Science and Culture Today | Page 1328 | Discovering Design in Nature

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof made a call for reason this past weekend. Citing Susan Jacoby’s work, Kristof points out the need for an improved intellectual climate to foster informed and reasoned debate. “How can we decide on embryonic stem cells if we don’t understand biology?” asks Kristof.

Amen. Let’s understand the technical details, the relevant history and philosophy, and all sides of an issue. Then we can have informed and reasoned debate. At least that is what comes to my mind when I hear a call for reason. Not necessarily, however, for folks such as Kristof and Jacoby.

In this clip, CSC fellow Professor John Angus Campbell analyzes the naturalistic rhetoric employed by Darwin in The Origin of Species. Campbell focuses on the Darwinian term “natural selection” and the way Darwin crafts his arguments to convince his audience of this central point of his work. This DVD is available from Access Research Network.

The most astonishing thing about Premise Media’s new documentary Expelled is the candor with which prominent Darwinist scientists admit their own ideological agenda in science education. In the film, Darwinists admit that atheist metaphysics is essential to their science. They insist that scientific education should erode their students’ belief in God.

Among the most prominent Darwinists interviewed in the film is Dr. P.Z. Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota-Morris and author of the science blog Pharyngula. Pharyngula is one of the most popular science blogs, and Myers mixes Darwinist science with unvarnished venom for Christianity. Dr. Myers posted one of his more polite descriptions of Christianity on Easter Day:

This is Easter, the day Christians everywhere set aside to celebrate the day they were hoaxed by a gang of Middle Eastern charlatans into believing a local mystic rose from the dead.

On June 26, 2000, President Bill Clinton announced the completion of the Human Genome Project, which had just deciphered the sequence of DNA in a human cell. “Today,” he said, “we are learning the language in which God created life.” At the president’s side was Francis Collins, director of the project, who had helped to write Clinton’s speech. “It is humbling and awe-inspiring,” Collins said, “to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.” As its subtitle indicates, The Language of God presents evidence for Christian belief. Curiously, however, that evidence does not include DNA, which according to Collins provides “compelling” evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution instead. In the Read More ›

From a release issued by Premise Media: SANTA FE, N.M.Something amazing happened yesterday. The controversy around Premise Media’s upcoming movie Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday, March 24th (http://www.blogpulse.com). There were also over 800 results on Technorati (www.technorati.com). “It is amazing to see the reaction of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and their cohorts when one of them is simply expelled from a movie. Yet these men applaud when professors throughout the nation are fired from their jobs and permanently excluded from their profession for mentioning Intelligent Design,” said producer Mark Mathis. Mathis was Read More ›

Last night was another screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, this one in Seattle and sans the infamous partycrasher Richard Dawkins. Still, the downtown theater, AMC Pacific Place, was packed out. Like every other screening, the audience loved it. The movie, whatever you might think of intelligent design, or evolution, or Darwin, is entertaining and at times irresistibly funny. And lucky us, this was the first showing of the actual 35mm print — exactly what audiences will see across the country when the film opens on April 18th. Discovery president Bruce Chapman has a good post about it at Discovery Blog. A crowd of 350 invited guests attended a pre-screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed tonight in Seattle’s Pacific Place. Read More ›

According The New York Times, arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins is now asserting that the new film Expelled perpetrates a “major outrage” because the film suggests there is a link between Darwinian ideology and ideas like Nazism.

Say what?

In 2005, Dawkins himself declared that such a link existed, responding to an Austrian interviewer that “a Darwinian State would be a Fascist state,” which is why he says he opposes trying to run a society “according to Darwinian laws”:

In this clip, Dr. Jonathan Wells introduces the question “Can ID Guide Scientific Research?” Wells explains how a trip to the Michigan-based company Ideation reinforced the need for intelligent design to solve practical problems. In response, Wells developed his Theory of Organismal Problem Solving, or TOPS, modeled after a Russian problem-solving method named TRIZ. Wells goes on to enumerate scientific fields where practical ID research is already underway, including physics, chemistry, and biology. This DVD is available from Access Research Network.

Darwinist Mike Dunford is incensed with the manner in which I quoted him in one of my recent posts. I pointed out, using Mr. Dunford’s own words, that the assertion that an understanding of natural selection was essential to laboratory research on bacterial resistance to antibiotics was inconsistent with the Darwinist assertion that the biological evidence for natural selection disproves the theory of intelligent design. It’s a fairly obvious point, when you think about it carefully, and it was refreshing that Mr. Dunford made the point in such a clear (if inadvertent) way. The observation is worth reviewing.

First, two definitions:

Like many films in pre-release, Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is being selectively screened around the country to develop a buzz.

Press will be invited to screen the final version in three weeks, I’m told, while the official opening in theaters is April 18. Surprisingly, even the private screenings are causing excitement. Audiences love it.

In January I saw an early version that was screened in Fort Lauderdale and I will be at a Seattle screening soon. The Darwinists who are portrayed in the film — giving answers to questions submitted in advance! — are worried about what the public will think of their views when produced incontrovertibly in their own words. What they say is damning, all right, but it’s not much different than what they write in books and say in speeches and other appearances.