Robert Crowther

CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Michael Behe has an opinon piece in today’s New York Times briefly laying out key aspects of the theory intelligent design. To date the MSM has been sadlly deficient in reporting what intelligent design theory is, and what it is not. This piece marks one of the first times that a major news outlet has let design advocates explain the theory in their own words. Hopefully other media will follow suit and instead of just regurgitating definitions from elsewhere they will accurately describe the theory itself. Let’s roll the highlight reel: “the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their Read More ›

Unjust criticisms of Dr. Richard Sternberg have been flying around the internet since the story of his harassment by Darwinists became public when David Klinghoffer wrote about it in The Wall Street Journal little more than a week ago. Sternberg you will remember is the former biology journal editor under attack for publishing a pro-ID paper by CSC Director Steve Meyer. CSC Senior Fellow and Gonzaga law professor David DeWolf has written a response correcting the campaign of misinformation now being waged against Sternberg.

In “Shooting the Messenger Indeed,” and the resulting followup, Balta argues that the treatment of Rick Sternberg as described by David Klinghoffer in the WSJ article is much ado about nothing. If anything, Balta argues, it is Sternberg who violated the canons of science rather than those who attacked him. Balta’s points can be summarized in the form of questions:

The Intelligent Design Network’s John Calvert has provided us with this first-hand account of Tuesday’s meeting where the public could share their opinions with the Kansas SBOE on proposed revisions to the state’s science standards.

Report on a public debate about evolution

Last night I went to the public meeting at Schlagel High in Kansas City, Kansas. It focused on the Kansas Science Standards and Proposals by the Harris group to increase their objectivity in the area of origins.

I thought there would be a crowd, but not 400. The place was packed. Even if I wanted to speak, the line that had been open for speakers was closed well before my arrival. They cut off the list at 60 but allowed time for only 45 or 50.

Canadian science journalist Denyse O’Leary (author of By Design or By Chance) has a short blog about the Church of Darwin’s continued haranguing of besieged Smithsonian scientist Richard Sternberg. Pondering Sternberg’s blacklisting at the Smithsonian O’Leary wonders: “How many Americans who would never under any circumstances condone behaviour like that pay taxes to support it?” O’Leary also has been doing a periodic series of fine rebuttals of National Geographic’s recent homage to Darwin.

Saturday the Boston Globe broke the story of this infant century. Creationists, against all odds and the Supreme Court, are taking over the world.

Now, thanks to the nation’s paper we learn about the plight of the besieged and persecuted Darwinist science teacher. Our nation’s esteemed paper of record, The New York Times, gives us the lowdown on teachers forced to smuggle evolution into the classroom.

Early on Cornelia Dean writes:

Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes . . .

This is an implicit admission that the teaching of evolution doesn’t make the news when states such as Ohio, New Mexico and Minnesota adopt standards that teach all about the theory, including the scientific challenges to it, but only makes the news when the local amateur hour decides to downplay evolution or promote religion in science class. Why is the latter news, but the former is ignored or barely mentioned at best? Or, why doesn’t the teaching of evolution make the news when a parent is denied his civil rights by a Darwinist school board and then tries for some modicum of justice?

But wait! There’s more.

The Washington Post published a lead editorial yesterday that seems to steal a page right out of The New York Times playbook (Darwinian end-run around scientific evidence, on three!). The Post’s first paragraph is shockingly similar to the Times’ opening from just the day before: “With their slick web sites, pseudo-academic conferences and savvy public relations, the proponents of “intelligent design” — a “theory” that challenges the validity of Darwinian evolution — are far more sophisticated than the creationists of yore. Rather than attempt to prove that the world was created in six days, they operate simply by casting doubt on evolution, largely using the time-honored argument that intelligent life could not have come about by a random natural process Read More ›

Earlier this month, the PBS show Uncommon Knowledge taped a discussion about the controversy over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design. The guests were Darwinists Dr. Massimo Pigliucci of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and CSC Fellow Dr. Jonathan Wells. Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson moderated the discussion.

The 30-minute show will be aired by PBS sometime in the next few months, but in the meantime Dr. Pigliucci has posted his version of what happened on a skeptics’ web site.

We recommend that anyone interested in this controversy watch the actual show when it airs. Since Dr. Pigliucci has chosen to publicize his own version of the discussion beforehand, however, we have asked Dr. Wells to write down his own recollection of it. Here is Dr. Wells’s account.

The New York Times lead editorial Sunday, Jan 23, avoided addressing in any detail the scientific issues in the national debate over how to teach evolution and instead tried to equate the scientific theory of intelligent design with creationism, and proclaimed all critics of Darwinian evolution are Biblical creationists. It reads like a briefing paper from the ACLU, and probably was inspired by one.

Critics of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution become more wily with each passing year. Creationists who believe that God made the world and everything in it pretty much as described in the Bible were frustrated when their efforts to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools or inject the teaching of creationism were judged unconstitutional by the courts. But over the past decade or more a new generation of critics has emerged with a softer, more roundabout approach that they hope can pass constitutional muster.

It is often mistakenly asserted that design theory is merely a recasting of creation science that came about because creationism was tossed out of schools in the late eighties. Actually, the theory of intelligent design finds it starting points well before the famous 1987 supreme court case that banned creation science from public schools. For example, biologist Michael Denton published his famous book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis in 1986, and even before that Walter Bradley and others had published works challenging Darwinian evolution and presenting the foundations of intelligent design theory in the early eighties. And, then there is the case of Dean Kenyon, professor emeritus of biology at San Francisco state who in the sixties was one of the world’s leading chemical evolutionists. By the late seventies he was disavowing his own previous evolution textbooks and discussing intelligent design theories in his university courses.

Continuing its dogmatic toeing of the Darwinian line the Times says this about the textbook disclaimer sticker recently struck down in Cobb Co., Georgia:

CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells had a letter published in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Wells responds in brief detail to earlier letters asserting that there is no scientific evidence against Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The York Daily Record is reporting on the first ever reading of a statement about intelligent design to Dover School District ninth graders in biology classes. The story raises the issue of whether or not students are even learning about intelligent design theory, and seems to conclude that they are not.

According to YDR the statement read to students says i part:

“Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s views. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families.”

One has to wonder why the ACLU and others are so upset that someone read a statement saying that there are other viewpoints. Intelligent design is never explained or even defined in the statement. So, then one has to wonder why the school board is so insistent that this statement be read, and then that the issue be ignored for the next 19 days of instruction on Darwinian evolution.

YDR reports: