February 2009

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ben Stein “has withdrawn from an engagement to speak at the University of Vermont’s spring commencement after his invitation drew complaints about his views on biological evolution.” The article reports: “According to the Burlington Free Press, the vast majority of protesters were not affiliated with the University of Vermont; only ‘about a half dozen’ objections came from the campus.” So why did protests about Stein start pouring in from outside the University of Vermont (UVM)? The answer seems clear: Stein’s invitation to speak at UVM was first raised to the Darwinist community in a post by PZ Myers titled, “University of Vermont makes an embarrassing decision.” Given the large following of PZ’s blog, Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: Douglas Axe is actually a molecular biologist, not a microbiologist. And it’s been pointed out that the quote I used from Axe’s piece that describes the Darwinian story as requiring 400 million years had a context — the supposed evolution of a proto-insect into a wide variety of insect life forms. However, the way I presented it makes it sound like the whole of Darwinian evolution was only supposed to require 400 million years, which wasn’t what Axe was saying.] As the number of celebrations of Darwin and his theory mount ad nauseam, one evolution researcher suggests that the emperor has no clothes. Douglas Axe, a microbiologist and director of the Biologic Institute, has posted an article pointing Read More ›

Original Article

It’s a big year for all things Darwin.  This month, two centuries after his birth, we commemorate the man and his accomplishments.  And in November, a century and a half after On the Origin of Species was published, we commemorate the beginnings of the theory by which we all know him.

But how exactly should we think of his theory?  Is it to be remembered the way we remember the man–as an important part of the past?  Or is it to be remembered as something more than that–as an intellectual seed that grew into something that thrives to this day?

Many, of course, would like to think of Darwin’s theory in these flourishing terms.  But the growth of something else makes this view increasingly hard to hold.  We refer here to the seldom discussed but steadily expanding body of peer-reviewed scientific work that refuses to square with Darwinism.

Take a look at the recent Genetics paper by Rick Durrett and Deena Schmidt. [1]  They’ve done the math to calculate how long it would take for Darwin’s mechanism to accomplish a particular kind of functional conversion.  And their eagerness to “expose flaws in some of Michael Behe’s arguments” [1] shows that they think they’ve resuscitated Darwinism after Behe pronounced it dead. [2]

Have they?

A survey conducted recently in England reveals that 51 percent of the British public believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of living things, and that intelligent design must be involved. The survey was conducted by the polling firm ComRes for Theos, a theology think tank.

The report of the survey of the British public, published in the Telegraph, noted:

In the survey, 51 per cent of those questioned agreed with the statement that “evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages”…A further 40 per cent disagreed, while the rest said they did not know…The suggestion that a designer’s input is needed reflects the “intelligent design” theory, promoted by American creationists as an alternative to Darwinian evolution.

The irony is that only 10-20% of the British public attend church each week, which is significantly less than half of the portion of the British population who support intelligent design. A similar disparity is seen in the United States, where 80-90 % of the American public believe that design played some role in biology, whereas only 40-50% attend church regularly.
The meaning of this disparity between support for intelligent design and church attendance is obvious: support for intelligent design extends far beyond the segment of the population that is traditionally religious. Weekly church attendance is a minimal criterion to be labeled “fundamentalist” or devout. The inference to design in biology is held by the majority of both the American and British public, and for more than half of people who support design, the reasons are not devout acquiescence to religious dogma. For most supporters of intelligent design in biology, design is inferred empirically.

After generations of Darwinist indoctrination in public schools, more than half of the British public doubts Darwinism as an adequate explanation for life. One can understand the Darwinist panic in the United States and England at even minimal discussion of the weaknesses of Darwin’s theory in public schools. Even with a monopoly on scientific indoctrination, Darwinists are unable to convince even half of the public of the truth of their theory.

Of course, Richard Dawkins was appalled by the results of the survey. The Telegraph article quotes Dawkins: