Robert Crowther

“If conservatives want to address root causes rather than just symptoms they need to join the debate over Darwinism, not scorn it or ignore it,” said CSC’s John West at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) debate earlier this week about whether Darwinism can be aligned with conservatism. He’s exactly right, and conservatives are starting to agree–at least that the discussion needs to take place. Case and point, the AEI event itself. The New York Times took the event seriously enough to send Patricia Cohen to cover the event and pen this report on it, which appears on the front page of today’s paper.

The Florida state legislature has passed legislation that would allow school districts that excell to have unprecedented control over their own schools, textbooks and curriculum.

It is interesting that the vast majority of those who criticized the recent Darwin vs. Design conferences in Knoxville and Dallas as unscientific didn’t even bother to attend the conferences. If they had, they would have seen very detailed and technical (at times almost too technical) science presentations from Jay Richards, Steve Meyer and Michael Behe. Here is a write up from Dr. Mark Krejchi who attended the Dallas conference and found it to be very much focused on the science of intelligent design. And, Dr. Krejchi knows a thing or two about science having a PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering followed by a couple of postdoc stints at Caltech (Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division) and Stanford University (Chemistry Read More ›

The Darwin vs Design conference last weekend at SMU in Dallas stirred up quite a debate in the Dallas media, and especially on the SMU campus. A number of articles have appeared in the SMU Daily Campus attacking Discovery Institute and ID, and today Anika Smith and Sarah Levy, the student who helped to organize the conference, have a very good response.

Fifteen years ago debating intelligent design at SMU was done with “no intimidation” and “no censorship.” So, a decade and a half ago, intelligent design was discussed on campus allegedly without threat of censorship. How many times has that happened since then? Not so many. The truth of this may be hard for some at SMU to grasp because, frankly, truth is something a bit more elusive, according to SMU professor Ronald Wetherington in a piece published in the SMU Daily Campus. Truth, according to Wetherington, “grows and changes.” Perhaps it is subjective to the consensus of the era? Regardless of what professor Wetherington thinks about science, truth, or intelligent design, at the end of the day there is still Read More ›

From the very beginning, the Darwin vs Design conferences organized by Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture were always envisioned as educational endeavors. Many people don’t understand what intellligent design is, and they don’t understand what it is that scientists and scholars at Discovery Institute are arguing for in the ongoing debate over Darwinian evolution and ID. These conferences are a chance for us to present some of the work and research we’ve done on these subjects. When some of the science faculty at SMU demanded that the conference planned for their campus be cancelled we decided to issue an invitation to them to come and air their objections to intelligent design in public, and to ask their most challenging Read More ›

We often hear Darwinists claim that there are no peer-reviewed science articles that support intelligent design, which clearly is not true. Of course, they also used to say no scientists doubted Darwinian evolution. Back when the PBS mini-series “Evolution” was produced the NCSE’s Eugenie Scott proclaimed that “virtually every reputable scientist in the world argues that evolution is good science.” So, we produced a list of 100 scientists who doubted Darwinian evolution. That was 2001, and today there are well over 700 who have courageously stepped forward and expressed their professional skepticism about Darwin’s theory. Saying you doubt Darwin is dangerous. Such doubts do not go unpunished, just ask Richard Sternberg. Conducting research on intelligent design and writing about it Read More ›

Late yesterday we received notice that the Anthropology department at SMU will not take us up on our invitation for a public dialogue about intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.

Robert Kemper, chair of the Anthropology department writes:

Thank you for your invitation to participate in the Friday night session of your conference. We appreciate your recognition of the value of dialogue on issues that have such opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, previously scheduled events and prior commitments prevent our department from taking advantage of this opportunity. We nevertheless remain committed to public understanding of these issues, and to providing the public with information to make intelligent choices.

We’ve yet to hear from the other science departments at SMU that we invited.

It’s interesting that these professors are willing to air their complaints and objections in public forums where there is no way for them to be “heatedly debated and discussed.”

A quick update for those who are planning to get tickets for the upcoming Dallas vs. Design conference, April 13-14 at SMU. The easiest way to get tickets is online through the conference website. If you are in Dallas and would like to purchase tickets in person, you can do so at Logos Bookstore, 6620 Snider Plaza, near the SMU campus. Advance ticket sales will close both in person and online at 5pm CST on Thursday, April 12. If you don’t have tickets by then you will have to take your chances at the door, where tickets will be on sale at the time of the event if there are still seats available. Here’s a nifty radio commercial you can Read More ›

CSC senior fellow and Acton Institute Research Fellow Jay Richards was interviewed by The Christian Post about the current controversy over the Darwin vs. Design conference coming up at SMU next month. As if often the case, the question of how evolution should be taught is more pressing for reporters than the scientific evidence at the foundation of either Darwinism or intelligent design. So, how does Richard’s weigh in on the what should be taught question?