Science and Culture Today | Page 1418 | Discovering Design in Nature

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.

Despite the Darwinist community’s long-standing campaign to help the public come to the “correct” view that “evolution and religion are compatible,” public skepticism of evolution remains high. (See this link for documentation.) This would logically lead one to the conclusion that there are other factors besides religion that drive skepticism of evolution. Perhaps, one might even suggest, for many people the issue has a lot to do with science! Recently I was told about a 1997 article in Scientific American which reported a study conducted by Brian Alters on students’ reasons for rejecting evolution (“What Are They Thinking?: Students’ reasons for rejecting evolution go beyond the Bible,” by Rebecca Zacks, Scientific American, October 1997, pg. 34). The study surveyed over Read More ›

The Times (London) Higher Education Supplement (THES) confuses intelligent design with young earth creationism in a slew of articles as part of a crusade against ID.
The main article of the four on the subject is stereotypical of the mainstream media’s insistence that this is about religion and not science, starting out reporting on a tent revival meeting and going on to focus on religion rather than on any of the serious scientific issues under debate.
In this article the reporters go after creationists, and at the end of the piece there is a short description of intelligent design and how it differs from creationism. However, this article is not available online, and it is the only place where the differences between ID and creationism are cited.

In the only article widely available online, “Intelligent design creeps on to courses”, the THES clearly equates ID with creationism. The headline implies the article is about ID, but the people quoted and the groups discussed are all creationists, and are referred to as such in the article. This is clearly misleading the reader to equate the two concepts.

The THES is reporting that courses on intelligent design and creationism now will be compulsory in zoology and genetics classes, as will criticism of the theories.

But there’s a twist: lecturers will present the controversial theories as being incompatible with scientific evidence. “It is essential they (students) understand the historical context and the flaws in the arguments these groups put forward,” says Michael McPherson, of Leeds University.

Some Darwinists are so against teaching of intelligent design that they are criticizing even mentioning the theory in order to attack it.

Despite the clear anti- creationist stance of these lecturers, the move has set warning bells ringing across the UK science community.

Even the critics realize that the issue there is about creationism, so why would the THES insist on including ID when their stories are actually about something else?

Science magazine has issued a correction for incorrectly calling Discovery Institute “creationism’s main think tank.” (see original post here) Corrections and ClarificationsNews of the Week: “Court revives Georgia sticker case” by C. Holden (2 June, p. 1292). The article incorrectly characterizes the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, as a think tank for the creationist movement. The institute is a public policy organization that operates many different programs, including the Center for Science & Culture, which supports the work of scholars who explore challenges to evolution and promote the concept of intelligent design. Wnen we originally called for Science to issue the correction it appeared we’d been rebuffed, but now we see that they have corrected the record. It is good Read More ›