Science and Culture Today | Page 1218 | Discovering Design in Nature

In 2003, the BBC launched a documentary series known as Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, presented by the atheist Jonathan Miller. The interviews that were conducted, being too lengthy for inclusion in the 2003 series, were later archived in a 2004 documentary series, entitled The Atheism Tapes, a supplementary series of six programs, consisting of the uncut interviews with a single contributing atheist.

One such film featured Jonathan Miller interviewing our old friend, Richard Dawkins. A clip from that interview is appended below:

Three minutes into the embedded interview, in speaking of the purported instances of irreducible complexity in nature, Richard Dawkins succeeds in decimating any pretense to neo-Darwinism’s status as a falsifiable proposition. He states, “There cannot have been intermediate stages that were not beneficial. There’s no room in natural selection for the sort of foresight argument…It doesn’t happen like that. There’s got to be a series of advantages all the way…If you can’t think of one, then that’s your problem, not natural selection’s problem.”

Click play to watch Stephen Meyer’s interview on the evidence for intelligent design, which aired Friday, June 18, on The 700 Club. Display content from downloads.cbn.com Click here to display content from downloads.cbn.com. Always display content from downloads.cbn.com Open content directly

Sylvia Mader’s 2010 textbook, Biology, uses colorized versions of Haeckel’s embryo drawings with only a few small modifications. As seen in the side-by-side comparison above, the black and white drawings are Haeckel’s original drawings and the colored drawings are from Mader’s 2010 textbook. Just like Haeckel’s original drawings, Mader’s colorized drawings obscure the differences between the early stages of vertebrate development in order to give students the following misleading caption: “At these comparable developmental stages, vertebrate embryos have many features in common, which suggests they evolved from a common ancestor. (These embryos are not drawn to scale.)” (Sylvia S. Mader, Biology, p. 278 (McGraw Hill, 2010).) Click the graphic for the full picture. Haeckel’s long-discredited recapitulation theory is not necessarily Read More ›

A few years ago, former NCSE-spokesman Nick Matzke called complaints over the use of Haeckel’s embryo drawings in textbooks a “manufactured scandal.” However, a variety of leading scientific authorities — proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution — have also complained about the use of these drawings and the way that embryology is used to support evolution in biology textbooks. Are these authorities in on the big conspiracy to “manufacture” this “scandal” too? Here’s where things stand today: Despite the fact that (in 2010 at least) out-dated concepts like “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” have been almost completely removed from new textbooks and that many (though not all) new textbooks use embryo photographs instead of fudged drawings, an examination of both recent textbooks and complaints Read More ›

No news continues to make news. Or maybe it’s agenda driven reporting making up news? Either way, this article trumpets the fact that Nebraskans need not worry that evolution will be replaced with intelligent design in science classes. Of course, that wasn’t being suggested and discussed anyhow. So, here’s a case of the media taking no news and goosing it into a “news” story. Three members of the Nebraska Board of Education say they’re not aware of any effort by board members or the public to include intelligent design in Nebraska’s new science standards.“I’ve had zero contact from anyone,” said board member Robert Evnen of Lincoln, who is on a committee reviewing the standards. Why is not being asked to Read More ›

As recently discussed on Evolution News, Discovery Institute has settled its lawsuit with the California Science Center (CSC). From our perspective, this is a very favorable settlement because (1) we are getting all of the documents we originally requested but they withheld, and (2) CSC is paying part of our court costs and attorneys’ fees. But now that the case has settled, the untold story is the pre-textual explanations that CSC made to rationalize why they refused to disclose public documents from certain employees, documents which might have shown evidence of CSC’s viewpoint discrimination against intelligent design (ID). Our lawsuit filed last December alleged that “CSC has failed to provide a single document reflecting communications from decision makers at CSC Read More ›

The California Science Center (CSC) has agreed to settle a lawsuit with the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute and release records that it previously sought to conceal regarding its cancellation of the screening of a pro-intelligent design film last year. “After months of stonewalling by the Science Center, this is a huge victory for the public’s right to know what their government is doing, especially when the government engages in illegal censorship and viewpoint discrimination,” said Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. The Science Center continues to “deny any and all liability relating to the claims,” according to the settlement agreement. However, it agreed to pay Discovery Institute’s legal fees and to surrender more Read More ›

Critics of David Coppedge’s lawsuit against Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) alleging discrimination against his pro-intelligent design views have been repeatedly misrepresenting the facts of his case. The latest example is an attorney quoted in an article with Federal News Radio who makes a number of factual errors. According to the article, Bill Bransford, a partner at the Washington D.C.-based law firm Shaw, Bransford and Roth, stated, “Coppedge apparently ‘believed he was talking to willing people about his theories, but apparently some of these people complained.’” Bransford does not seem to be aware of the facts of Coppedge’s case, since Coppedge was specifically told by his supervisors that no one he’d spoken to about intelligent design (ID) had complained. Bransford goes Read More ›

When Stephen Meyer faced Steve Matheson and Art Hunt at Biola University last month, one scientist’s research was key in their debate: Doug Axe, Director of Biologic Institute.

While there’s a good deal of back and forth on the subject, for the first time Dr. Axe has something of his own to say on the subject of his work. From Biologic Perspectives:

The specific work to which Meyer, Matheson and Hunt referred [4] has added to the scientific case for functional protein sequences being extraordinarily rare within the whole space of possibilities. Matheson started off by arguing not that this deduction of extraordinary rarity is incorrect, but rather that it is irrelevant to the debate between Darwinism and Design.

Axe goes on to explain the problems with Matheson’s reasoning:

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a national legal organization whose allied attorneys have logged over 100 million dollars worth of pro bono hours of legal work, has issued a statement backing David Coppedge’s lawsuit against Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A recent article in the Christian Post reporting on the ADF news release summarizes Coppedge’s plight: Last March [2009], Coppedge was accused of “pushing religion” on his co-workers after he began engaging colleagues in conversations about intelligent design — a theory that life and the existence of the universe derive not from undirected material processes but from an intelligent cause — and offering DVDs on the subject when the co-worker expressed interest. His supervisor, Gregory Chin, allegedly received complaints from employees and threatened Read More ›