Foundations

In Monday’s New York Times (“Believing Scriptures but Playing by Science’s Rules”), Cornelia Dean joins Eugenie Scott of the Darwin lobby NCSE (National Center for Science Education) in raising the tantalizing thought that (as “some say”) maybe scientists who have earned legitimate doctorates in scientific fields, but are known to hold private views that question Darwinism, should be denied their professional degrees. Take that in: Perhaps doctoral candidates whose personal views deviate from an ideological party line should be punished professionally. Presumably, if they are in a later stage in their career, you can thwart their application for tenure; or later still, a promotion to full professor.

Now that Darwin Day is finally here, we have cause to reflect on the occasion with two articles out today. John West has a brief history of the anti-religious bias of The Gospel According to Darwin in NRO, where he notes that

Darwin Day celebrations are fascinating because they expose a side of the controversy over evolution in America that is rarely covered by the mainstream media. Although journalists routinely write about the presumed religious motives of anyone critical of unguided evolution, they almost never discuss the anti-religious mindset that motivates many of evolution’s staunchest defenders.

The day after “Darwin Day,” the Kansas State Board of Education plans to vote on whether to delete from its science curriculum standards the study of the abuses of science as well as the successes. This incredible proposal  to sanitize the real history of science shows the lengths to which some will go to promote their dogmatic views. We have just sent a letter to the Board protesting the proposed change. The proposal is part of a package of revisions to the science standards that will also delete any discussion of scientific data critical of Darwinian evolution. Below is the text of the press release describing what is going on: TOPEKA—A national group is urging the Kansas State Board of Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: For a full and comprehensive review and response to Edward Humes’ book, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, and the Battle for America’s Soul, please see A Partisan Affair: A Response to Edward Humes’ Inaccurate History of Kitzmiller v. Dover and Intelligent Design, “Monkey Girl.] In Part I, I discussed how in the spring of 2006, I was contacted by a reporter named Edwards Humes who was writing a book on the Dover trial. He claimed to be supremely neutral, fair, and non-partisan. (Humes now refuses to grant me permission to directly quote his emails where he made these claims of neutrality.) But I had reasons to be suspicious. Reporters who go out of their way to claim to be Read More ›

The documentary Flock of Dodos depicts biologist Jonathan Wells as a fraud for claiming in his book Icons of Evolution (2000) that Haeckel’s bogus embryo drawings were used by modern textbooks to misrepresent the evidence for Darwinian evolution. But at a screening last Wednesday night at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Olson essentially admitted that it was his film that was wrong, not Wells. In answer to an audience question about whether he still maintained that “there are no Haeckel’s embryos in modern textbooks,” Olson replied:

EDITORS NOTE: This is an updated and expanded version of a previous post.

Darwinist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson showed “Flock of Dodos” in Seattle on Wednesday, February 7. Although the film sacrifices truth in order to tell a good story, it fails even at that. As entertainment, it’s a flop.

But I’m less interested in the film’s cinematic shortcomings than in the way it misrepresents the truth — and in the way Olson is dealing with criticisms of those misrepresentations.

As reported earlier this week (see here and here), filmmaker Randy Olson presented fiction as fact in his anti-ID documentary Flock of Dodos. But rather than apologize for his film’s repeated bloopers and misrepresentations, Olson is now digging himself a deeper hole in recent comments posted to a Darwinist blog.

It was gratifying to read the AP account of Cardinal Schoenborn’s lecture in New York last night and to note the way that His Eminence once again set the media and others straight on the position of the Catholic Church. It won’t make any difference to the Darwinists, of course, because, depending on their audience, they hold either that the Church has accepted Darwinism or that the Catholic Church is just an enemy of reason. Don’t confuse Darwinists with evidence on anything.