Science Reporting

If you are in Rome this spring you can find Vatican “holy cards” of Pope Benedict XVI for sale at souvenir stands around St. Peter’s and throughout the city. The selected quotation on the card is from the Pope’s first homily (largely ignored by the Western media, needless to say), wherein the Holy Father stated, among other things, that “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.” Hundreds of thousands of these little cards in myriad languages have been distributed already. They are very popular. If Europe recovers from materialism the work of Pope Benedict XVI will have been a major medium of change. No doubt the Pope will be denounced as a heretic by the Darwin faithful, Read More ›

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has thrown out the trial court decision ruling that evolution disclaimers on science textbooks were unconstitutional.

For more information visit Discovery Institute’s Cobb County Trial resource page here.

In a unanimous decision the federal three-judge panel –including both Democratic and Republican appointees– stopped short of deciding the constitutionality of the stickers, and instead sent the case back to the trial court judge with instructions to hold more evidentiary hearings on the issue.

“This decision is a victory as it throws out the problematic ruling from the trial court,” said Casey Luskin, an attorney with Discovery Institute. “Essentially, the appellate judges found that some of the findings of the lower court were not substantiated by the evidence in the record, so now new evidentiary hearings must be held, which could completely change the trial court’s original ruling against the school district.”

According to a report from the Montreal (CA) Gazette some parents in the Quebec town of Salluit don’t want their children learning about evolution. Alexandre April, who teaches French and physical science to students in Grades 7 and 8, said he was told repeatedly by the principal to stop teaching evolution, for fear of hurting their students’ religious beliefs. I suspect that the parents are more concerned that their students are being taught evolution dogmatically, without any exposure to the science that challenges it. The way to avoid these kind of problems of course is to teach the scientific evidence for evolution, as well as the scientific evidence against it. Were they to teach evolution critically, students would be more Read More ›

Below are the notes for my comments at the Traipsing into Evolution book party held at Discovery Institute yesterday. There the four authors discussed Judge Jones’ lengthy opinion in the Dover intelligent design trial, and touched on some of the highlights from the book, which was our response to his opinion.

Last year a few incautious university administrators (here’s one, here’s another) tried to start an academic shutdown of discussion of intelligent design on college campuses, and especially in college courses. Fortunately, such an obviously unAmerican act as censoring an idea, didn’t really catch fire except with the most strident Darwinistas (and here).

Even as Antony Flew receives the Phillip E Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, the Sacramento Bee reports about Johnson still on the speaking circuit. The short article quotes some of Johnson’s former colleagues at Boalt Hall, and is very clear on where Johnson stands on education policy in regards to teaching ID: Johnson said his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas. In fact, he said he opposed the efforts by the “well-intentioned but foolish” school board in Dover, Pa., to require teachers to present intelligent design as a viable scientific theory.Instead, he hoped to ignite a debate in universities and the higher echelon of scientific thinkers. This article comes just after Read More ›

British philosopher Antony Flew, “once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world,” is scheduled to accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth from Biola University today:

Seth Cooper and Joe Manzari’s article, “ACLU Demands and Dover Designs,” raised fresh questions about the potential for a dismissal of the Kitzmiller case based upon mootness, potentially allowing the Dover Area School Board to avoid a large attorneys’ fees judgment against them by rescinding their intelligent design (ID) policy before Judge Jones issued his decision.

Opponents of intelligent design responded harshly to the AEI article (and my own reporting) by questioning the legal reasoning about mootness. One critic stated that the AEI article, and my commentary, “appear to be utterly ignorant of the voluntary cessation doctrine” and “there was virtually no chance that the case would be mooted.” Yet several Supreme Court cases dealing with mootness and a careful review of the law demonstrate that there was strong case for dismissal if the anti-ID Board had repealed the ID policy prior to the ruling. The argument is hypothetical (one might even say, “moot”!) because the Board ultimately rejected all arguments to repeal the policy, choosing instead to pin its hopes that Judge Jones would rule in favor of a policy they themselves rejected. But even if the odds were small that Judge Jones would have dismissed the case, or that an appellate court would have vacated the judgment on the ground of mootness, the puzzle remains. If there was nothing to be lost by rescinding the policy, would not even a slight chance of success have led a prudent school board to take advantage of the opportunity? Their choice resulted in an absolute guarantee that if the ID policy were struck down, then the Dover Area School District would be obliged to pay $1 million dollars in attorneys’ fees.

This story from England is a month old, but took a while getting over the Pond to my in-box . Dennett and Dawkins say in public what Eugenie Scott says in private. Ruse may actually be sincere (though sincerely wrong), and not a ruse deviser at all. He was morally compromised some time ago when he took to quaffing beer with known “creationists in disguise” (as the ACLU’s favorite judge would call them). Ever since then Ruse has been incapable of sober materialist judgement. Recently in his Seattle debate with Steve Meyer, Peter Ward, too, criticized Dawkins, and with a bit of a snarl, I thought–all happily captured and preserved on tape. Dennett should rise again to the defense of Read More ›

According to a recent news article, in Mississippi, a “New Law Allows for Creationism in the Classroom“. While this sounds like a believable headline, let’s find out if the facts bear it out. According to the article, this is what the law actually says: “No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life.” (“New Law Allows for Creationism in the Classroom“) Hmmm… All I see is a law that permits students to ask any question they want and allows teacher to answer that question. There’s nothing about creationism. There’s not even anything about intelligent design. For all we know, if Read More ›