Science and Culture Today | Page 1446 | Discovering Design in Nature

In her new article dumping on intelligent design, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein presents a fantasy version of the new Kansas science standards, claiming that “in Kansas last month, the board of education voted that students should be exposed to critiques of evolution like intelligent design.” Actually, the Board did no such thing. The Kansas science standards encourage students to learn about scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory. They do not ask for the teaching of alternatives to Darwin’s theory such as intelligent design. Indeed, the Board included the following explicit statement in the standards: “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design….” [emphasis added] This isn’t merely a case of sloppy reporting. When Ms. Read More ›

Here is the e-mail I sent to New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein after she interviewed me last Thursday for her predictable hatchet-job on intelligent design in Sunday’s Times. Decide for yourself whether her story accurately reflected all of the information she was given: Laurie, It was good to talk with you. In follow-up to our conversation, here is a link providing a list of the peer-reviewed and peer-edited scientific publications favoring intelligent design and/or fundamental critiques of the claims of neo-Darwinism: https://www.discovery.org/a/2640/. To reiterate: We think that the debate over intelligent design will eventually be decided among scientists and scholars, and that’s why we put most of our resources into supporting the work of scholars on intelligent design and Read More ›

We are not alone in observing the sand wash out from under the Darwinists’ feet. The estimable editors of First Things have given readers a fine Christmas present in their December number.

Within is an essay by CSC senior fellow Michael Behe on “Scientific Orthodoxies”, and another by senior fellow Wesley J. Smith–in a book review–meditating on John Brown. And there’s a wonderful piece by Richard John Neuhaus mediating on a whole parade of related issues that we care about (such as Leon Kass’ principled leadership on the President’s Council on Bioethics), and, yes, evolution.

CSC Director Dr. Stephen Meyer yesterday had a lengthy and informative piece — eloquently making the positive case for intelligent design– published in the National Post in Canada.

Often, there are criticisms from the media that the theory of intelligent design is just an argument from ignorance. How many times have you read this tired, old description of ID: “life seems so complex evolution can’t be the answer, must have been a supernatural power.” Meyer’s piece answers this and shows how recent scientific discoveries and standard methods of scientific reasoning guides our inferences about the origins and diversity of the universe and living systems.

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.”