Science and Culture Today | Page 1425 | Discovering Design in Nature

The taxpayers in Dover Pennsylvania may have been fleeced by the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) for a shocking $1 million dollar bill. Joe Manzari and Seth Cooper’s article today in The American Enterprise Institute Online brings this dirty little secret into the public light. A few months ago when the ACLU announced that they “generously” would only demand $1 million in attorneys fees for the Kitzmiller case, the casual observer probably thought nothing of it. However, once the facts are examined, as Manzari and Cooper nicely lay out, the attorneys fees collected by the ACLU are not merely the cost of losing a lawsuit, but rather look much more like a fat taxpayer Read More ›

Earlier this month, controversial federal judge Phyllis J. Hamilton in San Francisco dismissed the Caldwell v. Caldwell lawsuit which alleged that the government-funded NCSE/UC Berkeley “Understanding Evolution” website endorses a particular religious view of evolution. However, Judge Hamilton’s order dismissing the lawsuit is nothing short of bizarre. It implies that the internet is an Establishment-Clause-Free-Zone where government websites are free to proselytize or establish religion at will. It is difficult to imagine Judge Hamilton’s peculiar ruling being upheld on appeal. According to a Daily Californian article, attorney Larry Caldwell believes that by sponsoring the Understanding Evolution website “the state of California is taking a position on religious issues and advocating certain religious values, which is clearly a violation” of the Read More ›

Many news sources have picked up the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent interview with The Guardian newspaper reporting a couple of minor comments he made about teaching creationism in schools. (For examples, see the Associated Press story or the New York Times story or the Reuters article in the Washington Post.)

With headlines like, “Archbishop Opposed to Teaching Creationism” (Associated Press) “Anglican Leader Says the Schools Shouldn’t Teach Creationism” (NY Times) or “Anglican leader opposes creationism in schools” (Reuters) one would think that the comments about creationism were central to the interview. Moreover, given that all of the articles discussed intelligent design, one would think that ID was relevant to the Archbishop’s comments. But not only did the Archbishop not focus on science curriculum in the interview, the interview never discussed intelligent design. Check for yourself, the entire interview transcript is available from The Guardian, and in more than 12,800 words, a scant 330 are devoted to “creationism;” no where is there any mention of intelligent design. Why, then, would each article talk about intelligent design?

I’ll say this for administrators at Baylor University in Waco, Texas: They certainly know how to provoke lots of free attention. But it might not be the kind of attention they want. The University’s denial of tenure to conservative scholar Francis Beckwith is beginning to generate a buzz on the world wide web. But it’s the type of buzz that carries a sting. Commenting on the Beckwith decision yesterday, Joseph Bottum of First Things responded with withering scorn:

Last week Baylor University in Texas denied tenure to noted scholar Francis Beckwith. Beckwith is an impeccable scholar with a distinguished publication record, including a forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press. He is also a gentleman in the classic sense of the term, someone who is liked and respected even by his fair-minded opponents.

But Beckwith has a problem: His views are out of sync with the left-wing ideologues who control much of American academia. First, he is a prominent critic of the morality of abortion, and his work on this issue is cited all over the place by other scholars (including in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the topic). Second, Beckwith has defended the the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design. Note: He has not advocated the wisdom of teaching ID, nor has he taken sides on the ultimate rightness or wrongness of ID. He has only defended the constitutionality of presenting the debate. (But this is no doubt too much for Darwin dogmatists.)

That a scholar of Beckwith’s stature should be denied tenure at Baylor raises serious questions about the university’s commitment to fairness and academic freedom. This is especially the case since it has been reported that Beckwith’s annual evaluations leading up to the tenure denial were glowing. He is said to have received the rating “exceeds expectations” each year. Apparently he exceeded expectations too much for some members of Baylor’s faculty.

It is frequently claimed by anti-Darwinists that the eugenics movement of 100 years ago was a fluke and not really the product of Darwinian science–even though the science establishment of the time was proud of the Darwinian justification, backed eugenics completely and was ruthlessly dismissive of any other view (sound familiar?). The Nazi embrace of eugenics discredited it for nearly a half century. But it is re-emerging in our time, as Discovery senior fellow Wesley J. Smith has pointed out repeatedly and does again in the Weekly Standard. Slowly, the awareness dawns.

A recent poll reported in “Inside Michigan Politics” found that 76% of Michiganites agree with the following statement: “Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.“ Only 17% of Michigagonians felt that “Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.” If that poll question sounds familiar to frequent readers of ENV, that’s because it’s identical to one of the poll questions commissioned by Discovery Institute earlier in 2006 and reported here. But there’s one major difference between this Michigan poll and the prior poll commissioned by Discovery: The Michigan poll is improperly touting a poll question about teaching both scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinism Read More ›