Science and Culture Today | Page 1436 | Discovering Design in Nature

While the newsmedia lavish praise on the new Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, no one seems to have noticed that the museum is presenting a thoroughly sanitized portrait of Charles Darwin, completely suppressing Darwin’s real views on such troubling issues as eugenics and race. According to the online version of the exhibit, far from being a “Social Darwinist,” Mr. Darwin is supposed to have been a passionate egalitarian who would have been horrified by any application of his theory to social and political issues. The exhibit proclaims: Darwin passionately opposed social injustice and oppression. He would have been dismayed to see the events of generations to come: his name attached to opposing ideologies from Marxism to Read More ›

My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “The fundies [fundamentalists] want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology.”

Charles Krauthammer’s syndicated essay against intelligent design ran opposite mine in today’s Seattle Times. The piece is full of problems, which Tom Gilson and Lawrence Seldon explore in loving detail here and here.

Now I would have framed a couple of points in their otherwise fine analysis a little differently. In one place,