Science

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. As you can imagine, Darwinists have a full year of celebrations planned, and February 12th, Darwin’s birthday, is likely to be the high water mark for most of those celebrations. Every year Darwin Day celebrations get more and more elaborate and outrageous. Celebrants decorate evolution trees, sign Darwin carols and odes to natural selection, and eat from the tree of life.Naturally, we don’t want you to miss out on the fun. On Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by Read More ›

MSNBC recently had an article titled “Fine-feathered dino sported bizarre bird tail,” reporting on the find of Epidexipteryx hui, a “pigeon-sized dinosaur that lived more than 100 million years ago [that] sported four ribbon-like tail feathers.” (See right for an artist’s imaginative interpretation of the fossil.) One of the original paper’s authors states, “Although this dinosaur cannot be the direct ancestor for birds, it is one of the dinosaurs that have the closest phylogenetic relationship to birds.” The article also contains other quotes with typical Darwinist rhetoric like, “[t]his find confirms the link between dinosaurs and birds.” But are other interpretations possible? Unreported in the media is the fact that the paper contains language directly hinting that Epidexipteryx hui could Read More ›

Discovery senior fellow Wesley J. Smith has returned to podcasting with What It Means to Be Human, a podcast about the many policies and proposals in bioethics, bioscience, and animal liberation that threaten the idea of human exceptionalism and undermine universal human rights: Click here to listen.On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at Discovery Institute, explains why human exceptionalism is so important for universal human rights.There is a war being waged against unique human worth on many fronts, from personhood theory and the animal liberation movement to radical environmentalism and philosophical materialism. Very powerful forces have dedicated themselves to convincing us that we really aren’t all Read More ›

CSC Fellow Forrest Mims has been honored by Discover Magazine, which has placed him on their list of “50 best brains in science.” Not bad company he’s keeping, with Steven Hawking, Bill Gates and others. Post-Darwinist has a nice write up congratulating Mims on the honor and recounting some of what he’s gone through to get this far as a scientist: Congratulations to Forrest Mims, a voice for real science in the midst of a mass of taxpayer-funded propaganda for unbelievable beliefs that happen to be held by scientists. Mims is an instrument designer, science writer and independent science consultant. He has made regular observations of the ozone layer, solar ultraviolet radiation, photosynthetic radiation, column water vapor and aerosol optical Read More ›

This is the sixth installment of a series responding to John Timmer’s online review of the supplementary biology textbook Explore Evolution (EE). The first part is here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here. 6. Timmer’s Double Standard on Textbook Treatments of EvolutionTimmer repeatedly attacks EE for allegedly trying to “divide and conquer” evolution because it discusses the different lines of scientific evidence (i.e. fossil, anatomical, molecular) regarding common descent in separate sections. Timmer’s criticism reveals either his gross ignorance of how contemporary biology texts cover evolution, or that he’s using a blatant double standard. EE was written to complement the coverage of evolution in standard biology textbooks, and so it follows the approach Read More ›

The Biologic Institute has an excellent article discussing how biologists are copying the “brilliant designs” they see in nature for technological purposes. We’ve discussed this intriguing phenomenon of biomimetics many times before here on ENV. (For a couple examples, see here, here or here.) The presumption of evolutionary biologists, of course, is that these “brilliant designs” evolved by natural selection preserving random, but beneficial mutations. Engineers operating under such presumptions have thus tried to mimic not only the “brilliant designs,” but also the evolutionary processes that allegedly produced the designs. Biologic’s article notes that one success story of such methods was the case of NASA engineers who used evolutionary computing to produce a better antenna. Did they use truly Darwinian Read More ›

With the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth looming, lecture halls are booked up with Darwinist celebrations and attacks on intelligent design. A couple of the usual suspects on the Darwin birthday circuit are Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott.
Recently, I saw that they would both be speaking at the University of Central Florida, at the behest of the university’s biology department. The topic? For Coyne it was intelligent design, and for Scott it was academic freedom (seriously). So, I thought I’d inquire as to whether or not UCF would be balancing these anti-ID lectures with views from the other side. Here’s the response I got:

Three of six experts selected by the Texas State Board of Education to review a proposed update of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for science have recommended that the TEKS retain controversial language calling on students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories in order to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills.

“Some activist groups are pressuring the State Board to cut that language from the TEKS in order to artificially shield Darwin’s theory from the normal process of scientific inquiry,” said Casey Luskin, an education policy analyst at Discovery Institute. “However, as these three experts point out, examining the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories is a core part of the scientific process, and abandoning such critical analysis merely to satisfy ideological demands of Darwinists harms students by giving them a false view of scientific inquiry.”

This is the fifth installment of a series responding to John Timmer’s online review of the supplementary biology textbook Explore Evolution (EE). The first part is here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here. 5. When Did Neo-Darwinism Become a Dirty Word?Timmer objects to Explore Evolution‘s subtitle, “The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism,” claiming that “[d]uring the roughly 20 years I was directly involved in biology research, I’d never come across the term ‘Darwinism.’” EE‘s subtitle actually uses the word “neo-Darwinism,” not “Darwinism,” but regardless, Timmer’s complaint reveals more about his own ignorance than it does about any inaccuracy on the part of EE. Terms like “Darwinism” and “neo-Darwinism” (or similar cognates like “Darwinian,” “neo-Darwinian,” or “Darwinist”) Read More ›

Texas is currently updating its academic standards, known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), in the area of science. In September 2008, writing committees working for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) proposed revised TEKS that largely eliminated previous language calling on students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. In the proposed revision, the “strengths and weaknesses” language was retained in a few areas (like high school chemistry), but it was scrapped in the vast majority of subject areas, most notably in high school biology. The clear goal in proposing the removal of the “strengths and weaknesses” language from the TEKS was to shield biological evolution from critical scrutiny by students or teachers. In October, members Read More ›