Science and Culture Today | Page 1319 | Discovering Design in Nature

HIgh school biology teacher Doug Cowan has a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal responding to a recent article which misreprsented his comments on the debate over how to teach evolution. Science Looks at All the EvidenceMay 17, 2008 Your article “Evolution’s Critics Shift Tactics With Schools” (Currents, May 2) claims that I would “like a legal guarantee [so I] can teach as I see fit.” Actually, I believe in teaching the prescribed curriculum, and I do so. But I don’t think a teacher should be penalized for exploring required topics in greater depth, especially in cases where scientists have different views. One should have the freedom to pursue and teach all the evidence even if it leads to disturbing Read More ›

South Carolina Senator Mike Fair has submitted an Academic Freedom Bill into the South Carolina State Legislature. This is now the sixth academic freedom bill submitted this legislative session, as other bills have been submitted in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Alabama, and Louisiana. The text of Senator Fair’s bill would require that, “The State Board of Education, superintendents of public school districts, and public school administrators may not prohibit a teacher in a public school of this State from helping his students understand, analyze, critique, and review the scientific strengths and weaknesses of biological and chemical evolution in an objective manner.” Meanwhile, like other commentators, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) cannot admit that South Carolina’s state science standards require Read More ›

In this short video clip, CSC fellow Dr. Dean Kenyon answers a series of questions about his interest in biological origins and the ideas he expressed in his book Biochemical Predestination, and his skepticism of Darwinian theory. The full video is available on YouTube.

Dr. Steven Novella and I have been engaged in a vigorous blog debate (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, , and here,) about the mind/brain problem and about intelligent design. Dr. Novella, who presents himself as a pro-science ‘skeptic’ (he’s president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society), is a passionate Darwinist and materialist. He blogs often on Darwinism, materialism, and “denialism” in science.

Monday morning I checked Dr. Novella’s blog. I noticed that several (at least four) of his recent controversial blog posts were missing. The links are here, here, here, and here. I checked more closely– using my own previous links to the posts– and the posts (#165, #189, #260, and #283) were gone, without a trace and without an explanation. The blog posts dealt with his view that intelligent design wasn’t falsifiable and with the debate between materialists and dualists on the mind-brain problem. What was up?

I emailed Dr. Novella, and asked him:

“We should teach only science in the science classroom.” Of course, who would disagree? The fact of the matter is, what happens in the science classroom — as several textbooks can attest — isn’t always science, but often philosophy.

Why do so many fail to understand the difference? As Dr. Rebecca Keller, CEO of textbook publisher Gravitas Publications, explains,

The philosophical aspects of science are usually not discussed in elementary or high school grades and for that matter, neither are they taught to scientists. Most people and most scientists are completely unaware that science is any different than the philosophies that are currently masquerading as science.

So it isn’t Science that we’re talking about, per se, but Scientific materialism, the philosophy that groups like the NCSE want taught in science class.

Scientific materialism is the current philosophy that guides and interprets most of modern science. Most scientists are unaware that they operate from within this interpretative framework and as a result it has become science. But scientific materialism is not science. It is one way to interpret scientific information.

Last month, I blogged about a pre-med student who recently took the MCAT and found emotionally-charged pro-evolution-biased language on reading comprehension questions. As he concluded, the MCAT exam is “just supposed to be a way to evaluate how you process information, and they don’t want to influence your reasoning by making you answer emotionally charged questions. This passage was distracting while I was taking the test. It was distracting because it’s about an emotionally controversial topic, and I don’t agree with everything they said. This crosses the line.” Following that post, another pre-med student (who is about to matriculate into medical school) contacted me and had this to say about the distracting pro-evolution bias on the MCAT: I sat for Read More ›

Note: This is one of a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain. When it comes to citing examples of purposeful design, nearly every author likes to point out the hen’s egg. It’s really quite remarkable. Despite having a shell that is a mere 0.35 mm think, they don’t break when a parent sits on them. According to Dr. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, A bird egg is a mechanical structure strong enough to hold a chick securely during development, yet weak enough to break out of. The shell must let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, yet be sufficiently impermeable to water to keep the contents from drying out. Read More ›

Naturalism: A Critical Analysis
Edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland
With contributions by William Lane Craig, William Dembski, Stewart Goetz, John E. Hare, Robert C. Koons, J. P. Moreland, Paul K. Moser, Michael Rea, Charles Taliferro, Dallas Willard, David Yandell
Routledge, 2000, 286 pages
ISBN: 0-415-23524-3

This impressive volume contains critical essays on naturalism from the perspectives of theology, ethics, cosmology, ontology, and epistemology. Various Discovery Fellows make contributions including Robert C. Koons, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and William Dembski.

Koons begins by noting that there is a simple correlation between existence and the requirement of some non-natural first cause. He observes an irony that science thinks it requires naturalism, when our very ability to practice science, due to the orderly, reliable, and predictable behavior of the universe implies a non-natural intelligent cause. Scientific dependence upon naturalism is self-refuting.

The Florida state legislature’s inability to push through an academic freedom bill highlights the difficulty of passing any legislation, expecially one that has strong opposition. Any legislation dealing with the teaching of evolution is bound to face an uphill battle as Darwinists are effective at organizing groups and people to pressure the legislators. Where does that leave the teachers in Florida?