Scientific Freedom

A helpful correspondent directed us to the following statement on the website of Southern Methodist University, the location of the upcoming Darwin v. Design conference this Friday and Saturday: Founded in 1911 by what is now The United Methodist Church, SMU opened in 1915 with support from Dallas leaders. The University is nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to freedom of inquiry. (emphasis added) SMU faculty who want the Darwin v. Design conference banned from their campus might benefit from re-reading—and heeding—this statement.

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 ›

Newsmedia are covering Discovery Institute’s invitation to SMU faculty to debate intelligent design. One Darwinist who urged against debating reportedly said: “ID and evolution are not two scientific theories to be weighed against one another, as if on a balance scale. One is a scientific theory, supported so massively and consistently by empirical evidence as to be virtually unassailable.” If that’s true, then the SMU faculty should have no trouble winning the debate, right? Since a recent Newsweek poll shows that at least half of Americans reject evolution, it would seem that Darwinists need to convince the public of the truth of their theory. Given that Darwinists (a) plainly have a need to convince people that evolution is true, and Read More ›

On March 19 I lectured at Boise State University (BSU) to about 50 mostly-friendly students and community members on “The Positive Case for Intelligent Design.” (The lecture was largely based upon a document I produced by the same title, available here.) BSU is the notorious home of their beloved undefeated-but-yet-#5-ranked Bronco football team, but my lecture was only sponsored by the IDEA Club at Boise State. The club’s leader reports that he’s recently received unfriendly e-mails from a hostile Darwinist. The club’s leader responded nicely, saying, “I hope that you would be willing to come [to Casey Luskin’s lecture],” and also defended himself saying “I am quite content for someone to disagree with my view, but I do not respect Read More ›

It isn’t just profs in SMU’s Ivory Tower that are afraid of students learning more about the failings of Darwinian evolution. In New Mexico recently an attempt to ensure academic freedom in line with the state’s educational standards has been opposed by local, dogmatic Darwin-only lobbyists. Joe Renick of ID Net New Mexico today has an opinion piece, Fear of Exposure, that shows the intolerance of the Darwinists in regard to any views but their own.

It’s been amusing–and revealing–to observe the recent debates between many in the Darwinist internet community and a professor of neurosurgery, Michael Egnor. A few simple questions have incurred a deluge of ad hominem attacks upon Egnor, mocking his name by calling him an “Egnoramus” who writes “EgnorRants” and using post titles like, “Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance.” In fact, Darwinist attacks upon Egnor are nothing new. Last summer a Darwinist wrote that “Michael Egnor is a Crappy Neurosurgeon Who Will Cut out Your Brain and Eat It,” and compared Egnor’s arguments to taking “a big ol’ steaming s*** on a piece of paper and want[ing] that taught as science.” More recently, Egnor pointed out the viciousness of Read More ›

Darwinists often tell us that scientific views which challenge Darwin should be banned from classrooms or scientific discussion because they are outside the “consensus” of the scientific community. Darwinists love to make this appeal to authority because it is a very effective form of peer pressure which appeals to our respect for science and the conformist tendencies in society. Yet they rarely define the meaning of “consensus,” and they also ignore the fact that true respect for science implies that we should never accept something merely because it’s the “consensus.” Simply put, that’s because the consensus can be wrong, and we should accept something only because of the evidence. As Stephen Jay Gould and other scientists warned the U.S. Supreme Read More ›

Dave Thomas has published an op-ed in the Albuquerque Tribune entitled “Intelligent design supporters find new, creative ways to get their message out.” Predictably, Thomas uses invectives and misrepresentations to oppose a legitimate bill which would simply give teachers “the right and freedom, when a theory of biological origins is taught, to objectively inform students of scientific information relevant to the strengths and weaknesses of that theory.” I predicted that Darwinists* would attack the bill by trying to claim that it brings creationism, intelligent design, or religion into the classroom. As I’ve noted before, Darwinists* have no legitimate reason to make such attacks because the bill would protect the teaching of science, and science only, in the science classroom, as Read More ›

A student at Boise State University recently published an opinion article in the campus newspaper, the Arbiter Online, defending intelligent design. In the article Aaron Vandenbos observed that there is a difference between how ID-proponents and evolutionists behave when in debate: “In my experience, IDists, knowing that they are the underdog, are careful to be objective and factual. On the other hand, I have noticed that evolutionists tend to spend most of their time questioning their opponents’ credibility, belittling their opponents’ intelligence, demolishing straw men and then doing victory laps.” He then explained that evolutionists have defined the terms of this debate so as to settle it before it has even begun. Mr. Vandenbos wrote: Now, I certainly do not Read More ›

On Wednesday, February 28, Bryan Fischer debated Kitzmiller plaintiffs’ attorney of the ACLU, Witold “Vic” Walczak, over teaching intelligent design in schools. The debate was sponsored mostly by the ACLU. Mr. Fischer reports that the pro-ACLU crowd cheered supportively when Fischer read a statement by Darwinist biologist P.Z. Myers advocating academic intolerance towards proponents of ID. Fischer reported: Of course Fischer read aloud P.Z. Myers’ quote with the intention of shocking the “pro-ACLU crowd” because Fischer assumed that they would value academic freedom, tolerance, and civil discourse. Apparently Fischer’s assumption was wrong.