Science and Culture Today | Page 1429 | Discovering Design in Nature

“This latest fossil find poses no threat to intelligent design.” So says Discovery Institute senior fellow and leading intelligent design theorist Dr. William Dembski, adding:

“Intelligent design does not so much challenge whether evolution occurred but how it occurred. In particular, it questions whether purposeless material processes–as opposed to intelligence–can create biological complexity and diversity.”

The journal Nature is making news by publishing a report today that a group of researchers claim to have uncovered the skeleton of a 375-million-year-old fish in the Canadian Arctic that they believe is a missing link in the evolution of some fishes to becoming land walking vertebrates. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, meaning “large shallow water fish.”

Even though this find does not challenge intelligent design, there may be good reasons to be skeptical about it.

After several years of claiming that there is no debate about the theory of intelligent design (ID) researchers have published an article bringing the debate to the pages of the latest issue of Science. Three researchers, Jamie Bridgham, Sean Carroll and Joe Thornton claim to have shown how an irreducibly complex system, such as that described by Discovery senior fellow Michael Behe, might have arisen as the result of gene duplication and a few point mutational changes. “This continues the venerable Darwinian tradition of making grandiose claims based on piddling results,” said biochemist Michael Behe, who developed the theory of irreducible complexity in his best-selling book Darwin’s Black Box. “There is nothing in the paper that an ID proponent would Read More ›

The Dallas Morning News this past weekend ran an op-ed by first Thing’s Joseph Bottum adapted from his original piece about Baylor University’s decision to deny tenure to conservative scholar Francis Beckwith. CSC associate director John West blogged about Beckwith and Bottum’s articles previously, but it’s worth noting that the pressure is being turned up on the University to review this decision and right the wrong.

The April, 2006 edition of Crisis Magazine features a critical review of the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. George S. Johnson’s article, “An Evening with Darwin in New York,” is a thoughtful analysis of the museum content mixed with general criticism of the Darwinian orthodoxy.

The article walks through the museum in broad brush strokes while taking note of the stories about Darwinian evolution not told by the exhibit. The review starts with the exhibits treatment of fossils, and features extended notes from Niles Eldredge, and many paleontologists who find the fossil record somewhat lacking as evidence for Darwin. Not surprisingly, the criticisms of these paleontologists, all mainstream secular scientists, were left out of the display.

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?