Casey Luskin

In his Autobiography, Charles Darwin stated, “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course the wind blows.” It is thus quite odd that a ScienceDaily.com article earlier this year with the headline “New Findings Confirm Darwin’s Theory” should go on to say “Evolution Not Random.” This study may be confirming some theory, but it isn’t Darwin’s theory. This tactic to push evolution to the public as “non-random” appears to be part of an ongoing campaign on the part of Darwinists to make neo-Darwinism appear more appealing to the public (which tends to be religious). While there are non-random components to natural selection, evolutionary biology Read More ›

Recently I documented ten examples of textbooks refuting the NCSE-scripted misinformation printed in the New York Times claiming that Ernst Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings haven’t been used in textbooks since “20 years ago.” In fact, just last week while browsing through some science textbooks at a local thrift store, I discovered another textbook that includes Ernst Haeckel’s bogus embryo drawings. In 1998, Judith Goodenough, Robert A. Wallace, and Betty McGuire published Human Biology: Personal, Environmental, and Social Concerns with Harcourt College Publishers. Some Darwinists (like Randy Olson) have claimed that if Haeckel’s drawings are used, it’s only to provide historical background on the history of evolutionary thought. Not so with this textbook: Chapter 20, “Evolution: Basic Principles and Our Heritage” Read More ›

The NCSE’s rebuttal to Jonathan Wells’ Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution, as re-published in this past Sunday’s New York Times, contains some small differences from their original response which Wells refuted in 2002. I will rebut some of the NCSE’s new false claims in a couple of posts this week. First, let’s look at the fourth question that Dr. Wells asks: “Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry — even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?” Dr. Wells is referring to the faked embryo drawings by the 19th century Read More ›

The New York Times seems to be afraid that students about to go back to school might have their heads filled with ideas that challenge Darwinian evolution. Thus today it uncritically republished a 6+ year-old error-filled response by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to Jonathan Wells’ Ten Questions to Ask your Biology Teacher About Evolution. Bruce Chapman already responded to the Times articles on DiscoveryBlog, here. Of course, the NCSE’s attempted response didn’t really answer the “Ten Questions” then, and it doesn’t now. In fact, in 2002 Jonathan Wells authored a forceful rebuttal to the NCSE, “Inherit The Spin: Darwinists Answer ‘Ten Questions’ with Evasions and Falsehoods,” which we have now reprinted below so that readers may judge Read More ›

Unfortunately I spent much of July at home feeling sick and miserable. For part of that time, all I could do was sit and catch up on episodes of the comedy cartoon, South Park. Before elaborating, I must first note that I don’t recommend watching South Park if you have squeamish ears or a distaste for shock humor. And if you’re a kid, ask your parents before watching it; South Park may be a cartoon but it is not intended for kids. But I confess that I find South Park quite entertaining, largely because they poke fun of all sides of controversial social, political, and scientific issues. It thus seems fitting that South Park would inspire me to blog about Read More ›

Last year I blogged about how Newsweek science columnist Sharon Begley had promoted the multiverse hypothesis as if it were a reasonable scientific proposition, avoiding mentioning to readers that this speculative idea was invented for the purpose of avoiding the conclusion that the cosmos was intelligently designed. As I wrote, “Begley tries to steer the reader into believing the wildly speculative multiverse hypothesis–a pet philosophical favorite of materialists–while barely even hinting that the alternative, and much more elegant explanation, is intelligent design of the cosmos. For those who are informed on this subject, her article comes off as if she is trying to hide the design inference from the reader as a reasonable conclusion to explain the incredible fine-tuning of Read More ›

How many times have we heard the old Darwinist canard that the human eye is “poorly designed”? As the argument goes, the vertebrate eye is poorly designed because our photoreceptor cells face away from the incoming light and the optic nerve extends over them, allegedly blocking some light. William Dembski and Sean McDowell’s new book Understanding Intelligent Design has an easily accessible and forceful rebuttal to this poorly designed Darwinist objection to ID, explaining that the design of the human eye is actually quite optimal: The photoreceptors in the human eye are oriented away from incoming light and placed behind nerves through which light must pass before reaching the photoreceptors. Why? A visual system needs three things: speed, sensitivity, and Read More ›

The Toronto Sun is reporting on a new poll finding that “58% of Canucks think humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and 22% believe God created people in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” The article thus proudly asserts that “[a] majority of Canadians believe in the theory of evolution.” But what about those Canadians who accept the conventional geological age of the earth but are skeptical of neo-Darwinian evolution? Obviously they don’t accept the young earth creationist view, but contrary to what the pollsters and newsmedia suggest, they also might not “believe in the theory of evolution.” Or what about those Canadians who believe in some form of God-guided evolution, where God’s Read More ›

Over the past couple years, Tiktaalik, a fossil allegedly documenting parts of the transition from fish to tetrapods, has become a new celebrated icon of evolution. PBS’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary featured Tiktaalik as their premier transitional fossil, an anachronism since it wasn’t even reported until months AFTER the Dover trial concluded. The NAS’s recent “Science, Evolution, and Creationism” booklet also prominently pushes Tiktaalik, calling it “a notable transitional form.” Darwinists have a lot of rhetorical capital invested in this fossil, and it thus comes as no surprise that they are quick to defend it with the “zero-concession policy” vehemence we’ve come to expect from internet Darwinists. As William Dembski writes regarding this policy: Our critics have, Read More ›