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As noted here, Ouachita Parish around Monroe, Louisiana recently passed a policy on academic freedom for teaching controversial scientific subjects. Here is the text of Ouachita Parish’s new resolution on academic freedom as well as their new their curricular policy: From http://www.opsb.net/downloads/forms/Ouachita_Parish_Science_Curriculum_Policy.pdf
A common Darwinist myth is that the only people who are skeptical of evolution are Americans. A recent article in the Virginia Informer stated, “John Swaddler, UK native and associate professor of biology at the College [of William and Mary], noted that the media phenomenon of creationism/ID vs. evolution doesn’t happen in countries besides America.” Saddler is promoting a common Darwinist claim which is simply untrue: As we’ve noted recently, there has been a push to teach intelligent design in the United Kingdom. This summer an article in the London Guardian noted that over 30% of British students support non-evolutionary accounts of the history of life. Such skepticism extends far beyond the U.K. Nature reported that Poland is experiencing an Read More ›
We recently discussed how New Scientist reporter Celeste Biever unnecessarily used a fake identity to talk to the IDEA Club at Cornell. Over the past year, I’ve had a few analogous encounters where Darwinist biologists have used their positions at major secular universities to feign being pro-ID in an unnecessary deception to engage in dialogue. One very recent example is a biologist at Northeastern University in Boston named Donald M. O’Malley. In September, 2006, Dr. O’Malley wrote me an e-mail saying that he was pro-ID and that “the grandest of designs [is] the central nervous system.” He said that he shared this information “in confidence” because “there are certain parties that certainly would not be sympathetic to my views” and Read More ›
In Part I, I discussed how Carl Zimmer’s recent article, “From Fins to Wings,” in National Geographic quoted a biologist in a fashion that sounded like an advertisement for evolution. While the article obviously was not pro-ID, it ironically discussed much evidence which ID-proponents often contend supports intelligent design. This segment of the 3-part response will discuss evidence for design from “conservation” in developmental genes. Evolutionarily Conserved Genes or Common Design? “From Fins to Wings” discusses many examples of similar genes controlling similar developmental processes in widely different organisms. ID-proponents have taken this re-usage of genetic coding components as indicative of common design. Pro-ID scientist Mike Gene has noted that we have to be careful when advancing arguments about common Read More ›
If you have not seen it already, you will enjoy playing with this random mutation generator. You will see how wonderful the Darwinian process is at taking your text and moving on to ever-greater levels of complexity.
Read More ›Over at her new blog, Mindful Hack, journalist Denyse O’Leary is presenting different views of how Darwinism interacts with morality. Michael Shermer thinks Darwinian evolution easily accounts for “Christian morality.” John West, author of the recently published Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest, claims that Darwinism really implies moral relativism. Given how natural selection is invoked by Darwinists to explain behaviors ranging from rape to marital fidelity to selfishness to the Golden Rule, one is reminded of the maxim that “the theory that explains anything actually explains nothing.”
National Geographic‘s pro-evolution articles sometimes come off like advertisements for Darwin (for an analysis of a prior ad, see here). Its November, 2006 issue has an article, “From Fins to Wings,” by Carl Zimmer which quotes Harvard microbiologist Howard Berg saying “The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple.” With such a ringing endorsement, I expected the article to urge me to buy evolution at the local grocery store! Zimmer’s article, however, was better than many past evolution-endorsements in National Geographic. Past articles used icons like Haeckel’s false “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” concept and antibiotic resistance to sell evolution. While Zimmer’s present article retains the fallacious “the human eye was poorly designed” icon, it improves the treatment Read More ›
Are leading Darwinists succeeding in promoting a religion-friendly image? Prominent evolutionists have used warfare imagery to call upon people to “fight” against intelligent design and other forms of evolution-skepticism, including various religions. In a recent article about a talk on The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins told a crowd in Kansas, “I know you here are in the front-line trench against powerful forces of darkness… Fight the good fight” against the “the ‘rotten logic’ of intelligent design and creationism,” which he claims argue the religious viewpoint that “God did it.” (As noted yesterday, the article is factually challenged, as it repeatedly incorrectly calls Dawkins a “physicist,” when he is actually a zoologist and evolutionary biologist.) In a similar fashion, Gerald Weissmann, Read More ›
Can I get a fact-check on this paper? It looks like the Lawrence Journal-World has decided to forgo any quality control in their newsroom. This latest piece mistakenly identifies zoologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins as a physicist, a blunder that made its way into the very headline. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us that Albert Einstein was the greatest chemist of the last century. While laughable, this latest gaffe illustrates a serious problem. Lawrence Journal-World has been a mouthpiece for the Darwinists, exposing their bias as they editorialize in their news articles on evolution and intelligent design. While many Kansans trust the Journal-World to keep them informed, this shoddy journalism proves what we’ve known for some time: Read More ›
The current issue of Time features a cover story preaching evolution to the skeptical public and editorializing that humans and chimps are related. Though the cover graphic (below) shows half-human, half-chimp iconography, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks warns us against “exhibit[ing] the same old fallacies: … humanizing apes and ape-ifying humans” (What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee, pg. xv [2002]). The cover-graphic commits both fallacies: The article also claims that it’s easy to see “how closely the great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — resemble us,” but then observes in a contradictory fashion that “agriculture, language, art, music, technology and philosophy” are “achievements that make us profoundly different from chimpanzees.” Perhaps Michael Ruse was Read More ›