Science and Culture Today | Page 1444 | Discovering Design in Nature

I just found this (you’ll have to scroll down to Oct. 22, the day it was posted) courageous defense of academic freedom and free and open scientific inquiry posted by the The American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It’s a blog post responding to the recent wave of viewpoint discrimination against ID in higher education. ACTA writes: Denunciations are not reasoned refutations. Administrative bans on intellectual inquiry do more to chill debate than to foster it, and do considerable damage not only to the ideas being banned, but also to those being protected from challenge or dispute. … Universities should be actively fostering debate about intelligent design, not seeking to shut down investigation of the idea entirely. And they should Read More ›

Mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski has written a thorough response to many of the claims made by plaintiffs’ expert witnesses in their expert reports for the Dover trial. The experts to which he responds are Barbara Forrest, Robert Pennock, John Haught, Kevin Padian, and Kenneth Miller. See: Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses [PDF, 720 kb]

In this column in the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum writes:

The President of Cornell stirred up a hornets nest when he spoke out against intelligent design last week. While he stopped short of trying ban it from campus science courses as has been tried at University of Idaho and Iowa State University, he definitely struck a blow against academic freedom. The IDEA Club at Cornell was quick to point out that the President really didn’t know what ID is, or was willfully misleading with his characterizations of it.

The IDEA Club at Cornell sent me this today about the anti-ID statements made by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings during his recent state-of-the-campus-address. I first learned about this press release after reading about it in this article in the Cornell Daily Sun. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Hannah Maxson Email: idea@cornell.edu Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, October 22 – The Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club at Cornell is deeply concerned with President Hunter Rawlings’ blatant disregard for the facts concerning Intelligent Design in Friday’s State of the University Address. In a speech usually reserved for current university business, he spent over two thirds of his time blasting the emerging Intelligent Design theory as anti-scientific and religious in an unscrupulous, unknowledgeable manner. Read More ›

George Neumayr of the American Spectator has a good column about the Dover trial:

The ACLU has gone from defending teachers to prosecuting them. In a federal courtroom this week, the ACLU argued that science teachers in the school district of Dover, Pennyslvania, are not free under the Constitution to question evolutionary theory.

He discusses various journalists’ reactions to it:

Stephen E. Jones has his finger on the pulse of the debate over design in Australia. See: Ban design theory in class: [Australian] scientists, etc