Science and Culture Today | Page 1437 | Discovering Design in Nature

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure. — Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

The Seattle Weekly’s Roger Downey has labored and produced a mouse. And, his mouse is a laughable, funhouse-mirror distortion of reality. But what else can you expect when you realize that he didn’t actually do any research, but essentially just cuts and pastes crazy assertions and outrageous claims from our critic’s blogs. Even though in the constellation of Seattle journalism and news publications the Weekly is (generously) seen as a lesser light, this piece demands a response.
“The Plot to Kill Darwin” is a rehash of old reports from other publications and blogs. There is nothing new, or original, in this article. Even the title and cover art seem to be ripped off from Wired magazine’s more sophisticated yarn of 2004. Most of the “news” reporting here is actually Downey just regurgitating oft repeated charges fringe Darwinists have lobbed at us for years. We’ve responded to all of this in the past.

The Weekly Standard has run John West’s response to Adam Wolfson’s recent article about intelligent design (which we blogged about here and here.)

Notorious legal decisions often develop a common-man meaning. The public perception of the Kitzmiller decision is that Judge Jones supposedly settled the issue: intelligent design is not science. As a law student, I have been amazed that this most important of Kitzmiller holdings is unsupported by any legal reasoning.

The news coverage of Kitzmiller has encouraged this misperception. CNN.com simplified the entire decision as being about defining science: “U.S. District Judge John Jones concluded in a 139-page decision that intelligent design is not science.” This is absurd to anyone who respects the law. Judges should only be deciding matters of law, not declaring as authoritative his opinion on matters of politics, or philosophy, or science.

139 pages of judicial overreach, ignoring important facts, scientific error, and logical fallacy (but other than that, it’s great!–why all the fuss?) have given the blogosphere much material to discuss. Richard Cleary has an extensive review of the Kitzmiller decision at Viewpoint. Cleary clearly highlights a fallacy in the argument ID is creationism repackaged: “The first claim, that ID must be religious, even though it doesn’t appear to be, because it evolved from (forgive me) creationism, is silly. Because one theory emerges from the embers of another doesn’t entail that it necessarily bears all or even many of the traits of the other. Modern theories of the atom are all descendents of Democritus’ belief that such entities exist, but the Read More ›

Bob Murphy at LewRockwell.com, a prominent libertarian website, examines many of the common objections to ID and finds them unpersuasive in Typical Objections to Intelligent Design.

Murphy takes the role of argument analyzer and examines the common objections of credibility, lack of peer-reviewed publications, ID as not scientific, and accusations that ID is an argument from ignorance.

After analyzing these common arguments, Murphy finds that “the ID people are on to something, while the proponents of Darwinian evolution are missing the point.”

Columbia South Carolina’s The State newspaper had a preview piece this morning about today’s hearing held by the state’s Education Oversight Committee (EOC) to hear from experts about teaching evolution.

State reporter Bill Robinson spoke at length with CSC policy analyst Casey Luskin last week in order to get more information on the overall debate, and also to better understand Discovery’s position on the issue. Unfortunately his article doesn’t reflect that.

Robinson, through an error of omission, misrepresents Discovery’s science education policy position, which we’ve been consistently clear about. The article, which completely misses the point that the debate in SC has nothing to do with intelligent design, only mentions Discovery once, but like this:

“Casey Luskin said Keller and Sternberg are scientists known to the Institute, which he said takes the position that “intelligent design is a scientific theory that is a good explanation for many aspects of life.”

By not explaining that our position is that we’re opposed to mandating intelligent design Robinson leaves his readers with the impression that is what we’re supporting in SC. Of course, as we’ve made clear, that isn’t true. It remains to be see if The State will do the right thing and issue a clarification. I’ve contacted Robinson but as of yet have not received a reply.