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You can now listen to Steve Meyer’s winning debate with Darwinist Peter Ward. And, if you’re in the Northwest you can watch the debate on TVW Thursday, May 4 at 8pm. Reporters and columnists especially should listen to this as a real debate by scientists on the science of Darwinian evolution is almost as rare as life in the universe.
With the rise in public desire for information about intelligent design and the overall debate over how to teach evolution it is no surprise that we’re seeing more classes on intelligent design at colleges, albeit usually in philosophy as opposed to science. Much attention has been given to the future course on ID recently announced at Cornell. But, Knox College is just now finishing a course on the subject. From the media report it’s a little hard to tell what the actual content of the course was. But according to the professor Martin Roth students seemed to appreciate the chance to learn about ID. “All of the students are now very much aware that the issue is far more complicated Read More ›
Dr. George Coyne, the University of Arizona astronomer and Jesuit priest who is also head of the Vatican Observatory has been speaking to whatever Darwinist group will have him on the topic of why intelligent design “belittles God” and should be opposed by Catholics, who, indeed, should welcome Darwin’s theory in all its glory. Coyne has infinite Christian charity and patience for Darwinists who diss God, but none at all for his co-religionists who doubt Darwin.
A news article last week in the National Catholic Register that merely reported Coyne’s provocative views sparked a spate of letters this week (April 30-May 6 issue–not yet available online) rebuking Dr. Coyne for misrepresenting ID (among other things he called it “a fundamentalist movement”) and for attacking Cardinal Schoenborn of Austria. The cardinal, of course, has emphasized the Church’s longstanding commitment to the reality of design in nature and has pointed out the folly of full-blown Darwinism. At the end of the extensive letters column the editors make clear that they were not endorsing Coyne’s views. In fact, they state, “Our editorial position…is very close to that of the Discovery Institute.”
Read More ›Human Events Online has published a wonderful little essay by Greg Frankey explaining how liberal organizations like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are working to keep any mention of intelligent design out of public school classes of any stripe, let alone science classes. In arguing so he shows how the teaching of evolution itself is nothing more than dogma, and points to some of the more pressing problems with the whole theory. As counterintuitive as it seems that a species could develop new physical traits simply because such a mutation might be advantageous (can we all learn to fly or to breathe underwater if we just wish to long enough?), it simply defies credulity Read More ›
Last night’s debate before 800 at Town Hall in Seattle was a notable success for Dr. Stephen Meyer, Discovery Institute and the case for intelligent design. The Seattle Times co-sponsored the “Talk of the Times” event with Town Hall and their respective representatives seemed surprised by the large public response. Like some of the local Darwinists with whom I and other Discovery staff spoke afterwards, they probably were surprised also by the outcome. Call it a technical knockout. David Postman of The Seattle Times, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer and Dr. Peter Ward Several University of Washington professors came to provide moral support to Dr. Peter Ward, the well-known UW astrobiologist, but they may have wondered why he had agreed to Read More ›
Last night, the Seattle Times Talk of the Times at Town Hall Seattle featured a debate over evolution and intelligent design between CSC Director Stephen Meyer and US paleontologist Peter Ward. The event was sold out with 800+ in attendance for what turned out to be a really good debate.
David Postman of the Seattle Times did a fine job as the moderator of the debate. If you saw my post yesterday about Postman’s front page article in yesterday’s Times you know that I had some misgivings about his being the moderator. However, I have to congratulate him for his objectivity and balance, and his overall good job in keeping the debate both substantive and enlightening.
Read More ›Tonight, Seattle Times reporter David Postman will moderate a debate over intelligent design and evolution between CSC Director Stephen Meyer and UW Paleontologist Peter Ward. If Postman’s article in the Times today is any guide, Meyer has his work cut out for him trying to correct and educate the moderator, as well as having to refute the typical mischaracterizations and misplaced attacks he’ll likely hear from Ward.
The fact is that Postman came in to our offices and spent a fair amount of time interviewing Bruce Chapman, and separately going over the science of intelligent design (which is virtually ignored in Postman’s piece — funny for a discussion about a science issue) with Meyer.
Yet his piece is full of errors of fact.
“Intelligent design argues that life is so biologically complex, there must be some kind of supernatural designer involved. The concept, however, leaves the designer unnamed.”
This one sentence is doubly wrong. No, ID is not an argument from ignorance. And, no, ID doesn’t claim that the intelligent cause has to be supernatural. (Postman apparently so strongly believes this fallacy that he repeats it later in the story, a second time: “gaps that can only be explained by the presence of a supernatural designer.”)
Read More ›When the controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design is debated on university campuses, the deck is usually stacked heavily against proponents of intelligent design. North Carolina State University has shown, however, that the topic can be debated with the fairness and civility that ought to characterize academic discussions. On Thursday, April 20, before a crowd of some 200 people, a biologist and philosopher defended intelligent design, and a biologist and philosopher defended Darwinism. That debate continued Thursday night at N.C. State University before a crowd of almost 200 people. Sponsored by the NCSU and Wake chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, the debate featured four speakers — one scientist and one philosopher from both sides of the issue. The Read More ›
A post made 2 weeks ago highlighted how in 1981, Constance Holden wrote in Science that emotions, rather than abundant evidence, often rule the field of paleoanthropology and its claims about human evolution. Yesterday, an article by Charles Matthews in the San Jose Mercury News reiterates that same point. Reviewing a book by Ann Gibbons, Matthews notes: “Gibbons, who reports on human evolution for Science magazine, gives a lucid account of the science involved in finding fossils, establishing how old they are, and ascertaining whether they in fact belong to the ancestors of humankind. She also shows how difficult and sometimes dangerous the work of hunting for 7 million-year-old fossils can be. And that, like most humans, anthropologists are subject Read More ›
Legal commentary mentioning the Kitzmiller decision is now starting to appear in legal journals. In the Spring, 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, one of the most widely circulated law journals, the lead article addresses intelligent design, Kitzmiller, and the establishment clause.
Cristi L. Bowman’s article, “Seeing Government Purpose Through the Objective Observer’s Eyes: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Debates,” is available here.
Most of the article is about establishment clause jurisprudence, and an argument against part of McCreary County v. ACLU. Bowman argues that the government purpose prong of the Lemon test should return to focusing on “actual intent,” rather than trying to evaluate government purpose with an “objective observer.” Kitzmiller and the evolution-intelligent design controversy serve as the article’s setting for how the objective observer standard will play out in future establishment clause cases.
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