Science and Culture Today | Page 1313 | Discovering Design in Nature

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post it anonymously.]

Immediately following the publication of “Teaching the Origins Controversy: Science, or Religion, or Speech?” in 2000 in Utah Law Review, multiple law review articles appeared opposing the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design (ID). It seems that the law review article by Professors DeWolf and DeForrest and Meyer hit a nerve that incited various law students to ardently defend the evolutionary theory they were uncritically taught in high school.

Once such student was Eric Shih, who published an article in the Michigan State Law Review in 2007 entitled, “Teaching Against the Controversy: Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Public School Solution to the Origins Debate.” Mr. Shih argues that “recent demands to ‘teach the controversy’ of intelligent design are nothing more than variations on the balanced tactics ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Edwards.” In other words, ID is nothing more than a mask for creationism.

Mr. Shih’s attacks are misplaced and confused. First, in real-world public policy debates, proposals proposals to “teach the controversy” have explicitly opposed requirements to teach intelligent design. As Stephen C. Meyer explained in a 2002 op-ed titled “Teach the Controversy” in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Larry Moran has a post on Sandwalk excoriating Matt Nisbet for his criticism of P.Z. Myers’ recent desecration of the Eucharist. Myers, a vocal Darwinist and militant atheist, obtained a Eucharistic Host, nailed it, threw it in the garbage, and photographed it, along with a Qur’an and a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
Nisbet, sensitive to the implications of Myers’ performance art, took Myers to task:

Unfortunately I spent much of July at home feeling sick and miserable. For part of that time, all I could do was sit and catch up on episodes of the comedy cartoon, South Park. Before elaborating, I must first note that I don’t recommend watching South Park if you have squeamish ears or a distaste for shock humor. And if you’re a kid, ask your parents before watching it; South Park may be a cartoon but it is not intended for kids. But I confess that I find South Park quite entertaining, largely because they poke fun of all sides of controversial social, political, and scientific issues. It thus seems fitting that South Park would inspire me to blog about Read More ›

Last year I blogged about how Newsweek science columnist Sharon Begley had promoted the multiverse hypothesis as if it were a reasonable scientific proposition, avoiding mentioning to readers that this speculative idea was invented for the purpose of avoiding the conclusion that the cosmos was intelligently designed. As I wrote, “Begley tries to steer the reader into believing the wildly speculative multiverse hypothesis–a pet philosophical favorite of materialists–while barely even hinting that the alternative, and much more elegant explanation, is intelligent design of the cosmos. For those who are informed on this subject, her article comes off as if she is trying to hide the design inference from the reader as a reasonable conclusion to explain the incredible fine-tuning of Read More ›

Yale neurologist Dr. Steven Novella and I have been involved in a vigorous discussion (example here) of the mind-brain problem in science and philosophy. There are real-world implications of our understanding of the mind, and nowhere are these implications more important than in the medical management of people with severe brain damage. Dr. Novella recently posted a commentary on the Terri Schiavo case. Dr. Novella’s post was prompted by a study just published in the journal Neurology that analyzes the media coverage of the affair and offers suggestions as to how experts and journalists can convey the truth of such complex cases to the public more effectively. These are laudable goals.

The crux of the matter, of course, is this: what are the facts in the Schiavo case, and, more generally, what are the real issues involved in the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS)?

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] CSC Fellow Richard Weikart sent us his article, “‘Expelled’ and the Darwinism-Nazi Connection: A Response to Jeff Schloss,” which is now up at the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) website. Weikart details the historical connection between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s Nazi ideology, responding to a similarly ASA-published article by Jeff Schloss.There’s a history with Schloss, which Bill Dembski explains over at Uncommon Descent. Suffice it to say that Schloss is critical of intelligent design and quick to repeat the standard objections to the connection Expelled draws between Darwin and Hitler… and Weikart doesn’t let him get away with it: In his Read More ›

How many times have we heard the old Darwinist canard that the human eye is “poorly designed”? As the argument goes, the vertebrate eye is poorly designed because our photoreceptor cells face away from the incoming light and the optic nerve extends over them, allegedly blocking some light. William Dembski and Sean McDowell’s new book Understanding Intelligent Design has an easily accessible and forceful rebuttal to this poorly designed Darwinist objection to ID, explaining that the design of the human eye is actually quite optimal: The photoreceptors in the human eye are oriented away from incoming light and placed behind nerves through which light must pass before reaching the photoreceptors. Why? A visual system needs three things: speed, sensitivity, and Read More ›

It’s not easy being an evolutionist these days. You have to feel a pang of pity for the critics at New Scientist, who have resorted to a new argument against intelligent design:The more complex things are, the more we see that there’s no way intelligence could have created them.That’s right — complexity is now an argument against intelligent design. From yesterday’s print edition: As Socrates knew, the really intelligent know the limits of their own ability, an idea we seem to be relearning. You might say supporters of intelligent design have it backwards: the more we observe the complex workings of our universe, the more we must conclude that no single intelligence could have created them.

The Toronto Sun is reporting on a new poll finding that “58% of Canucks think humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and 22% believe God created people in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” The article thus proudly asserts that “[a] majority of Canadians believe in the theory of evolution.” But what about those Canadians who accept the conventional geological age of the earth but are skeptical of neo-Darwinian evolution? Obviously they don’t accept the young earth creationist view, but contrary to what the pollsters and newsmedia suggest, they also might not “believe in the theory of evolution.” Or what about those Canadians who believe in some form of God-guided evolution, where God’s Read More ›

The Chronicle of Higher Education shows courage in publishing a non-P.C. article by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars that describes the real, as opposed to the putative, obstacles to increasing the number of American-born and educated scientists. Anti-intellectualism is a big part of it.

There is a problem, however, that Peter Woods overlooks, either because it doesn’t occur to him or because he doesn’t wish to spur the science establishment to even more outrage by mentioning it. That problem is the contemporary hostility that many committed Christian young people, and perhaps other religious youth, encounter in the sciences these days. Even those who have not experienced it become alert to it and, in turn, may be discouraged.

Darwinists can deny that this is the case, but a serious study, I submit, would show that it is so. Asked in private, when their words can’t be twisted and asked in a neutral manner, many religious students report a classroom environment that demeans religious belief and demeans religious people. If it is known that they do not accept Darwinian accounts of the rise and development of life, or even the development of universe before life arose on Earth, students know that they could be graded down in some classes (a certain University of Minnesota biology class comes to mind, but it is unusual only in the professor’s lack of subtlety). If they decide to seek an advanced degree the opposition will be stronger and they normally dare not express their convictions. If they somehow get a doctorate, they cannot expect a teaching position, or recommendations, once any serious dissent from Darwinism is detected. And if they secure a job they will not get tenure if word leaks out (see Expelled). Even after they have tenure they can still be maligned and harassed and even effectively demoted.