2006

Well you knew it had to happen sooner or later. The song is “Dance Like a Monkey” a catchy pop-punk bit from the legendary New York Dolls — their first new recording in nearly 30 years. It has a clever animated video to go along with it. Expect to hear a lot more about this as the song is going into rotation on the radio and the band was recently on Conan O’Brien.

The New York Times put it this way:

“The new record’s best song, “Dance Like a Monkey,” is a rock ‘n’ roll answer to a timely theological question. Trying to woo a “pretty creationist,” the singer invites her onto the dance floor. “Evolution is so obsolete,” Mr. Johnansen shouts like a leering old bluesman. “Got to stomp your hands and clap your feet.”

What the Dolls get wrong — they mistakenly confuse biblically based YEC with intelligent design.

What they get right — their chorus is right on target proclaiming “Evolution is obsolete.”

(if the video doesn’t load properly view it here at Youtube.com)

Some Darwinists have sometimes argued that if ID were taught in schools, then that would risk opening the science classroom to a floodgate of religious ideas about origins, wreaking havoc upon the classroom and turning it into a platform for religious proseltyzation. (For an older example of this objection, see Robert Pennock’s Tower of Babel, pg. xviii.) David Brin repeats this red herring in “The Other Intelligent Design Theories: Intelligent Design is only one of many ‘alternatives’ to Darwinian evolution,” which is the cover story of the current Skeptic Magazine. Brin suggests that if ID is taught, the science classroom will be opened to an onslaught of other “‘alternatives’ to Darwinian evolution” (which he thinks would might offend the sensibilities Read More ›

After I moved to college, my mom turned my bedroom into her quilting room. Though mom now makes very nice quilts, I am sadly stuck with a long-standing grudge against quilters (who are usually very nice people). Because of my personal history, I found it particularly amusing when I read in “The art of quilting” that a woman named Barbara West (picture, left) won the National Award of Excellence for Innovative Quilts from the Canadian Quilters Association for her quilt, entitled “Myths of our Time: Intelligent Design.” The anti-ID quilt parodies the old story where the famous atheist / agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell was told that the earth rested on the back of a turtle. Russell then challenged his objector, Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith (seen here with White House press secretary Tony Snow) was invited to the West Wing yesterday to witness the President’s veto of the embryonic stem cell bill. Smith, a Discovery senior fellow on bioethics issues, writes frequently for various magazines and newspapers, including The Weekly Standard and National Review Online, is promoting the theme of the unique importance of human life–of “human exceptionalism”. People are not like other animals spiritually, morally or even physically. Smith’s blog, linked by Discovery (see here), today carries the news of breakthroughs in adult stem cell medicine. The mainstream media have been wantonly obtuse about the the fact that the opponents of providing new federal funds and embryonic stem cells for research Read More ›

The Washington DC Examiner today published a full-page interview with John West and Casey Luskin, two of the authors of Traipsing Into Evolution. After seeing West and Luskin make a presentation about the book in Washington DC Recently, the Examiner decided to interview the authors “to get a better understanding of their arguments against Kitzmiller.” You can read the full interview online, and you can download a PDF of the actual page here. You can purchase the book online at Amazon.com, or order copies by calling 1-800-643-4102. Q Is your main disagreement with Kitzmiller v. Dover over its ultimate rejection of intelligent design (ID)? Or for the way the case exemplified, in your eyes, judicial overreach? A John West: The Read More ›

Last week I explained how Nick Matzke was wrong to argue that the Kansas Science Standards‘ (KSS) mention of irreducible complexity implies that it requires teaching intelligent design (ID). Most of the rest of Mr. Matzke’s post concentrates on the false claim that the Kansas Science Standards’ section on evolution makes claims that come only from ID literature. This argument is only furthering a conspiracy theory which believes that, when the standards read “do not include Intelligent Design,” they really mean, “do include intelligent design.” Under Mr. Matzke’s reasoning, every science teacher in the state of Kansas is supposed to be in on this conspiracy, which would be the only reason for them to know they are supposed to disregard Read More ›

Senator John McCain personally believes in evolution, but he takes a classically liberal view which says that ideas should not be hidden from students — even controversial ideas like intelligent design. Consider this excerpt from a news article on McCain’s take on intelligent design: Mr. McCain, who delivered his prepared remarks in an even, almost perfunctory manner, was at his best in the question and answer session that followed. Responding to a question about a report that he thinks “intelligent design” should be taught in schools, the senator mocked the idea that American young people were so delicate and impressionable that they needed to be sheltered from the concept, which says God had a hand in creation and which has Read More ›

A recent article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch notes that a Virginia Commonwealth University biology professor Jim Sparks complained that a biology textbook by Sylvia Mader, “Essentials of Biology (McGraw Hill, 2007) “had leanings toward creationism and short-changed evolution.” Another article described Sparks’ view as claiming the Mader textbook was “biased toward creationism and intelligent design.” But how accurate was Dr. Sparks’ description of the textbook? Consider what the textbook actually says about intelligent design: No wonder most scientists in our country are dismayed when state legislatures or school boards rule that teachers must put forward a variety or “theories” on the origin of life, including one that runs contrary to the mass of data that supports the theory of evolution. Read More ›

Discovery Institute gets a lot of nasty e-mail from name-calling Darwinists. But since the launch of StandUpForScience.com, the amount of nasty e-mailage has gone up about five-fold–something I barely thought possible (this resembles the post-Dover barrage of Darwinist hate-mail). In the past couple weeks I’ve had e-mails from Kansas tell me things like “Patton knew how to handle you fascist bastards,” “Your agenda is clear — secular schools cannot be tolerated, just as your spiritual leader Adolf Hitler said,” and “Religously speaking — GO TO HELL!” (all direct quotes from e-mails I’ve recently received from Kansas). Very interesting! In any case, I have no ill-will whatsoever towards these people, but one recent less-inflammatory but nonetheless name-calling e-mail came from a Read More ›

What are the Kansas science standards really about? Kansans will now be able to learn for themselves as three experts will explain why the revised standards were necessary at a series of free symposiums across Kansas. The efforts to mislead Kansas citizens about the state’s new science standards will hopefully be curbed by these symposiums.

“Practically everything opponents have said about these changes is either flat wrong or highly misleading,” said John Calvert, a spokesman for the eight scientist and educators who proposed the changes, and organizer of the symposiums. “Critics falsely claim that ‘the changes remove evolution.’ Wrong! They actually seek to increase the content so that students will be equipped to actually understand the theory.”

Three experts will explain the existing scientific controversies over biological and chemical evolution and how the new Kansas science standards encourage teachers to objectively introduce students to these controversies, as well as showing how the science standards have been systematically misrepresented and why it is important that the public be adequately informed on this issue.