Science and Culture Today | Page 1336 | Discovering Design in Nature

On December 3, Discovery Institute helped organize a press conference at the Iowa State Capitol where we released evidence that Guillermo Gonzalez faced discrimination at ISU because he supports intelligent design as a science. Someone from the pro-Darwin activist group, Iowa Citizens for Science, attended that press conference and passed out a press release. Citizens were welcome to attend the press conference and we made no objections to this person attending and distributing his press release. Within a couple days, a press release appeared on the Iowa Citizens for Science (ICFS) website, asserting that “[Guillermo] Gonzalez and the DI have announced plans to sue Iowa State University.” But that statement was both untrue and impossible: Discovery Institute is not Dr. Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 5 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.]https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0684834936 “Darwin was ignorant of the reason for variation within a species,” writes Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box, “but biochemistry has identified the molecular basis for it.”1 There were other things that Darwin did not know. For example, Darwin assumed that the cell was like a primitive blob of protoplasm that could easily evolve new biological functions. As Behe explains, “To Darwin, then, as to every other scientist of the time, the cell was a black box. … Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 4 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.] As discussed in Slide #1, proponents of Darwinism often employ the “Evolution” Bait-and-Switch, using evidence for small-scale changes and then over-extrapolating to claim that such modest evidence proves Darwin’s grander claims. In fact, this is precisely what PBS does in its online materials for “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” A PBS web slide asserts, “Evolution happens through natural selection,” and then goes on to discuss small-scale changes in the sizes of beaks in finches on the Galapagos Islands as supporting evidence. Such Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 3 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.] As noted in the Introduction, PBS asserts that the data “unequivocally” support the view that “[e]volution happens through natural selection.” In this dogmatic statement, PBS has again failed to clearly define “evolution.” If by “evolution,” PBS means that we can observe small-scale changes within species, then no one doubts that natural selection plays a role. But in fact, many scientists have questioned whether natural selection acting upon random mutation is sufficient to generate new species or new complex biological features. As evolutionary scientist Robert Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 2 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.] No one doubts that Darwin was a gifted scientist who made careful observations of the natural world. The same could be said for Sir Isaac Newton, an early proponent of intelligent design whose ideas inspired both modern physics and modern science as a whole. Yet despite the long-lasting success of Newton’s ideas, technological advancements in the early 20th century overturned Newtonian physics and replaced them with Einstein’s theories. If history is to be our guide, science must always be open to following the Read More ›

At festive Winter Solstice Luncheons across the country, determined atheists are gathering to celebrate one of the oldest and most superstitious holidays of human history. As speakers present lectures on the history of Solstice celebrations, participants give and receive Winter Solstice Cards. These vary little from the general theme of my favorite card, which depicts Charles Darwin as Santa Claus on the front. Apparently, Darwin is the Patron Saint of Solstice. Inside, it reads simply:

evolve your beliefs.
CELEBRATE WINTER SOLSTICE

After yesterday’s article in the Dallas Morning News portrayed Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education Don McLeroy’s Sunday school comments as if they were the basis for his science education policy, McLeroy has a response in the Dallas Morning News today.

McLeroy asks a simple question — what do you teach in science class? — then clarifies for the record his “motivations for questioning evolution:”

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 1 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 confidently instructs us that “evolution happens.” But should that matter? Even Darwin’s scientific critics agree that evolution happens. PBS is introducing equivocation into the discussion by failing to clearly define “evolution.” Some use “evolution” to refer to something as simple as minor changes within individual species that occur over short periods of time (Evolution #1). Others use the same word to mean something much more far-reaching, such as claiming that all living organisms are descended from a single common ancestor (Evolution #2), Read More ›

Fresh from our debate at Seattle Pacific University last month, Larry Arnhart resumed his on-again-off-again attack on Darwin Day in America—a book he alternately praises and condemns. Arnhart originally misrepresented (here and here) Darwin Day by alleging that I tried to tie every example of scientific reductionism in my book back to Darwin. As I pointed out in a previous blog, Arnhart’s claim is untrue, and I showed how he had misread or misrepresented the particular examples he had cited. Rather than correct his erroneous claim, however, Arnhart now asserts that I engaged in “bait and switch” when I pointed out in my book that Darwinism is “only one part of [the] larger story” of “materialistic reductionism” even while also arguing that “the work of Charles Darwin ultimately supplied the empirical basis for a robust materialism finally to take hold.” But if there is any “bait and switch” going on it is by Arnhart, not me.

The opponents of Intelligent Design have recently been trying to slither out of a logical dilemma they have created for themselves. Their problem is that they make two mutually exclusive claims: First that ID is not science, and, second, that ID makes false claims.

The primary reason opponents say that ID is not science is because it doesn’t make falsifiable claims. But if it doesn’t make falsifiable claims, then it can’t be said to have made claims that have been found false. Yet this is exactly what they charge.
Opponents of ID have done logical contortions of extraordinary dexterity to get out of this dilemma, but they only seem to land themselves in further contradiction. This contradictory attack on ID is on full display in Judge John Jones arguments in Dover vs. Kitzmiller, the decision that has been hailed by ID’s detractors as the end of ID.