Science and Culture Today | Page 1305 | Discovering Design in Nature

The website OpposingViews.com is currently hosting an online debate between intelligent design (ID) proponents and critics on the question “Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?” Michael Behe, Jay Richards, and I (Casey Luskin) head up the pro-ID side. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), The Ayn Rand Institute, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) take the anti-ID side. Last night they posted the opening statements from all parties. Now there are opportunities to make rebuttals, and then there will be final opportunities for surrebuttals, concluding the debate. Some highlights of the first round of posts include: Other opening statements from us can be found at OpposingViews.com. Below I’ve posted the text of my first opening Read More ›

I have thus far refrained from blogging about the new video game Spore that is being widely discussed in the media for one reason: anyone can see that Spore is not really about evolution by the Darwinian mechanism; it’s about evolution by intelligent design (ID). Even in his recent September 2 New York Times article, “Gaming Evolves,” Carl Zimmer reports that “Spore was strongly influenced by science, and in particular by evolutionary biology” but admits that “[t]he step-by-step process by which Spore’s creatures change does not have much to do with real evolution.” One biologist was quoted saying, “The mechanism is severely messed up.” And just what is that “severely messed up” mechanism? The answer is obvious: as an article Read More ›

“Predicting is very difficult, especially when it is about the future,” Yogi Berra is reported to have said. Phillip Johnson, writing in May’s Touchstone, says I think of the great Yogi’s maxim whenever I hear theistic evolutionists warn intelligent design theorists against committing what they call the “God of the gaps” fallacy. Their point is that it is futile to rely on “gaps” that the theory of evolution has not yet explained as places where divine acts might be necessary, because those gaps will inevitably be filled as science progresses. Eventually, God will be squeezed out of these spaces, with consequent embarrassment to the cause of religion. But why think that these “gaps” will ever be filled? As Johnson muses, Read More ›

Since being picked by McCain as his choice for Vice President, Sarah Palin has garnered a lot of attention, not least of which is for her views on how to teach evolution. A quick Google News search returns over 1,500 articles about that very subject, just since last weekend.

Not surprisingly, the media has completely misconstrued her views so that right now it is

Last Sunday morning, MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” (hosted by Tom Brokaw) interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty about whether “creationism vs. evolution … should be taught side by side in public schools.” Pawlenty observed that Brokaw should be talking about intelligent design (ID), not creationism: “In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed. Not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated.” Pawlenty said that the decision should be left to local districts. Discovery Institute, of course, has long-opposed mandating ID in public schools. Continuing to call the issue “creationism vs. evolution” and failing to acknowledge intelligent design, Brokaw then asked political Read More ›

As students around the country gear up to head back to classes and homework, some of them will be learning the complete story of evolution for the first time.
Adopted by secondary schools and colleges, Explore Evolution (Hill House Publishers, 2007), the first biology textbook to present the arguments for and against neo-Darwinism, is invigorating the study of biology for a new generation of budding scientists.

While we’ve documented several textbooks which teach bogus information to students, it’s good to remember that there are texts out there that not only teach correct and current information on evolution, but do so in a way that gets young minds involved and interested in the exciting questions of science.

Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, “Public Education and Intelligent Design,” in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home (fee for access US $29.95).

Prof. Nagel’s paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America’s highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity, not the emotional advocacy excitement for any side — that it is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel’s article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.

Evolution News & Views is pleased to welcome new contributor Ed Sisson to our team. Ed has long been involved in the battle for academic freedom. You may remember him from the Kansas state board of education’s hearings on science standards in 2005 or as Dr. Caroline Crocker’s pro-bono attorney when she was ousted from George Mason University for teaching some of the scientific evidence that challenges Darwinian evolution. We highlighted a series of Youtube videos featuring Ed earlier this year.

Ed’s biography, in his own words: