Robert Crowther

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. As you can imagine, Darwinists have a full year of celebrations planned, and February 12th, Darwin’s birthday, is likely to be the high water mark for most of those celebrations. Every year Darwin Day celebrations get more and more elaborate and outrageous. Celebrants decorate evolution trees, sign Darwin carols and odes to natural selection, and eat from the tree of life.Naturally, we don’t want you to miss out on the fun. On Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by Read More ›

CSC Fellow Forrest Mims has been honored by Discover Magazine, which has placed him on their list of “50 best brains in science.” Not bad company he’s keeping, with Steven Hawking, Bill Gates and others. Post-Darwinist has a nice write up congratulating Mims on the honor and recounting some of what he’s gone through to get this far as a scientist: Congratulations to Forrest Mims, a voice for real science in the midst of a mass of taxpayer-funded propaganda for unbelievable beliefs that happen to be held by scientists. Mims is an instrument designer, science writer and independent science consultant. He has made regular observations of the ozone layer, solar ultraviolet radiation, photosynthetic radiation, column water vapor and aerosol optical Read More ›

With the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth looming, lecture halls are booked up with Darwinist celebrations and attacks on intelligent design. A couple of the usual suspects on the Darwin birthday circuit are Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott.
Recently, I saw that they would both be speaking at the University of Central Florida, at the behest of the university’s biology department. The topic? For Coyne it was intelligent design, and for Scott it was academic freedom (seriously). So, I thought I’d inquire as to whether or not UCF would be balancing these anti-ID lectures with views from the other side. Here’s the response I got:

Three of six experts selected by the Texas State Board of Education to review a proposed update of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science have recommended that the TEKS retain controversial language calling on students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories in order to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills.

“Some activist groups are pressuring the State Board to cut that language from the TEKS in order to artificially shield Darwin’s theory from the normal process of scientific inquiry,” said Casey Luskin, an education policy analyst at Discovery Institute. “However, as these three experts point out, examining the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories is a core part of the scientific process, and abandoning such critical analysis merely to satisfy ideological demands of Darwinists harms students by giving them a false view of scientific inquiry.”

Texas is currently updating its academic standards, known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), in the area of science. In September 2008, writing committees working for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) proposed revised TEKS that largely eliminated previous language calling on students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. In the proposed revision, the “strengths and weaknesses” language was retained in a few areas (like high school chemistry), but it was scrapped in the vast majority of subject areas, most notably in high school biology. The clear goal in proposing the removal of the “strengths and weaknesses” language from the TEKS was to shield biological evolution from critical scrutiny by students or teachers. In October, members Read More ›

What is the science standards issue currently before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE)?During 2008-09, the Texas SBOE is reviewing the state’s science standards, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science, which were originally adopted in 1998. The controversial issue before the SBOE is whether the TEKS will retain existing language calling for students to learn about both the scientific “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. Some have proposed removing that language from the TEKS entirely, while others have suggested that good science education that encourages critical thinking should apply to all aspects of the curriculum, especially to the teaching of controversial scientific theories like neo-Darwinian evolution. In September 2008, writing committees working for the Texas Education Read More ›

[Note: For a comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] These ten lucky folks have won themselves a free copy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein and now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you weren’t lucky this time, you can still purchase a copy of the DVD for just $17.99. And it makes for a great Christmas gift, so pick up a few and spread the word to your friends and family. The winners are: Gary Jordan, WashingtonGary Vinson, TexasRandy Hansen, IowaD’Arcy McGreer, VirginiaKen Sanderson, AustraliaBRIAN WIEMKEN, CaliforniaChip Crush, KentuckyLa-Aja Wiggins, CaliforniaMark Giacoletti, PennsylvaniaGina Allen, Missouri Winners will be contacted by e-mail. DVDs will be mailed out and Read More ›

Vancouver Sun columnist Peter McKnight has suddenly launched a crusade against intelligent design in a series of columns looking at science and religion.

In the second part we learn that McKnight is sadly uninformed about intelligent design. He conflates it with creationism, and confines it pretty much to biology. Indeed, the theory goes beyond just biology and encompasses, physics, chemistry and cosmology as well. Intelligent design is not creationism, nor was it developed to get around court rulings. A little history is in order here.

Science standards review processes always seem to send Darwinists into a misinformation flurry. The current review of Texas’ standards is no exception. Josh Rosenau has a post up yesterday attacking Casey Luskin that has a number of errors. Josh is in elite company, as these are the very same errors that spread like the flu through the MSM last spring. At that time we reported how the New York Times and Washington Post, among others, were misreporting the facts about “strengths and weaknesses” language in the Texas science standards.

Now Josh writes:

At issue is a Disco.-inspired standard in the older TEKS which requires teachers to have students “analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information” (my emphasis).

I corrected this back in June: