Science and Culture Today | Page 1445 | Discovering Design in Nature

Today biochemist Michael Behe testified as an expert witness for the defendants in the current trial, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board. According to Discovery Institute’s Logan Gage, who observed all of Michael Behe’s testimony today at the Dover trial in Harrisburg, Pa, Behe covered a wide variety of topics. Below is an informal report on some topics covered by Behe’s testimony, based upon Mr. Gage’s report. Links are provided after some of the bullet points to articles where Dr. Behe has discussed these topics outside of today’s testimony. Points Behe made today during his testimony:

Today, the Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading think tank researching intelligent design, filed an Amicus Curiae (i.e. “Friend of the Court”) brief in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case urging the judge to rule that it is not unconstitutional to teach about the scientific theory of intelligent design.

The filing of the brief coincides with the beginning of the defense offered by the Dover School Board, which has required students to be notified about the existence of the theory of intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinian theory.

“The ACLU is claiming that no matter how carefully intelligent design is presented, and no matter what good educational reasons there might be for teaching it, doing so is just plain illegal and we think that’s nonsense,” said David DeWolf, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a law professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane.

A parent in California is suing the National Science Foundation for using more than a half-million federal dollars to develop a website that encourages science teachers to use religion to promote evolution in public schools.

In announcing the suit Larry Caldwell, President of Quality Science Education for All, who is co-counsel in the suit with the Pacific Justice Institute, said, “the same people who so loudly proclaim that they oppose discussion of religion in science classes are clamoring for public school teachers to expressly use theology in order to convince students to support evolution.”

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Austria discomfited Darwinists last July when he published an article in the New York Times taking them to task for claims the Church backs Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now on his website, his staff points out that some in “the English-speaking press” misreported a lecture two weeks ago in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral as “somehow drawing back from his essay in the New York Times.”

Annotation: It has come to our attention that the content of Cardinal Schönborn‘s first catechesis has been mis-reported in the English-speaking press as somehow drawing back from his essay in The New York Times. This is inaccurate, as will be apparent from the full text. In order to clear up this misunderstanding, we are posting here an initial draft of an English translation. (Official and final German and English versions will follow when the lectures are compiled into book form.)

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Avian (i.e. Bird) Flu, and how it’s a new virus which has sadly killed a few dozen people and millions of birds. This post will briefly assess whether the Avian Flu is an example of evolution, and also assess the implications for the origin of new genes and biological structures. Our immune systems are engaged in an eternal arm’s race, or perhaps better put, a cat-and-mouse game, against pathogens like viruses. Viruses are trying to hijack our cells’ machinery to make more copies of themselves. When they succeed, our cells can become damaged or destroyed. Our bodies respond by generating antibodies which can attack these viruses and stop them. But Read More ›

A lawsuit has been filed by parent and attorney Larry Caldwell against the usage of government funds to promote some of the material on the “Understanding Evolution Website” website. Caldwell alleges that the federal funds are being used to maintain an evolution website in which the government endorses certain religious beliefs and denominational statements. Before you assume that Caldwell is somehow arguing that evolution itself is a religious viewpoint, read what Caldwell actually is saying. This is not at all what Caldwell is alleging. Caldwell’s lawsuit is not trying to stop the teaching of evolution. Caldwell’s actual arguments are explained pretty well in this Daily Cal article: “According to the complaint, the site violates the clause through its assertion that Read More ›

Academic Freedom is still under siege at the University of Idaho, and Discovery Institute fellow Dr. Scott Minnich is unfortunately just the latest target of a national campaign to stifle dissent from Darwinism and suppress information about intelligent design.

Dr. Jerry Coyne’s flimsy and coarse demolition of what in fact is a straw man version of intelligent design would not warrant response if The New Republic had not promoted it as a cover story recently. We asked TNR’s editors if they would like an article in rebuttal, but the editors apparently thought such would not be needed.

“A California parent, Jeanne Caldwell, is filing a federal lawsuit today against officials of the National Science Foundation and the University of California at Berkeley for spending more than $500,000 of federal money on a website that encourages teachers to use religion to promote evolution in violation of the First Amendment,” according to a news release from Quality Science Education for All.”

More than a year ago, CSC associate director John West wrote about the establishment of state-funded Church of Darwin when he reported on the NSF’s funding of a website developed in conjunction with the NCSE that explicitly uses religion to justify teaching Darwinian evolution. So, who is it that keeps bringing up religion? The Darwinists, naturally.

I see that a couple of fascinating new websites have “evolved” on the Internet (and if you think sites really do evolve, there are some web “designers” I’d like you to meet). For reporters and others who imagine that only the likes of Discovery Institute fellows believe that Darwin’s theory is in the process of imploding, go to the new Stephen J. Gould Initiative for Non-Darwinian Evolution site and its companion, Biological Self Organization: Evolution by Mechanical Causation.

There is much to read there. It’s a curiosity, to say the least.