Science Reporting

Last night, the Seattle Times Talk of the Times at Town Hall Seattle featured a debate over evolution and intelligent design between CSC Director Stephen Meyer and US paleontologist Peter Ward. The event was sold out with 800+ in attendance for what turned out to be a really good debate.

David Postman of the Seattle Times did a fine job as the moderator of the debate. If you saw my post yesterday about Postman’s front page article in yesterday’s Times you know that I had some misgivings about his being the moderator. However, I have to congratulate him for his objectivity and balance, and his overall good job in keeping the debate both substantive and enlightening.

Tonight, Seattle Times reporter David Postman will moderate a debate over intelligent design and evolution between CSC Director Stephen Meyer and UW Paleontologist Peter Ward. If Postman’s article in the Times today is any guide, Meyer has his work cut out for him trying to correct and educate the moderator, as well as having to refute the typical mischaracterizations and misplaced attacks he’ll likely hear from Ward.

The fact is that Postman came in to our offices and spent a fair amount of time interviewing Bruce Chapman, and separately going over the science of intelligent design (which is virtually ignored in Postman’s piece — funny for a discussion about a science issue) with Meyer.
Yet his piece is full of errors of fact.

“Intelligent design argues that life is so biologically complex, there must be some kind of supernatural designer involved. The concept, however, leaves the designer unnamed.”

This one sentence is doubly wrong. No, ID is not an argument from ignorance. And, no, ID doesn’t claim that the intelligent cause has to be supernatural. (Postman apparently so strongly believes this fallacy that he repeats it later in the story, a second time: “gaps that can only be explained by the presence of a supernatural designer.”)

When the controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design is debated on university campuses, the deck is usually stacked heavily against proponents of intelligent design. North Carolina State University has shown, however, that the topic can be debated with the fairness and civility that ought to characterize academic discussions. On Thursday, April 20, before a crowd of some 200 people, a biologist and philosopher defended intelligent design, and a biologist and philosopher defended Darwinism. That debate continued Thursday night at N.C. State University before a crowd of almost 200 people. Sponsored by the NCSU and Wake chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, the debate featured four speakers — one scientist and one philosopher from both sides of the issue. The Read More ›

Legal commentary mentioning the Kitzmiller decision is now starting to appear in legal journals. In the Spring, 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, one of the most widely circulated law journals, the lead article addresses intelligent design, Kitzmiller, and the establishment clause.

Cristi L. Bowman’s article, “Seeing Government Purpose Through the Objective Observer’s Eyes: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Debates,” is available here.

Most of the article is about establishment clause jurisprudence, and an argument against part of McCreary County v. ACLU. Bowman argues that the government purpose prong of the Lemon test should return to focusing on “actual intent,” rather than trying to evaluate government purpose with an “objective observer.” Kitzmiller and the evolution-intelligent design controversy serve as the article’s setting for how the objective observer standard will play out in future establishment clause cases.

Darwinists claim that their theory is the foundation of all science. Indeed, we are often told that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of it.

In a news article last November, a Stanford biologist claimed he had been guided in his research by Darwinian evolution:

“Researchers at the School of Medicine uncovered obestatin [an appetite-suppressing hormone] by using the principles of evolution to pick clues from data held in the Human Genome Project, as well as the genome sequencing projects for many other organisms, among them yeast, fruit flies and mice. ‘Darwin led us to this new hormone,’ said senior author Aaron Hsueh, an endocrinologist and professor of obstetrics and gynecology.”

The Stanford press release continued:

The contention that biochemist Michael Behe’s intelligent design argument of “irreducible complexity” (IC) is not science was undercut in a recent issue of Science magazine which contains a paper purporting to falsify the theory. If it’s not science, why bother to try to falsify it? Further, the hapless case made against Behe’s theory — as Dr. Behe explains in his detailed response — shows that irreducible complexity is also good science. Unintentionally, this paper in Science puts the lie to the whole line used in the Dover trial against Behe and his theory of irreducible complexity. It will be interesting to see whether Science lets Behe reply to the Thornton paper in its pages.If you can’t find it in Science, Read More ›

Stephen Heller has an article at the Design Forum looking at semantics and asking who it is that owns the term intelligent design. It’s an issue that has a lot of relevance for Heller’s audience since they are all graphic designers. Design Forum is a part of the website of the AIGA, — American Institute of Graphic Arts. In Heller’s world “intelligent design” has a much different meaning than in my world. His concern seems to be that the phrase has different meaning for some people than it does for him and his colleagues.

When I hear a graphic designer comment on intelligent design I know that most likely he’s talking about a graphic image of some sort. Or, these days, making a bad play on words. Of course, this is why we have context.

Alan Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is describing the proposed Academic Freedom Act in Oklahoma as “code language … to promote a narrow religious agenda.” Lawrence Selden responds: So I raise this question: Is “encourag[ing] critical thinking by exposing students to all sides of the scientific debate about evolution” really just “code language” for “promot[ing] a narrow religious agenda”? It seems to me that looking at the alleged “code language” that is being “injected” into Oklahoma law is the best way to decide. Selden’s full response is here.