2008

In Louisiana, a state legislative committee unanimously has passed to the full state house a bill that will protect the rights of teachers to present scientific evidence both for and against modern evolutionary theory. A slew of local scientists were on hand to support the bill, along with educators and students. It’s not hard to understand why when you know what the bill actually says: “teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.” The next step is for the House side of the legislature to vote on the bill, which has already passed the Senate with Read More ›

Note: This is the third in a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain. A design must be considered improbable if it is highly functional and durable yet too complex to have come about spontaneously or by intermediate steps. Think of the subway system in any large metropolitan area. Could the combination of tracks, stations, tunnels, signs, vending machines, stairwells, lighting, trains, billboards, ticket booths, turnstiles, benches, platforms, security measures, and restrooms have happened all at once or did it come about by stages? If these commuter systems were to follow the tenets of the theory of evolution, the tracks going off in every direction might be Read More ›

Last week, I talked at length with a Washington Post editorial writer named Jo-Ann Armao. Ms. Armao said she was working on a possible editorial about the academic freedom bills on evolution currently being considered by legislatures of various states. I gave Ms. Armao a lengthy interview, providing a lot of background information and correcting various errors that have appeared in news coverage of the bills. The Post has now published its editorial on the topic, and it’s now evident that Ms. Armao simply didn’t care about facts. Ms. Armao had her spin, and even though the facts didn’t substantiate it, she was going to stick to it. Predictably, the Post asserts that the academic freedom bills are about “inviting Read More ›

Of course not, as we all know. But someone forgot to tell Hector Avalos, a critic of my role in the movie “Expelled.”

In a radio debate with me on WHO in Des Moines this morning, Avalos (religion professor at Iowa State University) claimed that Hitler was a creationist. I objected to this ridiculous claim. I countered that Hitler may have believed in a God of some sort who created natural laws, but one of the laws he thought God had created was the law of evolution by natural selection and the struggle for existence. I then quoted from Hitler to demonstrate that he did indeed believe in human evolution. In an extended conversation about evolution on October 24, 1941, Hitler lambasted Christianity, claiming that evolutionary science showed the poverty of the church’s dogmas. Hitler then stated, “There have been humans at the rank at least of a baboon in any case for 300,000 years at least.”

What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? A Friendly Conversation About Evolution
By Robert C. Newman, and John L. Wiester with Janet Moneymaker and Jonathan Moneymaker
InterVarsity Press, 2000, 146 pages
ISBN: 0-8308-2249-6

Feeling primitive? Unevolved? Inorganic? Then try a bowl of Primordial Soup! What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? is an illustrated friendly conversation about evolution and what science can explain about life. Aimed at younger students, this comic-book style work helps students understand if finch beaks really prove Darwinism is true or if the encoded message in DNA implies an intelligent designer.

HIgh school biology teacher Doug Cowan has a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal responding to a recent article which misreprsented his comments on the debate over how to teach evolution. Science Looks at All the EvidenceMay 17, 2008 Your article “Evolution’s Critics Shift Tactics With Schools” (Currents, May 2) claims that I would “like a legal guarantee [so I] can teach as I see fit.” Actually, I believe in teaching the prescribed curriculum, and I do so. But I don’t think a teacher should be penalized for exploring required topics in greater depth, especially in cases where scientists have different views. One should have the freedom to pursue and teach all the evidence even if it leads to disturbing Read More ›

South Carolina Senator Mike Fair has submitted an Academic Freedom Bill into the South Carolina State Legislature. This is now the sixth academic freedom bill submitted this legislative session, as other bills have been submitted in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Alabama, and Louisiana. The text of Senator Fair’s bill would require that, “The State Board of Education, superintendents of public school districts, and public school administrators may not prohibit a teacher in a public school of this State from helping his students understand, analyze, critique, and review the scientific strengths and weaknesses of biological and chemical evolution in an objective manner.” Meanwhile, like other commentators, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) cannot admit that South Carolina’s state science standards require Read More ›

In this short video clip, CSC fellow Dr. Dean Kenyon answers a series of questions about his interest in biological origins and the ideas he expressed in his book Biochemical Predestination, and his skepticism of Darwinian theory. The full video is available on YouTube.

Dr. Steven Novella and I have been engaged in a vigorous blog debate (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, , and here,) about the mind/brain problem and about intelligent design. Dr. Novella, who presents himself as a pro-science ‘skeptic’ (he’s president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society), is a passionate Darwinist and materialist. He blogs often on Darwinism, materialism, and “denialism” in science.

Monday morning I checked Dr. Novella’s blog. I noticed that several (at least four) of his recent controversial blog posts were missing. The links are here, here, here, and here. I checked more closely– using my own previous links to the posts– and the posts (#165, #189, #260, and #283) were gone, without a trace and without an explanation. The blog posts dealt with his view that intelligent design wasn’t falsifiable and with the debate between materialists and dualists on the mind-brain problem. What was up?

I emailed Dr. Novella, and asked him: