Science and Culture Today | Page 1346 | Discovering Design in Nature

PBS-NOVA’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary has evoked much commentary and response. In fact, we have recently received a flood of e-mails from members of the public who felt that “Judgment Day” was heavily biased and inaccurate, including e-mails from educators and teachers who thanked us for correcting the misinformation promoted by PBS. Other e-mails have not been so nice, showing that sadly, some Darwinists apparently lack the Thanksgiving holiday spirit. Below is a sampling of some of the e-mails we have received recently: One Darwinist wrote us to explain that he is a “science teacher,” showing the type of example that he sets for his students regarding how to discuss controversial scientific and social issues: “May you Read More ›

As we noted earlier, Mike Behe has a response to another critic, Dr. Ian Musgrave of University of Adelaide, who wrote “An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Behe.” Read Behe’s response to Musgrave at his Amazon blog using the links below. Behe has also responded to a number of other critics at that site, including Ken Miller, Sean Carroll and Nick Matzke. Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5

I just posted at Discovery Blog about the remarkable article in The Los Angeles Times by Richard Hayes and what it tells us about the political motivation of scientists who opposed embryonic stem cell research, but were reluctant to speak out because they didn’t want to go against the P.C. crowd in science and the media. The relevance to other issues, including Darwin’s theory, is obvious. http://www.discovery.org/blogs/discoveryblog/

Recently stories about intelligent design and evolution have been appearing more regularly in the mainstream media. Many of these have to do with ongoing arguments over the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution, and academic freedom cases of scholars and scientists researching intelligent design theory. Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest stories of recent weeks. PBS’ NOVA aired its review of the Dover intelligent design trial and misrepresented what intelligent design is and what its proponents say about it.

Federal judges don’t ordinarily travel around the country speaking about their judicial rulings, but Judge Jones is no ordinary federal judge. While promoting the PBS-NOVA special on intelligent design, he recently appeared the Lehrer Newshour, where he made striking admissions that demonstrate the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling. Two hallmarks of judicial activism are (1) the tendency to resolve questions outside the scope of the judiciary, which are best left to other branches of government,1 and (2) the intent to make policy and influence parties outside of the case.2 Judge Jones’ own admissions on the Lehrer Newshour demonstrate that both of these criticisms correctly apply to his Kitzmiller ruling. Judge Jones’ Expansive Intrusion into Legislative QuestionsFirst, Judge Jones admitted Read More ›

We had a “heads up” yesterday from Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith to expect a breakthrough on the issue of embryonic stem cells, and now he has published on it. Read more here.

One way you can tell an ideologue is if he ditches an old friend because the old friend no longer agrees with him. It has happened to me occasionally on the issue of Darwinism, and I rather relish it, frankly. I have been a card carrying member of the Centrist Establishment my whole adult life, so I experience a certain excitement in being stigmatized as an extremist by the Leftist Establishment. Me? An extremist? Why thank you so much!

The same thing is happening to Anthony Flew now, in double dosage, and I hope he, too, is enjoying the notoriety.

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 ›