Jonathan Witt

My letter responding to George Will’s “A Debate That Does Not End” appears in the July 18 print edition of Newsweek. George Will says the theory of intelligent design isn’t falsifiable—isn’t “a testable hypothesis.” Actually, particular design arguments are falsifiable. Design theorist Michael Behe, for instance, argues that we can detect design in the bacterial flagellum because the tiny motor needs all of its parts to function at all. That’s a problem for Darwinian evolution, which builds novel form one tiny functional mutation at a time. How to falsify Behe’s argument? Provide a detailed evolutionary pathway from simple ancestor to present motor. The flagellum might still be designed, but Behe’s argument that such design is detectable would have been falsified. Read More ›

Discovery Institute advocates teaching students the controversy over Neo-Darwinism. The rebuttal is simplicity itself: “Medievalists! Naughty Luddites! Are you going teach the strengths and weaknesses of gravity? Heliocentrism? Evolution is … A … FACT!”

Public high school biology teacher and Seattle area resident Doug Cowan has a fine piece in today’s Christian Science Monitor discussing how he encourages his students to think critically by exposing them to both the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. He begins: I am a public high school biology teacher, and I do an unusual thing. I teach my students more than they have to know about evolution. I push them to behave like competent jurors – not just to swallow what some authority figure tells them to believe – not even me – but rather to critically analyze, with an open mind, the evidence set before them. The full essay is here. And there’s more on how Read More ›

Leading Darwin defender Richard Dawkins had a piece in The Times of London recently, reassuring readers, “The eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called ‘The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment’ in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom.”

Only someone who does not know, or does not care to know, the myriad problems with eye evolution could make such a claim with a straight face. Leading Darwin doubter David Berlinski shows just how feeble the Darwinists’ account of eye evolution is in this excerpt from Commentary. And here Berlinski’s critics criticize his critique and he responds.

Dawkins’ claim is also rebutted in this cogent Times letter from Andy McIntosh, Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory, University of Leeds:

A new poll of medical doctors suggests that a significant minority (34%) support intelligent design over evolution. This alone is enough to show that there is a lively debate over the adequacy of Neo-Darwinism to explain intricate structures like the human body.

However, if one looks past the press release at the details of the poll itself, one finds that actually a majority of doctors favor intelligent design over Neo-Darwinism.

World has a good news story on the Kansas science hearings, one that goes well beyond the MSM’s rusty boilerplate about scientists clashing with Bible thumpers:

In Kansas, Darwinists won back control of the State Board of Education in 2000 and restored the older standards. But conservatives have now retaken the board, and they are expected to vote this summer to adopt the revisions debated in Topeka.

The Darwinist response to such a challenge is no secret. “My strategy at this point is the same as it was in 1999,” wrote Liz Craig of Kansas Citizens For Science on the group’s discussion board in February. “Notify the national and local media about what’s going on and portray them in the harshest light possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc. . . . we can sure make them look like asses as they do what they do.”

Then there are these facts, widely misreported by several major newspapers and magazines:

Biologist and Icons of Evolution author Jonathan Wells takes The New York Times and physicist Lawrence Krauss to task here and here for persistent misreporting of the science curricula battles in the state of Kansas.

Science writer Denyse O’Leary is bringing her incisive humor to the blogosphere. Post-Darwinist is a must read. An excerpt from her discussion of the Nightline debate between Michael Ruse and William Dembski epitomizes her style:

Here’s the transcript of the CNN debate that included Discovery Institute senior fellow Jonathan Wells, prominent evolutionist Michael Ruse, and the ICR’s John Morris. Use the search word “Tucker” to scroll down to the evolution segment.