history of science

This film in two parts features Stephen Meyer and Michael Ruse on PBS’s ThinkTank in 2006, hosted by Ben Wattenberg. Used with permission. Part I Part II

Dr. Stephen Meyer’s opening remarks to the Texas State Board of Education, where he testified in June 2009 in favor of keeping critical analysis of evolution in the Texas science standards. Listen in as Dr. Meyer explains some of the problems with Darwin’s theory, including the Cambrian Explosion.

As may be seen from our newly updated page listing Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design, the ID movement has developed a diverse research program bearing fruit in the form of more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Beyond doubt, ID proponents have published a significant body of legitimate peer-reviewed research. In the past, critics charged Read More ›

For years Alfred Russel Wallace was little more than an obscure adjunct to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Remembered only for prompting Darwin to write On the Origin of Species by sending Darwin his own letter proposing a theory of natural selection, Wallace was rightly dubbed by one biographer “the forgotten naturalist.” A decade of recent interest in Wallace has Read More ›

Whenever a challenge to the truth of Darwinian evolution arises, the scientific establishment and its allies trot out the Scopes Monkey Trial. It is their position that if the scientific establishment has ratified a science textbook, such as the book from which Scopes taught evolution, the state should not engage in “censoring” the material in that book.

The Scopes Monkey Trial plays such a prominent role in the debate that I purchased a copy of the transcript; a copy of the textbook from which Scopes taught, A Civic Biology; and a copy of the companion lab guide to that textbook. Review of these source materials-very different from the biased picture presented in Inherit the Wind-was a real eye-opener.

In the Scopes trial, there was never any judgment or verdict that Darwinian evolution is true. The prosecution argued and the judge agreed that the Tennessee statute in question barred the teaching of the Darwinian theory even if it were true, so its truth was not an issue in the case. Nor, notably, was the truth of the theory of Darwinian evolution and the supposed evidence for it ever subjected to cross-examination. Scopes’ lawyers presented extensive written statements from seven scientists stating that Darwinian evolution is the correct explanation for the diversity of life on earth. The prosecution sought permission to cross-examine the five pro-Darwinian science experts whose statements had been read in open court, but Clarence Darrow and the other Scopes lawyers objected and the court refused to allow it.

Unfortunately, in his Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, Judge Jones bought into the revisionist history of ID that claims ID is just repackaged creationism, and the Judge presented a sharply truncated and inaccurate view of the intellectual history of design. A correct history will make it clear that “intelligent design” was not a term invented to avoid the Edwards ruling, but Read More ›

More than sixty years after the famous Galileo “The Earth it Moves” trial in Rome, Copernicus is in the news again, this time in the form of a so-called theory of universal gravitation (or UG, as it has come to be known). Headquartered at the Royal Society, a think tank in London funded by well-heeled royalist donors, members of the Read More ›