Casey Luskin

A recent issue of the journal Science has an article entitled, “Evolution: Crossing the Divide,” which discusses the “painful transition from creationist to evolutionist” of paleontologist Stephen Godfrey. The article tells of the many difficulties Dr. Godfrey faced when he told his fundamentalist Christian family, which taught him to believe in young earth creationism, that he had become an “evolutionist.” The article portrays Darwin-skeptics as young earth creationists, painting a false dichotomy between religion-based creationism or science-based evolution. To elaborate, the false dichotomy goes something like this: Darwinists obviously say that one can accept evolution and religion, but they force a false dichotomy upon Darwin-skeptics by claiming that if you challenge evolution, then you have abandoned science and your view Read More ›

The Wall Street Journal has an article discussing the high scores received by Finnish students in a test measuring science knowledge and intelligence. However, part of the test, which was created by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, may be a measure of nothing more than whether a student believes in evolution. For example, see the sample test question, Question 3, Evolution: Which one of the following statements best applies to the scientific theory of evolution? A The theory cannot be believed because it is not possible to see species changing.B The theory of evolution is possible for animals but cannot be applied to humans.C Evolution is a scientific theory that is currently based on extensive evidence.D Evolution Read More ›

Over at Men’s News Daily, editor Mike LaSalle has a post entitled, “Darwin Ist Tot: Intelligent Design is Not Creationism” that observes, “Science is practiced by scientists, not by priests. But recently science and religion appear to have become indistinguishable, as for example in their respective institutional intolerance of competing ideas.” Since leading scientists oppose ID by misrepresenting it as a silly appeal to “magic,” LaSalle observes that “[m]y daily crop of the term ‘Intelligent Design’ on Google News usually brings a plurality of articles that have in common a missionary intent to define Intelligent Design as a hands-down flavor of biblical creationism.” LaSalle offers his witty suspicions about what goes on in the backrooms of the newsmedia: It’s almost Read More ›

How is misinformation spread about intelligent design?  In some cases, it’s a simple pathway going from lawyers working with the NCSE and ACLU right into the willing hands of the media. First, attorneys cooperating with the NCSE and ACLU during the Kitzmiller v. Dover case invented text from the “Wedge Document,” wrongly stating in their “Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” submitting during the Kitzmiller trial that, “The Wedge Document states in its ‘Five Year Strategic Plan Summary’ that the intelligent design movement’s goal is to replace science as currently practiced with ‘theistic and Christian science.’”  Next, Judge Jones copied and pasted this misinformation directly into his Kitzmiller ruling, stating: “The Wedge Document states in its ‘Five Year Strategic Read More ›

I had the pleasure of hearing Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss engage in a fireside chat at Stanford this past weekend. For the most part, they agreed with one-another on nearly everything. If I could summarize their conversation in 2 words, it would be “fear” and “evangelism.” First, it’s clear that they fear intelligent design. They equated intelligent design proponents with “con-men” who are “slimy,” “well-funded,” and promote “ignorance.” (Incidentally, each of these claims is incorrect.) They also appeared to greatly fear religion, as both Dawkins and Krauss held that teaching young children about religion in Sunday School is equivalent to “child abuse.” Dawkins even said that his goal is “to kill religion.” (Dawkins later tried to qualify this argument, Read More ›

In the past we’ve often seen Darwinists debating the controversy over intelligent design that they say doesn’t exist. The latest volley in the controversy that doesn’t exist comes from U. Kutschera, a biologist at the University of Kassel in Germany. Kutschera is a vocal critic of ID who wrote in the first issue of the new NCSE-acclaimed journal Evolution: Education and Outreach that people reject evolution because of “religious indoctrination.” Now Kutschera writes in Annals of Botany, “This spontaneous generation of complex design ‘without an intelligent designer’ evolved independently in the protective ‘skin’ of plants, animals and many other organisms.” The problem is that Kutschera’s study is not even about biological origins, and he mistakes his own amazement at the Read More ›

Intelligent design does not necessarily mean optimal design. Yet the realm of human technology is a realm of intelligently designed objects, many of which strive to optimize energetic efficiency. It is therefore intriguing that designers of human technology would find solutions to technological needs from the biosphere–a realm which neo-Darwinian scientists tell us is the result of blind, random processes. I recently discussed how biologists are turning to natural flagellar biochemical pathways to help improve biomedical technology. A new article in Business Week confirms that this is a common trend in industry, observing that engineers are increasingly turning to nature for guidance and inspiration in producing human technology: Spot the common theme: a bullet train with a distinctly bird-like nose; Read More ›

Somewhere a dialogue is presently taking place concerning intelligent design, and it may be going something like this: ID Proponent: DNA. Genetic code. Language. Commands. Information. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Cambrian Explosion. Pattern of Explosions. Cosmic Fine-Tuning. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Complexity of life. Irreducible complexity. Specified Complexity. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Human intelligence. Creative Genius. Love. Music. Art. Leonardo da Vinci. Beethoven. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Molecular Machines. Molecular motors. Cellular factories. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Science. Evidence. Data. Observations. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Atheism: Richard Dawkins. Daniel Dennett. Sam Harris. Eugenie Scott. Barbara Forrest. Stephen Jay Gould. E.O. Wilson. Michael Ruse. P.Z. Myers. Many others. Wedge? Irrelevant. Darwinist: Read More ›

I recently picked up Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science by Oxford chemist Peter Atkins. It’s a 2003 book, and on the plus side, it offers enjoyable and concise explanations of many important scientific theories, including some lucid diagrams explaining Einstein’s ideas about relativity. In his chapter on evolution, Atkins boldly states, “The effective prediction is that the details of molecular evolution must be consistent with those of macroscopic evolution.” (pg. 16) I’m willing to accept that “prediction.” However, Atkins unfortunately goes on to dramatically overstate the evidence for molecular evolution by asserting, “That is found to be the case: there is not a single instance of the molecular traces of change being inconsistent with our observations of Read More ›

We are often told by Darwinists that design cannot be detected in biology. But an article entitled “Wired Science Reveals Secret Codes in Craig Venter’s Artificial Genome” reports that “Wired Science has ferreted out the secret amino acid messages contained in ‘watermarks’ that were embedded in the world’s first manmade bacterial genome, announced last week by the J. Craig Venter Institute.” In biochemical jargon, each amino acid is ascribed a letter. Thus, one can encode sequences of amino acids that effectively spell out words. (The IDEA logo has done this since 1999 by using a chain of 4 amino acids that spell out “I.D.E.A.”) These are the words that Wired‘s sleuths discovered in the “manmade” parts of the bacterial genome Read More ›