Science and Culture Today | Page 1456 | Discovering Design in Nature

Science Magazine’s “Netwatch” for today has an item titled “Standing up for Darwin.” I hope the magazine’s review process for scientific articles is better than its apparently non-existent fact-checking of news items. In typically histrionic tones, the piece laments:

Evolution is under attack again, as school boards in Kansas and other states consider whether to mandate teaching of “intelligent design”…

While it’s frustrating when critics of intelligent design mischaracterize what ID is about, it’s even worse when people billing themselves as friends of ID do the same thing. As the term “intelligent design” has increasingly entered the public discourse, the number of people misusing the term to advance their own agendas by calling it “design” has increased. Take the recent proposal by a Utah legislator for something he calls “divine design,” by which he clearly seems to mean creationism. According to a recent article in the Salt Lake City Tribune:

Evolution has not been a big issue in Utah until now. On June 3, Sen. Chris Buttars of West Jordan said he would propose giving equal time to what he called “divine design,” that is, that the world was created by a superior being.

“The divine design is a counter to the kids’ belief that we all come from monkeys. Because we didn’t,” the conservative Republican told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The long-awaited screening of The Privileged Planet documentary at the Smithsonian takes place this evening in Washington, D.C. Stay tuned for some first-hand reporting of the event later tonight and on Friday from Rob Crowther.

In the meantime, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all of the Darwinists who provided free publicity for the screening by denouncing a film they had never even seen. (If they had seen the film, they would have known that it doesn’t deal with biological evolution. See Rob Crowther and Bruce Chapman’s prior posts, here and here, respectively.)

After tonight’s screening, I’m sure we can look forward to still more encores from the pro-Darwin chorus. Keeping in mind that the most vocal critics to this point have neither read the book nor seen the movie, Discovery’s Seth Cooper decided to help out by drafting a few form letters critics can send to newspaper editors tomorrow :

Since the newsmedia have frequently misreported Discovery Institute’s position on the teaching of intelligent design, I thought I would highlight a letter Seth Cooper and I just sent to the Pennsylvania State Legislature opposing a pro-ID bill under discussion there. The Pennsylvania bill would authorize local school boards in the state to require intelligent design as part of their standard curriculum if they so choose. While well-intentioned, we think this proposal is unhelpful for a variety of reasons.

Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about the Kansas evolution hearings. Well, sort of. While the article discoursed at length about the pro-Darwin scientists who did NOT participate in the Kansas hearings, it never actually got around to mentioning any of the people who DID testify.

It looks like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education isn’t going to be able to get away with her defamation of California parent Larry Caldwell after all. (For the history of the Caldwell case, see here and here and here.) In a press release issued this week, Caldwell states that the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) has agreed to permanently remove Scott’s defamatory article from the world wide web and will be printing a retraction letter by Scott in the next issue of California Wild. In addition, CAS will give Caldwell the opportunity to accurately present his views in his own words in the next issue of the same magazine. Denyse O’Leary has an excellent blog about this latest development, here.

WANTED: A new research assistant for Morton Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call and political commentator extraordinaire. An ability to read original documents and separate fact from fiction preferred. Please reply ASAP in order to spare Mort further embarrassment.

The Kansas State Board of Education is scheduled to take up discussion tomorrow of the proposed revisions to the state’s science standards (although an actual up or down vote might not come until later in the summer).

The Board’s Science Hearings Committee, after hearing testimony from nearly two dozen scientists and scholars last month about how evolution should be presented in the classroom, will apparently recomend the adoption of the draft standards which call for students to learn more about the scientific evidence regarding chemical and biological evolution, including scientific criticisms raised in peer-reviewed science journals. In a one page rationale for their recommendation the committee states that it had “heard credible scientific testimony that indeed there are significant debates about the evidence for key aspects of chemical and biological evolutionary theory.”

Below is the complete text of their statement, which is available on the Kansas Dept. of Education website as well.

If you’re a graduate student who dares to question Darwinian evolution good luck on defending your dissertation. OSU graduate student, Bryan Leonard, is suffering a vicious attack from Darwinist who seem bent on keeping him from earning his doctoral degree, precisely because he does not adhere to a strictly Darwinian viewpoint. (see here for more details) Fortunately there are some who see these attacks for what they are — threats on academic freedom. Charles Mitchell at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has posted his insightful take on the situation: “First, to my knowledge at least, Leonard’s Ph.D. is not actually on evolution or intelligent design or anything else. It’s about pedagogy, period. Its concern is not scientific analysis Read More ›

CSC Senior Fellow David Berlinski has just sent me an open letter to the Amazing Randi. Randi you may remember led the Darwinist charge of the bright brigade to try and coerce the Smithsonian into deep sixing The Privileged Planet. And Randi was serious because he offered a $20,000 bribe to keep the film from playing. Berlinski, however, has decided to screen the film in Paris. But here’s the thing, Randi. I was sort of planning to screen the film right here in my apartment in Paris. I’ve got a little screening room I call The Smithsonian right between the bathroom and the kitchen, I sort of figured I’d invite some friends over, open a couple cans of suds, sort Read More ›