2011

Today an academic freedom bill in the Tennessee State Legislature passed out of the Tennessee House by a vote of 70-23. The journal Science has an online newspiece about the bill which states the following: In a 70-28 vote today, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed HB 368, a bill that encourages science teachers to explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal. Critics say the measure will enable K-12 teachers to present intelligent design and creationism as acceptable alternatives to evolution in the classroom. The bill’s text, if passed into state law, would protect teachers from discipline if they “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories Read More ›

So says a highly placed spokesman inside Discovery Institute who prefers to remain anonymous. “We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” says the spokesman, “that Darwinian evolution is a fact. There is overwhelming evidence that all living things are descended from a common ancestor by accidental mutations and unguided natural selection. Intelligent design is wrong, wrong, wrong!” The anonymous spokesman says that this remarkable turn of events is due to recent scientific breakthroughs in paleontology, embryology, experimental selection, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and molecular phylogeny. First, paleontology: Berkeley dino-bird expert Kevin Padian has just purchased the last missing link from a Chinese fossil dealer–thereby providing us with an unbroken record of ancestors and descendants from the Big Bang Read More ›