Science and Culture Today | Page 1403 | Discovering Design in Nature

Discovery Institute senior fellow and nationally acclaimed bioethicist Wesley J Smith is having it out with NRO’s John Derbyshire over human exceptionalism.

In the wake of US elections, which largely focused on international issues such as terrorism and the war in Iraq, there have been some who think that this somehow means that scientists should ignore evidence for intelligent design, such as the fact that digital code in DNA and molecular machines in cells exist. Canadian science writer Denyse O’Leary (first of Post-Darwinist, now of Mindful Hack fame) commented on our tendency in the US to think that elections here set the pace for everything else in the world. I hope no one will mind me saying this but many American intelligentsias are very, very parochial. Do they think they have a patent on the ID controversy? Do they think everyone knows Read More ›

David Sepkoski’s recent literature review (“Worldviews in Collision: Recent Literature on the Creation*Evolution Divide”) in Journal of the History of Biology provides another illustration of the fact that many science journals are biased against intelligent design. He uses pejorative language against ID, claiming its proponents engage in a “guerilla campaign,” calling specified complexity “Dembski’s hobby-horse,” and asserting that Stephen Meyer’s article contains a “confused interpretation of the Cambrian explosion” (though Sepkoski provides no specifics to bolster his point). Given the pejorative language, could the anti-ID bias in the scientific community be any clearer? Sepkoski’s omissions are more interesting than what he includes. He reviews no books by scientific proponents of intelligent design, such as The Privileged Planet, which was published Read More ›

Cornell Professor Emeritus Richard A. Baer has an opinion piece in the Cornell Daily Sun that is right on target in several areas but completely lost when it comes to freedom of scientific inquiry and intelligent design. Baer rightly points out instances where staunch Darwinists such as Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins have clearly crossed out of the realm of science and into philosophy by making dogmatically materialistic statements such as Sagan’s famous line that “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Baer explains that in his experience:

A far more serious problem at Cornell and at most universities is the many illegal border crossings that go on in the opposite direction: claims made by scientists, speaking as scientists, that are really theological, philosophical or ethical claims, rather than scientific ones.

TIME magazine this week has an interesting discussion between Richard Dawkins, author most recently of The God Delusion, and Francis Collins, author of The Language of God. It is worth reading. Two observations:

Yesterday I blogged about my correspondence with New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean, who covers the evolution debate for the Times. Today I thought I would remind readers that this is not the first time we’ve reported about editorializing by Ms. Dean on the evolution issue. Last year, Dean wrote an op-ed advising evolutionists on what they should do to win the public debate over evolution. But the Times still assigns Ms. Dean to cover the evolution debate. Question: Would the Times assign a reporter to cover the abortion debate who had written an op-ed advising the pro-life movement on what it needed to do to in order to prevail? Conflicts of interest apparently don’t matter when the issue is Read More ›

A few days ago, I took New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean to task for putting words in the mouth of Ohio Board of Education member Deborah Owens Fink. According to an article by Dean, “Dr. Owens Fink…said the [Ohio] curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.” But as I pointed out, Dr. Owens Fink did not call intelligent design “an ideological cousin of creationism,” even though Dean’s wording makes this appear to be the case. Those words represent Dean’s own editorial evaluation (in what was supposed to be a news article, not an editorial). According to Dr. Owens Fink, “the reporter… put words in the article that may represent her view but not mine.”

I contacted Ms. Dean to give her a chance to respond to my criticisms, and she graciously replied. What ensued was an exchange of views that helps illuminate the mindset of many reporters who cover the evolution issue. Here is Dean’s first response:

As we recently discussed here, there was a factually challenged article against intelligent design in a UK newspaper, The Independent. Given the anti-ID motive-mongering in the article, it is not surprising to find that the British Center for Science Education (BCSE) helped put the article together. The BCSE’s Roger Stanyard admits that “[s]ome of you are aware that I helped in putting it together” and gives the URL, saying the article is “based n [sic] material and advice supplied by BCSE.” (see here) So how closely is this “British Center for Science Education” tied to the “National Center for Science Education” (NCSE) based in the United States? It’s not entirely clear, but recently the NCSE’s Nick Matzke explained that “Roger Read More ›

The Denver Post published a very good review of two important new books about the debate over Darwinism and intelligent design, earlier this week. Doug Groothuis reviews both CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells’s new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and the new book by professional skeptic Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design.

Later this month Discovery Institute Press will publish a new book examining the misguided attempts of some conservatives to embrace Darwinism and champion it as compatible with conservative views. Most conservatives are presumed to be critical of Darwin’s theory, yet a number of thinkers on the right, such as George Will, James Q. Wilson, and Larry Arnhart, have mounted a vigorous defense of Darwinism. Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West will explain in Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest that the attempts to reconcile conservatism and Darwinian biology ultimately misunderstand both.