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

Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey has a short review of John West’s Darwin Day in America in today’s paper. John G. West, who disbelieves in Darwinism, has written a book on its bad cultural consequences, from eugenics to permissive sex education. West’s opponents will not read it, because he is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle think tank that has championed Intelligent Design. And that is too bad, because even those who believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, as I do, can concede that some things done in its name have been less than pleasing. Though himself a Darwinist, Ramsey clearly understands the value of civil debate and free and open inquiry. He concludes: West offers a Read More ›

This CBS News report falls immediately into the hole of stereotyping the debate over evolution as simply a religious issue. The reporter ominously opines: “How did life begin? The question often divides faith and science.” This is an all too familiar setup for an Inherit the Wind style treatment of the issue — as if the only questions about Darwinism are religious ones. Not so. There are a lot of scientific questions at play in this debate — indeed, all of the serious questions about the evidence are scientific. Yet, as the report goes on, it manages to climb out of that hole to give a better, fuller look at the overall debate. This story shows that while there may Read More ›

Supporters of Darwin’s theory have claimed to oppose teaching religion in the nation’s science classrooms for years. Now, just in time for Darwin Day 2008, leading evolution proponents (including the National Academy of Sciences, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the National Center for Science Education) are cynically promoting religious instruction in schools as a way of defusing opposition to Darwinian evolution. On February 6, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Dr. John West, author of Darwin Day in America (ISI Books), will present a tale of hypocrisy and hubris on the part of leading Darwinists. Join Dr. West at Discovery Institute in Seattle as he examines how these organizations are willing to undermine the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause in order to promote Read More ›

WHAT:Stanford University will play host to a debate entitled Atheism vs. Theism & the Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design. This debate is being organized by student groups at Stanford: IDEA Club at Stanford,The Stanford Review and Vox Clara: A Journal of Christian Thought at Stanford. WHO:Chirstopher Hitchens vs. Jay RichardsChristopher Hitchens — Contributing editor to Vanity Fair; visiting professor, New School in New York; author of God is Not Great. VS.Jay W. Richards — Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute; co-author, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.Hosted by Ben Stein — Journalist, author and actor in the soon-to-be released movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Read More ›

I have written an extensive response to the National Academy of Sciences’ new anti-ID booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The full response, The Facts about Intelligent Design: A Response to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science, Evolution, and Creationism, can be read online here or downloaded as a PDF. Permission is freely granted to reproduce the document for educational use. Below are some excerpts from the rebuttal: IntroductionA 1982 poll found that only 9% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes. Two years later, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued its first Science and Creationism booklet, stating that science and religion occupy “separate and mutually exclusive realms.” Public skepticism of evolution remained high–a 1993 Read More ›

Materialist neurologist Dr. Steven Novella recently took Deepak Chopra to task for Chopra’s support for mind-body dualism. Chopra, a respected physician and professor of medicine who has written and lectured extensively on spirituality in medicine, had pointed out the numerous problems raised by a dogmatic materialist understanding of the mind-brain problem. Materialists believe that the mind in a sense doesn’t exist as a separate entity; it’s merely a state of the brain, caused entirely by neurons and neurochemistry. Novella states:

One could write many pages correcting the inaccurate information in the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) new version of Science, Evolution and Creationism. One of its most egregious errors is that it blatantly misrepresents the flagellum. It states, “For example, in the case of the bacterial flagellum, there is no single, uniform structure that is found in all flagellar bacteria.” (pg. 40) While technically this statement may be true if one looks at the fine-grain of the amino-acid sequence of every single protein among flagellum-bearing bacteria, there most certainly are highly conserved flagellar parts. In this regard, this statement is extremely misleading and inaccurate. Consider the conclusions, directly to the contrary of the NAS, of Mark J. Pallen et al.‘s Read More ›

In April, Random House will release a brand new book by CSC senior fellow David Berlinski, titled The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. Who better than an agnostic to argue with atheists about science?William F. Buckley likes it. “Berlinski’s book is everything desirable: it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing, and of course vastly learned. I congratulate him.” –William F. Buckley Jr. And, so does Michael Behe. “With high style and light-hearted disdain, David Berlinski deflates the intellectual pretensions of the scientific atheist crowd. Maybe they can recite the Periodic Table by heart, but the secular Berlinski shows that this doesn’t get them very far in reasoning about much weightier matters.”–Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biological Sciences, Lehigh Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 14 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 presents a thoroughly pro-Darwin only account of the debate over evolution. In fact, there are many reasons why we should teach the controversy over Darwinian evolution: (1) Congress supports such a policy:“The Conferees recognize that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to Read More ›

In his acclaimed book Evolution: The History of an Idea, the respected historian of evolution Peter J. Bowler explains that the journal Nature was originally founded in the late nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley and others for the express purpose of promoting a “campaign” to support Darwinism: By exploiting their position in this network, Huxley and his friends ensured that Darwinism had come to stay. (Ruse, 1979a). They controlled the scientific journals–the journal Nature was founded in part to promote the campaign–and manipulated academic appointments. Hull (1978) has stressed how important these rhetorical and political skills were in creating a scientific revolution. The Darwinists adopted a flexible approach which deflected opposition, minimized infighting among themselves, and made it easy Read More ›