2007

Over at ID The Future we are featuring the first part of an interview with Premise Media’s Walt Ruloff, the executive producer for the new Ben Stein film, Expelled, due out in February of next year. In this installment, Ruloff gives a brief overview of Expelled, explains how he came to spend over two years making the film, talks about intelligent design as a disruptive technology compared to dogmatic Darwinian evolution, and tells how the film will show that Darwinian evolution is a science stopper. Rather than get mired in the politics of the debate, Ruloff explains that Expelled gets to “where the rubber meets the road, where the science is being done.”

Dallas Morning NoNewsNo News To Report About Texas School Stance on Science Education Dallas — In a stunning development there is no news in Texas. There is no news. Nothing to report. “I don’t see any news here,” said the board president.However, another board member said, “The board hasn’t created news yet, but just wait there’ll be some news eventually.” News was sought across the state, but unable to be found.“We haven’t been making news, I don’t see any news now, nor is there any news forthcoming” said one board member.“I like news,” commented another, “but we’re not making any.” In the past both President Bush and Governor Perry have made news. “The news must be there, no matter what Read More ›

No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence
By William A. Dembski
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, 404 pages
ISBN 0-7425-1297-5

No Free Lunch, the sequel to mathematician and philosopher William Dembski’s Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. Dembski explains that the Darwinian search mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection is incapable of generating novel complex, specified information (CSI).

There’s been a lot of handwaving about a study out of the University of Oregon that purports to refute Michael Behe. You might think this is deja vu (vu, vu, vu), but it isn’t.

New York Times science writer Ken Chang reported this week on how “scientists have pinpointed mutations in an ancient protein that transformed its shape and function more than 400 million years ago.” One of the researchers even claims to have discovered “how evolution sculpted the protein structure to produce a new function.”

Really? With such claims having been bandied about before with little basis in reality, I sought out a biologist working in a research lab and asked her about this paper and she responded:

This month saw two very different takes on intelligent design in the UK press. As we reported earlier, the Guardian ran a story which set up a false dichotomy of ID as a personal opinion and Darwinism as scientific fact. Standing in contrast to this view is Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, who wrote a penetrating piece on how the rationality of science is threatened by the new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins:

The most conspicuous example of this is provided by Dawkins himself, who breaks the rules of scientific evidence by seeking to claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution – which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection – also accounts for the origin of life itself.

There is no evidence for this whatever and no logic to it. After all, if people say God could not have created the universe because this gives rise to the question “Who created God?”, it follows that if scientists say the universe started with a big bang, this prompts the further question “What created the bang?”

Expelled is a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.

Two years ago when we hosted an event at the National Press Club to raise the alarm about the persecution of pro-ID scientists and educators, I was quoted as saying:

“There is a disturbing trend of scientists, teachers, and students coming under attack for expressing support in the theory of intelligent design, or even just questioning evolution. The freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin’s theory, or to express alternative scientific hypothesis is coming under increasing attack by people that can only be called Darwinian fundamentalists.”

Well, it is nearly two years later and it’s sad to say, but the Darwinist inquisition is spreading. Things have gotten worse, not better. Academic freedom is under intense attack by Darwinists across the country.

Finally someone is fighting back, and that someone is Ben Stein. Stein is perfectly situated to weigh in on this issue, as he is an actor, a pop-culture icon, and at the same time a serious economist who has worked in academia and the government.
Today the website was launched for Stein’s next film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, due out in theaters nationwide next February.

PZ Myers Then: Comment #35130 Posted by PZ Myers on June 14, 2005 07:50 AM (e) (s) Here I am, a biologist living in the 21st century in one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the two biology teachers in my kids’ high school is a creationist. Last year, the education commissioner in my state tried to subvert the recommendations for the state science standards by packing a hand-picked ‘minority report’ committee to push for required instruction in intelligent design creationism in our schools. All across the country, we have these lunatics trying to stuff pseudoscientific religious garbage into our schools and museums and zoos. This is insane. Please don’t try to tell me that you Read More ›

A few days ago I sat in one of the rooms where the producers of a new film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” were screening a trailer and passing the word to interested individuals and groups. It’s the same pre-release publicity approach used recently for other Hollywood offerings, including documentaries. My emotion was almost as much one of relief as excitement. It is going to be a terrific film treatment of the whole controversy, and far fairer than any we have encountered.

This week Behe’s Edge of Evolution received a glowing review in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Cameron Wybrow, who writes: Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, provides some hard numbers, coupled with an ingenious argument. The key to determining the exact powers of Darwinian evolution, says Behe, lies with fast-reproducing microbes. Some, such as malaria, HIV, and E. coli, reproduce so quickly that within a few decades, or at most a few millennia, they generate as many mutations as a larger, slower-breeding animal would in millions of years. By observing how far these creatures have evolved in recent times, we can estimate the creative limits of random mutation. It’s worth noting that, unlike certain critics who used their reviews to Read More ›

Materialists predict they will create “artificial life” in a test tube in the next 3 to 10 years. I have a counter-prediction: They will succeed only by re-defining “artificial” and “life.” For example, “artificial” will cover any human manipulation of an existing organism — so replacing a few genes or enzymes in an already-living cell will count as creating “artificial life.” And “life” will be anything that can undergo “Darwinian evolution” — such as an artificially engineered system of molecules — even though it can be sustained only in a carefully controlled laboratory environment. But a free-living cell? I don’t think so. We are still many years and many discoveries away from understanding the nature of life even in prokaryotes. Read More ›