Culture

National Geographic recently posted “Francis Collins: The Scientist as Believer,” an interview by John Horgan. The interview is nearly all about religion, but I have two comments touching on evolution.

Last fall I posted a response to Chris Mooney’s chapter in The Republican War on Science where I rebutted much of what he said in his book against intelligent design (which can be read here). Recently, Mooney wrote an article in the LA Times, co-authored with Alan Sokal, where he stepped up the rhetoric against Darwin-skeptics, calling them “the worst science abusers.” Mooney always equates Darwin-skeptics with “religious fundamentalists” and even goes so far as to invoke the “denier of evolution” name-calling approach: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not spare deniers of evolution, and global climate change will not spare any of us. As physicist Richard Feynman wrote in connection with the space shuttle Challenger disaster, “nature cannot be fooled.” Apart from Read More ›

Jack Cashill has an insightful column on the progressive mindset, especially as exemplified by Darwin’s modern defenders. Where others see light, they see a threat to their way of life. And given their mastery of the media and academia, they do a great job of screening out the uncomfortable. Read the column here.

The New Yorker recently published a story by Jonathan Rosen: “Missing Link: Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin’s neglected double.” Picking up on a thought of G.K. Chesterton, Rosen notes that while he did “as much as anyone to overturn traditional religious assumptions, Wallace proceeded to horrify his fellow-evolutionists by concluding that natural selection could not in itself explain the uniqueness of man.” There must be intelligent guidance, claimed Wallace.

And this raises an interesting question: Would Judge Jones’ Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling have banned the views of the co-founder of evolution from Pennsylvania classrooms? A question already addressed in Traipsing Into Evolution:

There have been times when our critics have seemed a little . . . well . . . silly. Most often, this happens when someone decides they don’t have to actually understand anything about the intelligent design position before they attack it. Krauze over at Telic Thoughts illuminates with a great example of a ridiculous straw-man argument. He writes:

One of the reasons I don’t take grandiose statements about how “many scientists reject intelligent design” seriously is because the average scientist has no clue as to what intelligent design is about, having only read some anti-ID editorials in the journals they subscribe to.

After the Kansas school board threw out objective science curriculum standards in favor of dogmatic Darwin-only teaching rules, Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts weighed in on the board’s redefining what science is. This was a big issue in 2005 that we reported extensively (see here and here). The board has adopted a definition of science out of step with most states’ in the nation.

[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.] Last year I was contacted by Edward Humes, a reporter who wanted an interview for a book he was writing on the Dover trial. In his original emails (which he now refuses to grant me permission to quote), Humes claimed to be fair and non-partisan. I felt suspicious because reporters that take great lengths to tell me they are neutral usually write highly biased and partisan anti-ID stories. What did Humes write? As I discussed Read More ›

Friday saw a column by William Buckley at National Review regarding the announcement that US Senator John McCain is speaking at a luncheon in Seattle co-hosted by Discovery Institute next week. The luncheon is about McCain’s vision of the United States’ role in the world and the co-sponsors are the CityClub of Seattle and the Settle World Affairs Council. It is hardly an intelligent design related event. But, some critics of ours can’t help but get all in a lather about things like this. So much so that even William Buckley has heard from them. His response in National Review is concise, succinct and to the point. (You expected anything else?) Buckley goes right to the heart of the matter, Read More ›

There’s an old lawyers’ joke about the “cracked kettle” approach to legal argumentation. Jones sues Smith for borrowing her kettle and returning it with a crack in it. Smith’s lawyer then defends her with the following arguments (in order):

1. Smith didn’t borrow the kettle.
2. The kettle was cracked before Smith borrowed it.
3. When Smith returned the kettle, it wasn’t cracked.
4. There never was a kettle.

In my book Icons of Evolution I described a 2000 conference talk in which Kevin Padian (President of the National Center for Science Education) used argumentation very much like this to defend his claim that birds are modified descendants of dinosaurs.¹ Darwinists are now using a similar approach to defend Ernst Haeckel’s embryo drawings.

In honor of Darwin Day this week we issued our annual update to the Scientific Dissent from Darwin list. Apparently, it is dishonest to point out that 700 scientists are skeptical of Darwinian evolution. Never mind that we have never tried to claim that a majority of scientists are Darwin doubters, not even close. The whole point of the list was to refute the claim in PBS’ 2001 Evolution series that no scientists doubted Darwin. (Then it was ‘no credible scientists’; which became ‘well, not very many scientists’; and so on.) Still. Time magazine journalist Michael Lemonick got himself all in a huff over the list. So much so he even attacked the doctor we quoted in the release about the list. Lemonick attacks Dr. Michael Egnor — professor of Neurosurgery at State University of New York — for not knowing enough about biology, for not having a degree in the field, for only being a brain surgeon. That’s rich coming from a guy who writes for a weekly news tabloid. His credentials:

I’ve been covering science in major publications for more than two decades. Consider the fact that I may have actually learned a thing or two along the way.