Science and Culture Today | Page 1412 | Discovering Design in Nature

Discovery Institute’s “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” education campaign is intended to defend the excellent science standards adopted by the Kansas State Board of Education and to counter the campaign of misinformation by groups like Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS), which are wildly distorting what the Kansas science standards actually say and do.

Most importantly, the “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” campaign seeks to correct three big falsehoods being spread by opponents of the Kansas science standards:

Falsehood #1: The Kansas science standards include intelligent design.

Contrary to claims by opponents, the Kansas science standards do not include intelligent design. In spreading this falsehood, opponents of the standards ignore the following clear statement by the Kansas Board of Education in the standards: “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design….” (emphasis added) Which part of “do not include Intelligent Design” can’t opponents of the standards understand?

“Should public schools censor scientific evidence just because it challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution?” asks Robert Crowther, director of communications for Discovery Institute a non-partisan public policy center. “Of course not. Teachers should present all the scientific evidence, including both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory, and this is exactly what the Kansas state science standards call for.”

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Sign the Petition and Stand Up for Science at www.standupforscience.com

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At the behest of Kansas teachers and parents the Discovery Institute in July will launch the www.standupforscience.com website to help defend Kansas’ science standards. At the website people who support teaching both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution will be able to sign a petition supporting the state’s science standards.

There is a concerted effort underway in Kansas to censor science and undermine the strong science standards adopted there last year. In 2005 the Kansas state board of education (KSBOE) courageously voted to adopt science standards that require students to learn all about evolution, including both the scientific evidence and for and against the theory. That’s it. The Board didn’t require any alternative theories be taught, just the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution. However there are a number of groups both inside and outside of Kansas that are seeking to stifle discussion in Kansas classrooms of anything critical of Darwinian evolution. Chief among them is “Kansas Citizens for Science” (KCFS). Not content with simply complaining about the Kansas science Read More ›

Yesterday, Cornelius Hunter critiqued at IDtheFuture some of Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller’s theologically-charged arguments for evolution during the Kitzmiller trial. Miller is a widely promoted theistic evolutionist, and thus served as the plaintiffs leadoff expert witness for biology, evolution, and theistic evolutionism during the Kitzmiller trial. Judge Jones apparently found Miller’s existence so compelling that the Judge ruled that evolution and “belief in the existence of a supreme being” are compatible, and ruled that any belief otherwise is “utterly false.” Yet significant portions of Miller’s testimony about the anti-religious descriptions of evolution contained in his textbooks were factually challenged (i.e. wrong). On the second day of the Kitzmiller trial, Miller was confronted about theologically charged statements about evolution Read More ›

Pete Chadwell, a graphic artist in Bend, Oregon understands what so many Darwinists don’t: students are being short changed in their science education when they learn only half the story about evolution. Teaching students both the scientific strengths and weaknesses is good education, good science, and good for students. Darwin himself would support this approach to teaching evolution. As Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” And as science teacher John Scopes said some 80 or so years ago, “If you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one Read More ›

Discovery senior fellow, technology guru and conservative economist George Gilder has a major essay in the new issue of National Review, titled “Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific Advance.” (subscription required)

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Recently Discovery President Bruce Chapman sat down for an interview with Discovery senior fellow, author, and technology guru George Gilder. The subject: evolution and intelligent design. Listen to a clip of the interview on the ID The Future Podcast.(MP3 format, 53MB, download only, no streaming)

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Gilder’s piece offers a unique and fresh perspective on the issue of materialism vs. design and is a breakthrough description of the case against Darwinism and for intelligent design based largely on information theory and our understanding of information in the age of supercomputing and instant information delivery. It turns out that Darwin’s theory is especially vulnerable to the analysis of life from the hierarchical structure that Gilder says a 21st century understanding of modern physics, mathematics and computer science provide. His penultimate point? “Wherever there is information there is a preceding intelligence.”

Over at Intellectualconservative.com, attorney Steven Laib has a short review of Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision.

All things considered, this is a book worth reading. Anyone who takes an interest in the legal battles over how science is to be taught in the public schools will find it informative and potentially a roadmap to where the next cases in this area will be argued.

Laib isn’t the only who’s read and complimented Traipsing. Here are some additional comments from reviewers of the book.

As we reported earlier this week, there were a number of articles equating intelligent design with creationism in the THES recently. Bruce Gordon, research director for Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture, has written the following response to the THES, correcting their mistakes and outlining some of the key points of intelligent design theory.

[Editor’s Note: The three individual installments of this series can be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The final complete article, What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, can be found here.] The noted scholar Ronald Numbers is often cited as an objective authority on the history of the debate over evolution. But when he recently co-authored an article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, “Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action,” I was surprised that Numbers used invective language and clearly incorrect claims to discredit the theory of intelligent design. My first two pieces on the article are here and here. Now I want Read More ›

Predictably, as soon as we announced that the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism list had topped 600 doctoral scientists, we were flooded with a wave of scientists wanting to add their names to the list. Well, okay, it was a small wave — 14 in the past four days to be exact — but a wave none the less.

Over at Post-Darwinist, Denyse O’Leary notes that she could probably heat her home with the energy generated by the Darwinist’s voiciferous denunciations of anyone who dares to doubt the veracity of the Darwinian mechanism.

Maybe, as the rage grows, I can offer energy from, like, enormous clusters of Darwinists denouncing specific scientists, in which case I can sign on to an alternative energy provider in Canada, offering “pro-Darwin noise” as an energy source. Goodness knows, given recent American Episcopal Church pronouncements, there is enough of that to turn my modest home – and homes for a six-block radius – into a northern Banana Republic. Hey, if all my neighbours agree to sign up with me for a few evening classes in tropical horticulture (instead of the temperate/near north horticulture we know and love), we could put all our extra bananas and pineapples into the local Food Bank. Cheap at the price, and good citizenship! And at least some use for the Darwinists’ rage, too.