Science and Culture Today | Page 1335 | Discovering Design in Nature

Washington, DC — The National Academy of Sciences has published yet another report on evolution, titled “Science, Evolution, and Creationism.” In the ample space of 89 pages, the NAS manages to celebrate evolution as an unassailable truth, completely misrepresent intelligent design, and rehash the same standard Darwinist arguments which have been refuted by critical scientists time and again.

The NAS exaggerates the success of evolution, hyping it as “the foundation for modern biology.” This outrageous claim continues to meet a growing skepticism from scientists around the world. Over 700 doctoral scientists have publicly declared their disagreement by signing a list dissenting from Darwinism, including National Academy of Sciences member Phillip Skell.

In 2005, Dr. Skell wrote in an article published in The Scientist that “the claim that [Darwinian evolution] is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.”

Instead of treating evolutionary theory as an area open to further scientific inquiry, the NAS report canonizes evolution as perfect and immutable, “so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter it.”

“Under their definition, a theory is not a testable area of science but rather an unquestionable dogma,” said CSC program officer Casey Luskin.

Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here. When Kellogg needed advice about Tony the Tiger, Seagrams wanted to know more about whisky, and Samonsite wanted to understand the deeper meaning of luggage, they all called one man: Clotaire Rapaille, Boca Raton marketing guru extraordinaire. A native of France, Rapaille has parlayed a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in medical anthropology from the Sorbonne into a lucrative career in high-stakes world of corporate advertising. Featured by such news outlets as CNN, The New York Times, and Newsweek, Rapaille has assembled an elite client list straight from the Fortune 100. Read More ›

Access Research Network has just released its second annual “Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories” and its “Top 10 Darwin and Design Resources” list for the year ending in 2007.

The origins debate continued to capture the attention of a world-wide audience in 2007, as evidenced by some of the key news stories designated as among the more important according to Access Research Network (ARN), a leading science and technology watch-dog group based in Colorado Springs, CO.

“Part of our mission at ARN is to help educate the public about issues relating to Darwin and Design,” says Kevin Wirth, ARN Director of Media Relations. “Not only are there a lot of moving parts to this issue, but it also suffers heavily from significant mis-information. One of the things we do is monitor science news and other reports related to this topic, and provide access to resources designed to help others better understand the full scope of this issue. Overall in 2007 I’d say we’ve observed a growing consternation running through many scientific disciplines over issues that were once thought to be resolved long ago. For example, the so-called ‘simple cell’ continues to demonstrate far more complexity and information content than anyone ever imagined. This continues to sustain the argument for Design theorists, but places a growing burden on Darwinists who maintain that this is merely evidence of ‘apparent design’. But we’re seeing a growing number of scientists who simply aren’t buying the ‘apparent design’ explanation. “

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 9 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS asserts that “shared amino acids” in genes common to many types of organisms indicate that all life shares a common ancestor. Intelligent design is not necessarily incompatible with common ancestry, but it must be noted that intelligent agents commonly re-use parts that work in different designs. Thus, similarities in such genetic sequences may also be generated as a result of functional requirements and common design rather than by common descent. In fact, PBS’s statement is highly misleading. Darwin’s tree of life–the notion Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 8 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] According to PBS, the male peacock’s beautifully-colored tail is easily explained using sexual selection: females prefer the colorful “eyes” on the tails of males. Has the evolutionary origin of the peacock’s tail been explained? Sexual selection merely pushes the question back: why should female peacocks prefer male peacocks with tails that have “eyes”? Absent a linkage to survival and reproduction, sexual selection is now a circular argument: male peacocks have beautiful tails because females prefer such tails, and females prefer such tails because Read More ›

I was recently e-mailed by a student who is an evolutionist and skeptical of intelligent design. This student asked various questions about intelligent design, but they were honest questions from an inquiring mind. The student had many misconceptions about ID, and this is unfortunate, because in a different political environment it might be possible for such misconceptions to be dispelled by science educators. I felt it might be helpful to put these questions, along with my answers, in a post here: You asked: “Do you think evolution exists at all?” I reply: Yes. Every ID proponent I know acknowledges that random mutation and blind natural selection are real phenomena that can cause at least some changes within species. Moreover, they Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 7 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS observes that Darwin boasted that embryology provided “the strongest single class of facts in favor of” his theory of evolution. But Darwin penned those words in the 1860s, and developmental biologists have learned much since that time. In fact, Darwin staked much of his evidential support upon the work of the 19th century embryologist Ernst Haeckel. After Darwin, it was discovered that Haeckel promoted fraudulent data to falsely support vertebrate common ancestry by overstating the similarities between vertebrate embryos in their earliest Read More ›

Well, it appears that my article about the inherent contradiction in an important section of the Dover vs. Kitzmiller decision is making evident some potentially dangerous developments among Darwinist opponents of Intelligent Design. Both Richard Hoppe at Panda’s Thumb (“The Disco ‘Tute’s New Man“) and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars (“ID and Testability“) have offered arguments against my position, and with each other–and, it turns out (at least in Brayton’s case), with themselves.
I had pointed out that Judge John Jones affirmed a blatant contradiction in his opinion. He argued that the alleged unsoundness of the argument from irreducible complexity is a blow to Intelligent Design, since it is “central to ID,” and then later argues that even if irreducible complexity were true, it wouldn’t confirm ID because it isn’t central to it, but “merely a test for evolution, not design.”

CSC Senior Fellow John West this week had an insightful commentary in the Tampa Bay Tribune about the growing discussion of religion and science in conjunction with the ongoing presidential campaigns. Ironically, both the preoccupation with religion and the avoidance of science in the presidential campaign may have been fueled by the scientific community itself. Increasingly, self-proclaimed defenders of science have tried to turn “science” into an ideological weapon to attack any questioning by religious believers of the “consensus view” of scientific elites on embryonic stem-cell research, global warming, Darwinian evolution, and similar issues. Read the full piece here.

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 6 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS observes that the famous 19th century naturalist, T.H. Huxley, declared that “evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.” But modern Darwinists have gone much further than Huxley. In Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala celebrates that “Darwin’s greatest accomplishment” was to show that the origin of life’s complexity “can be explained as the result of a natural process–natural selection–without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent.”1 America’s great champion Read More ›