Evolution

Last Sunday’s episode of Boston Legal (“From Whence We Came”) was ripped straight from the headlines in typical David Kelley style. Hotshot young attorney Lori (Monica Potter), with help from Denny Crane (played by William Shatner, and for which he won a Golden Globe the same Sunday night) and Shirley Schmidt (the newest addition to the show, played by Candace Bergen), defends a school superintendent being sued by two science teachers who were fired for refusing to teach creationism.

Kelley’s writing is always sharp and his dialogue is witty, but his take on the evolution issue merely regurgitates the old Inherit The Wind trope of religion vs. science. He never even bothers to really define evolution or intelligent design, which is used interchangeably with creationism.

A California school district has been sued in federal court for allegedly violating a parent’s civil rights during a controversy over how to teach evolution. For more than a year, Larry Caldwell tried to get the Roseville Joint Union High School District outside of Sacramento to consider changing how it taught the theory of evolution in its biology classes. Caldwell, who has three children, says he wanted the district to correct factual errors in its biology textbooks as well as to introduce students to some scientific criticisms of modern evolutionary theory. Caldwell did not propose that the district teach creationism or alternatives to evolution. The Roseville district ultimately rejected Caldwell’s recommendations. But in the process of trying to scuttle his Read More ›

A federal judge today ruled that the evolution stickers used in the Cobb Co., GA school district’s biology textbooks are unconstitutional. (See our press releases here and here.) In a somewhat bizarre ruling, the judge found that the stickers “fostering critical thinking” about evolution “is a clearly secular purpose.” And, the judge also found that the Cobb County school district had secular, not religious reasons for adopting a textbook sticker dealing with evolution. Yet, he somehow concludes that the “effect” of the sticker would be to advance religion. CSC associate director John West summed it up this way: “The judge rules, and repeatedly states, that there is a clear secular purpose to the sticker, and it has a legitimate secular Read More ›

Casey Luskin, the Co-President of Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA), has posted an article entitled, “A Holiday Truce: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out.” This important and carefully written article contains an interview with a Holocaust survivor and discusses the abuse of human atrocities in the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. As Luskin points out in his commentary, some of the more extreme hyper-Darwinists have resorted to equating skepticism of some of the more far-reaching claims of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory with denial of the Holocaust. The low-ball tactic of using genocide to score debating points was brought home to me late last month, when Washington State ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan responded to my presentation on the teaching of Read More ›

Photo credit: George Gilliland

Dave Dentel, copy editor of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania had an insightful, and pleasantly objective, op-ed over the holiday weekend. Dentel makes the point that the ACLU, aided by Darwin-only supporters within the ranks of mainstream scientists, is unlikely to acknowledge any of Darwinian evolutionary theory’s shortcomings. Indeed he points out that the very things they mistakenly claim of intelligent design theory, namely that it isn’t testable, Darwinian evolution itself is truly guilty.

Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center has published a column looking at the current court cases involving evolution. While he mistakenly looks at intelligent design theory as just the next step after creationism in the anti-evolutionary chain, he does have some interesting insights into the drawbacks for science of shutting down the debate. “If school board resolutions aren’t the answer, who decides what, if any, critiques of evolution get into the curriculum? The short answer is – or should be – scientists decide. But many in the science establishment worry that teaching the controversy – even conflicts among scientists about some aspects of evolutionary theory – would open the door to creationist or other religious views. That’s why so Read More ›

American Daily has posted an interesting article by writer Robert Myers, “The Face of Evolution,” making the case that neo-Darwinism may be unfit for the classroom as it is a religion itself and that if it is allowed in other theories should be as well. “The first time that I heard the concept of evolution presented as a religion or philosophy, I snickered at the audacity of such a proposition. But the more I have taken notice of how the arguments are made, the more I see the religious aspects of the evolutionary position.” I have to point out — lest we be misquoted — that our position remains that intelligent design theory should NOT be mandated, but that it Read More ›