Science and Culture Today | Page 1428 | Discovering Design in Nature

In Jack Krebs’ post at Pandasthumb, he takes Casey Luskin up on a challenge to show that the Kansas Science Education Standards somehow “sanction the teaching” of intelligent design. (Luskin has now responded as well.)

According to Krebs, “the standards do say to teach ID” (emphasis his). Unfortunately for Krebs, his reading of the Kansas standards is an exercise in torturing a text to say what one desires, instead of respecting the plain meaning of the text.

To make his case Krebs relies on a flawed chain of inferences which, at best, would establish that the standards merely permit teaching about some intelligent design ideas.

Krebs makes two big errors. First, he completely fails to explain why the standards include unambiguous language which say the standards “neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about” intelligent design. Krebs would have us stick our head in the sand and pretend the language doesn’t exist. Second, Krebs purposefully misreads into the KSS far more about intelligent design than the standards actually say.

In this Catholic News Agency article about the statement of Kansas Archbishop Naumann, it is clear that the Archbishop understands the policy issue: both ID and Darwinian materialism have a philosophical base (theoretical science does have, folks), so you can’t rule out one and retain the other just because you prefer it. Either keep both out, he says, out or let both in.

Sensibly, Archbishop Naumann thinks students would be best served by acknowledging the place of philosophy in science (it is philosophy, after all, that defines science) and stop using an invidious reading of the First Amendment to disallow ID because of its theistic implications, while ignoring the atheistic implications of Darwinism.

Recent news articles on various aspects of the overall debate over evolution and intelligent design continue to highlight the fact that many in the media are falling for the false claims of Darwinists.

In Ohio, in Utah, in Wisconsin, in South Carolina, and elsewhere Darwinists are claiming that any criticism of Darwin’s theory is the same as intelligent design. (Christian Schwabe, Lynn Margulis and other staunchly anti-ID scientists would be quite surprised to learn their strident criticisms of Darwinian evolution have turned them into ID proponents.)

Today New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson totally misrepresented what I said in his article “Anti-Darwin Bill Fails in Utah.” I said that to the extent that the bill supported critical analysis it was a loss, but we really didn’t care about this bill because it amounted to a meaningless disclaimer, and we’ve never thought disclaimers were a good idea. I totally made it clear that Discovery was NOT keen on this bill. Honestly, I don’t think this reporter was even listening to a word I said. I never called it purely a “local Utah matter”. What the heck does that mean? A “local Utah matter?” I never said anything like that. He asked if I thought this vote would Read More ›

Editor’s Note: In the original post we mistakenly identified the newspaper in question as the Orlando Sentinel. It was in fact the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. While the identification was incorrect, the links all went to the right articles.

In what was supposed to be a news article, the Sun Sentinel yesterday substituted its own inaccurate definition of intelligent design for the definition actually used by proponents of the theory. In so doing, its editors apparently suppressed a more accurate definition of ID written by the reporter with whom I spoke. In addition to misdefining intelligent design, the Sentinel article engages in blatant editorializing by pejoratively labeling efforts to correct textbook errors as “watering down” the teaching of evolution. Below is the text of the letter I just sent to the Sentinel’s reader’s representative.

My previous post exposing how the New York Times changes its definition of who is a biologist depending on whether a scientist supports or opposes Darwin’s theory has apparently hit a raw nerve. A Darwinist blogsite calling itself “Hell’s Handmaiden” has taken me to task for supposed inaccuracies in my post. But it turns out that it is Hell’s Handmaiden who is misrepresenting the facts, not me.

Editor’s Note: This was sent to us from a former Discovery policy analyst.

Martha Wise is a member of the Ohio Board of Education. She cannot stand anything that is not conclusively and absolutely pro-Darwinian in science education. She is also the chief censor of any scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinian theory. Martha helped to oust the Ohio Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan.

Her op-ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer is a wonderful celebration of Orwellian double-speak in the service of Darwin-only science indoctrination: She’s insists she is a creationist, but she opposes creationism. The science standards explicitly disclaim the mandating of ID, but the standards (she claims) mandate ID. In Dover everyone acknowledged they were teaching ID but in OH they are not–except that Martha says that in Ohio they somehow were by stealth, even though the NCSE originally proclaimed victory with the passage of the critical analysis benchmark. “Critical analysis” doesn’t mean “critical analysis.” People with religious motivations are barred from proposing the lesson plan, but Wise’s religious motivations for stopping the lesson plan are in bounds. And feminist philosophers of science count as “evolutionary biologists.”

In the Cincinnati Enquirer on February 22, Ohio State Board of Education Member Martha K. Wise has an editorial entitled Conservative Ohio values led to change in evolution policy. I find this editorial intriguing. Here is how she starts the essay: “I believe in God the creator. I believe in freedom. I believe in America, and the state of Ohio, and the Republican Party, fiscal conservatism, fairness and honesty. These values guided me last week to lead the Ohio Board of Education to remove creationism from our state’s Science Standards and Model Curriculum.” So clearly Martha Wise is stating that her belief in “God the creator” “guided” her last week to “remove creationism.” Whatever–I’m not here to nitpick or question Read More ›

In a recent editorial, Gary S. Hurd complains about an apparent misquote on a quote from Bill Gates about the software-qualities of DNA. Hurd devoted a large portion of his editorial to complaining about the fact that apparently I and some others have misplaced a comma and accidentally inserted the word “we’ve” into the quote when quoting Gates (this did not change the meaning of the quote, in fact it may have lessened its impact if anything). Firstly, I thank Dr. Hurd for alerting me to the fact that there was a misquote. For the future record, here is the accurate quote: “Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” (Bill Read More ›