say it turns out that what Darwin never knew actually confirms how much he did know. From the publicity material: The results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin’s insights while revealing clues to life’s breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have …
At Discovery News (here and here), Bruce Chapman notes that Stephen Hawking’s dismissal of design in the universe has gone largely uncriticized in the US. Not so in his homeland. American media have tended to uncritical worship before Stephen Hawking and his new tome, a rebuke of The Grand Design. The Wall Street Journal has had three articles on it, one by Hawking. On CNN, Larry King was like a flustered peasant bowing before an oracle: he reads a question, the oracle speaks, he reads the next question… The English themselves are not in such awe. There has been a small parade of dismissive reviews, including some by bored scientists who found nothing new in Hawking’s argument that natural laws are sufficient to explain the universe. In The Daily Mail, Oxford …
Scientists from Discovery Institute and Biologic Institute are heading to Texas to Southern Methodist University Thursday, September 23rd for a special evening event: 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin Presents New Scientific Challenges to Darwinian Evolution. Following a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma they will answer questions from attendees. Three years ago Discovery funded and organized a two-day conference on the SMU campus titled Darwin vs. Design and featuring several scientists including Stephen Meyer who will also be at this year’s event. At that event some of the faculty and other Darwin activists around Dallas said that such a discussion had “no place on an academic campus” and tried to shut it down. We thought that created a teachable moment. So we …
How hard is it to understand what we’re not teaching intelligent design means? It means exactly that. Yet for some strange reason there are Darwinist bloggers who insist on passing on false information. Over at The Stir, Julie Marsh uses Stephen Hawking’s recent assertions that the natural laws of physics preclude any intelligent designer as a springboard to jump on the Texas State Board of Education for teaching intelligent design. News flash: they aren’t teaching intelligent design, and no board members have proposed such a thing. Even the Darwin loving Dallas Morning News has clearly reported the Texas State Board of Education’s position against teaching intelligent design. “Should “intelligent design” – the cousin of creationism …
Here come more threats to academic freedom, not unlike those seen by intelligent design proponents and Darwin skeptics. Over the years we’ve covered many, many cases like this where someone who expresses doubt about Darwinian evolution is harassed, fired, denied tenure, and so on. “The significance of this is a threat to academic freedom and it’s also a threat to academic science,” Siegel said. “If scientists have to produce work that meets a certain view to keep their jobs, researchers are going to stop publishing negative findings for fear of being fired.” No, they will simply stop researching period in the subject areas that get them in trouble. The average scientist can find lots of fruitful areas of research that won’t get her in hot …
Bruce Chapman has an insightful bit of commentary about today’s tragic events at the Discovery Channel offices. It was both scary and pathetic at the Discovery Channel in Maryland today when an environmental terrorist took hostages in an attempt to force the television network to show more programs on Malthus and Darwin and to rail against over-population and global warming. Oddly missing from initial news accounts was any mention of Darwin. But, in James J. Lee’s manifesto, emerges this clear demand: “Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!” Read it all on …
Evolutionary evangelist Jerry Coyne argues that we are all just slaves to our genes and that behaviors likes racism and sexism are facts of evolution. They’re in our “own nature”. We may also have evolved to be sexist and xenophobic, but that doesn’t mean that we should give up trying to extirpate racism and sexism from our world. After all, by asking people to stop disliking foreigners, or those of different races, we may be asking them to defy their own nature. Yet, he thinks we should try to stamp them out anyhow. But, if these traits are simply a result of our genetic make-up won’t evolution eventually either enhance such traits or eradicate them forever? In its own good time? It seems that in Jerry’s world these things shouldn’t even be up …
Bruce Chapman has a piece published at American Spectator today about recent rumblings amongst school board’s over the Louisiana Science Education Act. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law last year an act that sets parameters for teachers who introduce scientific supplements on Darwinian evolution, global warming, human cloning and other controversial subjects. The state’s Science Education Act encourages “open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied.” It specifically prohibits religious instruction or interpretations (or irreligious interpretations, for that matter). The law is simple, reasonable and avoids constitutional and scientific mistakes that afflicted earlier laws in Louisiana and elsewhere. But in Livingston Parish, east …
Dr. Stephen Meyer explains the importance of biological information in origin of life research, as discussed in his groundbreaking intelligent design book Signature in the Cell. Watch here in high …
Biola Magazine this month features an insightful interview with Stephen Meyer about intelligent design and his book Signature in the Cell. In the growing movement known as intelligent design, Stephen Meyer is an emerging figurehead. A young, Cambridge-educated philosopher of science, Meyer is director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute — intelligent design’s primary intellectual and scientific headquarters. He’s also author of Signature in the Cell, a provocative new book that offers the first comprehensive DNA-based argument for intelligent design. On May 14, Meyer gave a lecture at an event hosted by Biola’s Christian apologetics program in Chase Gymnasium, where he made his case that the origin of the information needed to create …
Univeristy of Texas, El Paso mathematician Granville Sewell has written a book of essays spanning a wide variety of issues related to the debate over evolution. Besides biological evolution, it also deals with the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, quantum mechanics, and even design in mathematics. Here he talks a bit about some of his views from In The Beginning And Other Essays on Intelligent …
Definitions of intelligent design used in the mainstream media are either so superficial as to be meaningless, or completely wrong in stating that ID is creationism and anti-evolutionary. One of the best basic definitions is from www.intelligentdesign.org: The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. In his groundbreaking book, Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer expands on this definition and builds a strong, scientific case for the theory of intelligent design. Here is a short video of Meyer explaining his definition of ID as he used it in his …
Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum recently published an op-ed in the Shreveport Times defending the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), passed in 2008. Titled “Law provides framework to handle controversial scientific issues,” his article explains that criticisms of the LSEA made by an ACLU-affiliated lawyer are logically and legally baseless. Charles Kincade’s op-ed June 19 in The Times shamelessly belies that contempt, demanding censorship over academic freedom! Anyone who repeats Kincade’s tired old line that the LSEA will “permit the teaching of religious creationism” needs to be administered either a literacy test or a lie detector test: the statute expressly prohibits, at Louisiana Family Forum’s (LFF) insistence, …
Several years in the making, the book arrives just as the information age is coming to biology and scientists are delving deeper into the mystery of the origins of life. In Signature in the Cell Dr. Meyer lays out a radical new and comprehensive argument for intelligent design that readers will likely never have encountered before, and which materialist scientists cannot counter. That was written in this space exactly one year ago today when Signature in the Cell: DNA and Evidence for Intelligent Design arrived in book stores and since then has been named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, an Amazon.com best-selling science book and began to change the shape of the debate over intelligent design. Now, it is available in paperback.Since it’s publication some things …
No news continues to make news. Or maybe it’s agenda driven reporting making up news? Either way, this article trumpets the fact that Nebraskans need not worry that evolution will be replaced with intelligent design in science classes. Of course, that wasn’t being suggested and discussed anyhow. So, here’s a case of the media taking no news and goosing it into a “news” story. Three members of the Nebraska Board of Education say they’re not aware of any effort by board members or the public to include intelligent design in Nebraska’s new science standards.“I’ve had zero contact from anyone,” said board member Robert Evnen of Lincoln, who is on a committee reviewing the standards. Why is not being asked to do something …
The California Science Center (CSC) has agreed to settle a lawsuit with the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute and release records that it previously sought to conceal regarding its cancellation of the screening of a pro-intelligent design film last year. “After months of stonewalling by the Science Center, this is a huge victory for the public’s right to know what their government is doing, especially when the government engages in illegal censorship and viewpoint discrimination,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. The Science Center continues to “deny any and all liability relating to the claims,” according to the settlement agreement. However, it agreed to pay Discovery …