Jonathan Witt

As a representative of Discovery Institute, I sent the following letter to The Seattle Times last week. It didn’t appear there, so we’re publishing it here.
Dear editor,

Much of the mainstream media’s coverage of the controversy surrounding Kansas’s science standards has repeatedly talked about a “conservative” or “far right” position on the one hand and a “moderate” position on the other. Are those labels accurate? The so-called “conservative” or “far right” position calls for students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. An overwhelming majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, support this approach.

In contrast, the so-called “moderate” position insists that students learn only the strengths of modern evolutionary theory–science education as propaganda.

The Scripps Howard News Service is carrying this arresting story by Deroy Murdock:

Most ecologists want to make life easy for butterflies and waterfalls. Who can argue with that? Some environmental extremists, however, think what Earth really needs is fewer people. In some cases, billions fewer.

“We’re no better than bacteria!” University of Texas biologist Eric Pianka recently announced. “Things are gonna get better after the collapse because we won’t be able to decimate the Earth so much,” he added. “And, I actually think the world will be much better when there’s only 10 or 20 percent of us left.”

Pianka dreamed that disease “will control the scourge of humanity.” He celebrated the potential of Ebola Reston, an airborne strain of the killer virus, to make Earth nearly human-free. “We’ve got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
Just five hours after Pianka’s March 3 speech to the Texas Academy of Science, which Forrest

Mims III covered March 31 in The Citizen Scientist, the Academy named Pianka its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. Several hundred scientists gave Pianka a standing ovation, Mims reported.

Pianka is not alone.

Dear editor,

In “The Collapse of Reason,” Cathy Young agrees with leading liberal intellectual Todd Gitlin who believes “the academic left is making itself irrelevant by embracing ideological extremism and trying to purge its ranks of those who are not politically correct.” It’s a shame, then, that Young herself characterizes those who see evidence for intelligent design as religiously motivated right wing nuts, and in her own collapse of reason, provides no evidence for her position.

I think it was George Patton who said, “If everybody’s thinking the same thing, then nobody’s thinking.” And I believe that’s the problem with this Darwinian thinking that puts all the eggs in one basket.

Oh, those ignorant people who criticize Darwinism … this guy’s probably a Christian fundamentalist, right? Determined to ignore science and establish a theocracy.

Darwinists ask us to trust them in their role as historical scientists. All the while many of them appear incapable of accurately interpreting even very recent historical events. I’m thinking of their understanding of recent Vatican statements about Darwinism and design. We’re frequently reassured by Darwinists and their trusting messengers in the mainstream media that the Catholic church is absolutely on board the Darwinian juggernaut, and that the new pope hasn’t bought into anything as gauche as Darwin doubting, much less anything as Medieval as thinking there is clear evidence of intelligent design in nature.

But then the pope hauls off and appoints an outspoken proponent of intelligent design as archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Washington DC, one of the “red hat” dioceses of the US.

The action merely confirms what the Vatican has been stating explicitly for years, feverish media spin to the contrary notwithstanding. In this month’s Touchstone, Martin Hilbert (who holds a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science) sorts out Catholic views on Darwinian evolution:

Below are the notes for my comments at the Traipsing into Evolution book party held at Discovery Institute yesterday. There the four authors discussed Judge Jones’ lengthy opinion in the Dover intelligent design trial, and touched on some of the highlights from the book, which was our response to his opinion.