Science and Culture Today | Page 1344 | Discovering Design in Nature

Nearly 20 years ago, a small non-profit in Texas, The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), published a short supplemental textbook called Of Pandas and People (Pandas). This event did not go unnoticed. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) soon thereafter published numerous reviews condemning Pandas as a “creationist … ‘equal time’ tract” that presented “a pot pourri of half-truths, untruths, and nonsense.” Law review articles were published hoping to prove Pandas unconstitutional. In 2005, a federal judge banned Pandas outright from science classrooms in Dover, Pennsylvania — but only after denying FTE the right to appear before the court to defend the book. Most troubling, the judge largely ignored the published text of Pandas, instead scrutinizing long-forgotten pre-publication Read More ›

Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design
By Francis J. Beckwith
Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, 185 pages.
ISBN 0-7425-1430-7

Legal scholar Francis J. Beckwith recounts the legal history of court battles over the teaching of biological origins. Though many thought that the landmark Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard would permanently settle these questions by ruling creationism unconstitutional, Beckwith observes that intelligent design poses a new challenge to legal scholars. Beckwith provides a thorough treatment of the subject.

[This four part series responding to Paul Gross can be seen in: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.] In his review of Michael Behe’s book The Edge of Evolution, Paul Gross wrongly claims that cosmic fine-tuning is rejected by mainstream physicists. Gross writes that “as proof of intelligent design [Behe] now hitches it to the strong anthropic principle: a universe fine-tuned for human life, and not by accident. … mainstream … cosmology remain[s] unimpressed.” First, cosmic design is a minimal component of Behe’s book, which primarily focuses on biological design. Second, there are a variety of respected physicists who believe that cosmic find-tuning is a valid inference from the data. Indeed, Gross seems to have forgotten that numerous Read More ›

This weekend Discovery Institute is moving its Seattle offices crosstown. For the locals in the know, we’ll be saying goodbye to the exciting corner of Third & Pike, and heading south closer to Pioneer Square (here’s a pic of the new digs). The new street address is 208 Columbia. More on the move here. Moving servers, phone systems, and everything else is a chore. So, if the blog goes down for a while, well you’ve been warned. And if you’re having trouble reaching us between now and Monday, have patience.

November 13th PBS’ NOVA program aired Judgment Day a special program on the Dover ID trial. For the truth about the Dover intelligent design trial go to www.traipsingintoevolution.com.

Today’s edition of the student newspaper at Baylor University carries a devastating investigative report exposing new details of the university’s shameful treatment of pro-ID engineering professor Robert Marks. Anyone who thinks Baylor science faculty have academic freedom to research and write about ID should read this article, which provides extensive documentation of the lengths to which some Baylor administrators will go to censor and shut down open discussion and research about intelligent design. From reading the article, it appears that the intolerance of pro-ID faculty comes from the very top of the institution. This account makes a mockery of Baylor’s own Faculty Handbook, which promises faculty that

“John West’s book is a deep and comprehensive study of scientific materialism’s morally corrupting effects on American public policy. Although some readers (like me) will not find his attack on Darwinian science persuasive, anyone who wants to think about the moral and political implications of modern science will have to ponder his arguments.” — Larry Arnhart, Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University and author of Darwinian Conservatism

Larry Arnhart is the most articulate defender of the idea that Darwinism supports conservatism, and I have enjoyed interacting with him over the past couple of years (we debated again tonight at Seattle Pacific University). Unfortunately, Arnhart has a habit of mischaracterizing my actual positions, and so he often ends up attacking a straw man. (He’s done the same thing to historian Richard Weikart.) Arnhart is at it again, criticizing my book Darwin Day in America on his blog for a position it doesn’t even uphold. This is the same book Arnhart earlier praised (see above). Since we disagree about Darwin’s theory, I fully anticipated that Arnhart would criticize parts of my book. But I had hoped that he would critique something that was actually in the book, which would allow for a much more interesting discussion. Alas, that was not to be.

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.

Perhaps the most celebrated defense attorney in the first half of the twentieth century, Clarence Darrow is best known for his role at the Scopes “monkey trial” in the 1920s. But he also was an early champion of the idea that criminals should not be held responsible for their crimes. Darrow’s debunking of criminal responsibility was based squarely on his worldview of deterministic materialism.

Darrow once told prisoners in a county jail that there was no difference whatever in the moral condition between themselves and those still in society. “I do not believe people are in jail because they deserve to be,” he declared. “They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it, on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control, and for which they are in no way responsible.” According to Darrow, “there ought to be no jails, and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealing with the people on the inside, there would be no such institutions as jails.” He added that he knew why “every one” of the prisoners committed their crimes, even if they did not know the reason themselves: “You did these things because you were bound to do them.” Those prisoners who thought they made a choice to commit a crime were simply deluded. “It looked to you at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit; but still, after all, you had no choice.”

Paula Apsell was the executive producer of PBS/NOVA’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which tries to inaccurately paint ID as a creationist idea that has been refuted by science. But in fact, a few years ago Ms. Apsell produced a different NOVA documentary entitled “Mystery of the Megaflood.” For a geologist like me, it’s a fascinating tale about how mainstream geologists took decades to accept the view that a giant post-glacial flood was responsible for much of the bizarre geological features found in eastern Washington. According to Apsell’s “Megaflood” documentary, a geologist in the early 1900s named J. Harlen Bretz proposed a catastrophic local flood theory to explain this geology. Bretz was ridiculed by his contemporary geologists because his ideas Read More ›

UPDATE: A tenth PBS blunder is now addressed, where PBS makes the false insinuation that intelligent design is no more scientific than astrology. Scroll down to read more. More than 50 years ago two playwrights penned a fictionalized account of the 1920s Scopes Trial called “Inherit the Wind” that is now universally regarded by historians as inaccurate propaganda. Last night PBS aired its “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which similarly promotes propaganda about the 2005 Kitzmiller trial and intelligent design (ID). Most of the misinformation in “Judgment Day” was corrected by ID proponents long ago. To help readers sift the fact from the fiction, here are links to articles rebutting some of PBS’s most blatant misrepresentations: 1. PBS falsely claims Read More ›