Science and Culture Today | Page 1355 | Discovering Design in Nature

A new six part series of interviews has popped up on Youtube featuring attorney Ed Sisson. Sisson you may remember was a key player in the Kansas state board of education’s hearings on science standards in 2005. He also happens to have been Dr. Caroline Crocker’s pro-bono attorney when she was ousted from George Mason University for teaching some of the scientific evidence that challenges Darwinian evolution. So, he knows a bit about academic freedom and free open scientific inquiry. The main thrust in this interview is Sisson’s contention that Darwinian evolution should be open to scrutiny, both in the classroom and the courtroom.Sisson wrote to tell us about the video: “Although I gave the talk two years ago, it Read More ›

Download this response as a PDF Opponents of academic freedom in Louisiana have been putting out a smokescreen of misinformation in their effort to kill legislation to protect the rights of Louisiana’s science teachers. Rather than discuss the real issues at stake, they are trying to get their way through misrepresentations, scare tactics, and the demonization of those who support honest discussion of scientific controversies. Their misinformation campaign shouldn’t be allowed to obscure key facts: 1. Louisiana’s academic freedom legislation is not about “creationism.” It’s about protecting the rights of teachers to teach good science. Many teachers remain confused and fearful about what information they can legally teach regarding controversial scientific topics such as evolution. By enacting a limited right Read More ›

Baton Rouge, LA — Yesterday the Louisiana House Education Committee unanimously passed SB 733, an academic freedom bill. The bill requires that Louisiana schools shall “create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” The passage followed testimony from four Ph.D. scientists, including three biologists, who testified in favor of the bill. One biology professor from Louisiana College, Dr. Wade Warren, testified about how during his graduate studies at Texas A & M, the dean ordered him cease discussing scientific problems with students. Another biochemist, Dr. Read More ›

In Louisiana, a state legislative committee unanimously has passed to the full state house a bill that will protect the rights of teachers to present scientific evidence both for and against modern evolutionary theory. A slew of local scientists were on hand to support the bill, along with educators and students. It’s not hard to understand why when you know what the bill actually says: “teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.” The next step is for the House side of the legislature to vote on the bill, which has already passed the Senate with Read More ›

Note: This is the third in a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain. A design must be considered improbable if it is highly functional and durable yet too complex to have come about spontaneously or by intermediate steps. Think of the subway system in any large metropolitan area. Could the combination of tracks, stations, tunnels, signs, vending machines, stairwells, lighting, trains, billboards, ticket booths, turnstiles, benches, platforms, security measures, and restrooms have happened all at once or did it come about by stages? If these commuter systems were to follow the tenets of the theory of evolution, the tracks going off in every direction might be Read More ›

Last week, I talked at length with a Washington Post editorial writer named Jo-Ann Armao. Ms. Armao said she was working on a possible editorial about the academic freedom bills on evolution currently being considered by legislatures of various states. I gave Ms. Armao a lengthy interview, providing a lot of background information and correcting various errors that have appeared in news coverage of the bills. The Post has now published its editorial on the topic, and it’s now evident that Ms. Armao simply didn’t care about facts. Ms. Armao had her spin, and even though the facts didn’t substantiate it, she was going to stick to it. Predictably, the Post asserts that the academic freedom bills are about “inviting Read More ›

Of course not, as we all know. But someone forgot to tell Hector Avalos, a critic of my role in the movie “Expelled.”

In a radio debate with me on WHO in Des Moines this morning, Avalos (religion professor at Iowa State University) claimed that Hitler was a creationist. I objected to this ridiculous claim. I countered that Hitler may have believed in a God of some sort who created natural laws, but one of the laws he thought God had created was the law of evolution by natural selection and the struggle for existence. I then quoted from Hitler to demonstrate that he did indeed believe in human evolution. In an extended conversation about evolution on October 24, 1941, Hitler lambasted Christianity, claiming that evolutionary science showed the poverty of the church’s dogmas. Hitler then stated, “There have been humans at the rank at least of a baboon in any case for 300,000 years at least.”

What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? A Friendly Conversation About Evolution
By Robert C. Newman, and John L. Wiester with Janet Moneymaker and Jonathan Moneymaker
InterVarsity Press, 2000, 146 pages
ISBN: 0-8308-2249-6

Feeling primitive? Unevolved? Inorganic? Then try a bowl of Primordial Soup! What’s Darwin Got To Do With It? is an illustrated friendly conversation about evolution and what science can explain about life. Aimed at younger students, this comic-book style work helps students understand if finch beaks really prove Darwinism is true or if the encoded message in DNA implies an intelligent designer.

HIgh school biology teacher Doug Cowan has a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal responding to a recent article which misreprsented his comments on the debate over how to teach evolution. Science Looks at All the EvidenceMay 17, 2008 Your article “Evolution’s Critics Shift Tactics With Schools” (Currents, May 2) claims that I would “like a legal guarantee [so I] can teach as I see fit.” Actually, I believe in teaching the prescribed curriculum, and I do so. But I don’t think a teacher should be penalized for exploring required topics in greater depth, especially in cases where scientists have different views. One should have the freedom to pursue and teach all the evidence even if it leads to disturbing Read More ›