Science and Culture Today | Page 1434 | Discovering Design in Nature

Over at ID The Future, Casey Luskin has a year-end interview with Access Research Network’s Dennis Wagner who has compiled a list of the top intelligent design stories of the past year. His list spans the globe and includes such highlights as:

TVW here in Washington state has chosen to rebroadcast Seattle’s Townhall debate on intelligent design between Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer and University of Washington’s Peter Ward as part of their “Best of 2006.”For those who missed this debate, it is available on our website here. We debate. You decide.

Part I of this series discussed two exciting papers which support the claims of intelligent design (ID). While ID is certainly compatible with common ancestry, molecular evidence against the Neo-Darwinian icon, “Darwin’s Tree of Life,” continues to mount. This paper will discuss how molecular data is posing great challenges to the Darwinist assumption that life forms a nested hierarchy. Perhaps with time, common design will be considered as a serious option.

During the holiday season, many Americans take time to seriously and respectfully reflect on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. Not so for one website, the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” (FSM), a pro-evolution satire against intelligent design. They exhibit no interest in treating Christian holidays with respect. To celebrate the season, they are selling Christmas cards which show a dead Christian fish symbol. Other Christmas Cards portray Michelangelo’s well-known “Creation of Adam” painting on the Sistine Chapel, but the FSM cards have God replaced by the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Another graphic promoted on the page shows a nativity scene where Jesus is replaced by the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” I can appreciate humor, but it’s also clear that the FSM images are Read More ›

It’s been just over a year since the Kitzmiller ruling, and over a series of 3 posts, I’d like to briefly highlight some scientific discoveries reported since that time: Random mutation and blind selection may have trouble on the horizon. This will become especially clear in the second post of this series which will discuss the difficulty Neo-Darwinism is having constructing robust phylogenetic trees.

The Scientist today is reporting about Smithsonian officials’ campaign of discrimination and harassment of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg and the Congressional recommendation of more protection for scientist’s free speech rights.

Congress’s recent report documenting the harassment of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian reveals a shameful lack of respect for the free speech rights of scientists skeptical of Darwinian evolution on the part of federal officials. It is important to emphasize that pro-Darwin officials at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) tried to punish Dr. Sternberg for his activities outside of the museum.

Last summer, 49 scientists (mostly biologists) from the University of Virginia co-authored a letter to University of Virginia (UVa) Magazine arguing that “[n]ot only does evolution clash with religious dogma, but it undermines the significance that some would like to give to the place of humans in the universe.” Both Salvador Cordova and I wrote letters responding to their anti-religious mischaracterizations of intelligent design. UVa Magazine has now kindly printed abbreviated versions of our letters. Salvador Cordova has discussed these at UncommonDescent, and we also reprint our original letters below in full: I was mentioned in the article ‘Ultimate Questions’ which sparked the recent flurry of letters to the editor over intelligent design (ID). I hope to set the record Read More ›

A year ago today, Judge John E. Jones issued his 139-page ruling denouncing intelligent design in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. At the time, the ruling was hailed by defenders of Darwin’s theory as a knock-out blow against intelligent design and scientific skepticism of Darwin’s theory.

What a difference a year makes.

A year after Dover, Darwinists seem increasingly disillusioned as well as shrill, the central part of Judge Jones’ “brilliant” decision has been found to be riddled with errors and copied nearly verbatim from the ACLU, a research lab has been launched for scientists to pursue intelligent design-inspired scientific research, and states and localities are continuing to adopt public policies to encourage students to study the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory. At the same time, the stereotype that all critics of Darwin’s theory are religiously-motivated zealots while all defenders of the theory are dispassionate scholars who are neutral toward religion has started to implode.

Here are the top developments during the past year in my view:

An article in the latest issue of New Scientist highlights the exciting work of scientists at the Biologic Institute, a new research lab conducting biological research and experiments from an intelligent design perspective. While writer Celeste Biever can’t suppress her visceral pro-Darwin bias from the story (which carries the dismissive title “Intelligent design: The God Lab”), Biever’s article is going to make it very difficult for Darwinists to continue to assert that scientists who support intelligent design aren’t conducting scientific research.

As Biever’s article grudgingly makes clear, “researchers [at the Biologic Institute lab] work at benches lined with fume hoods, incubators and microscopes—a typical scene in this up-and-coming biotech hub.” The article also reports on some of the research projects underway, and even describes Darwinian biologist Ken Miller as conceding that the topics being explored “are of interest to science”: