Science and Culture Today | Page 1458 | Discovering Design in Nature

AP education reporter Ben Feller has a wire story about the debate over how to teach evolution. I was pleased to see that Feller actually got our position correct, and let us describe our policy in our own words. This is what he got from a recent interview with Discovery president Bruce Chapman: “The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design, is not seeking to require schools to teach the theory. Nor is it out to diminish the teaching of evolution, said Bruce Chapman, the institute’s president.“We want the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory taught. That’s it,” Chapman said. And he has a better definition of intelligent design than we usually Read More ›

Now that the dust has settled from the very successful national premiere of The Privileged Planet, I can post a few of the photos (taken by expert photographer Brian Gage who also designed all the materials for The Privileged Planet premiere, not to mention the book cover and the DVD cover as well.) The event itself went very well and it appeared that everyone of the 220 guests in attendance had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Blogger Ed Brayton is fulminating over my comments about those who wrongly conflate intelligent design theory with religion. Brayton responds with proof-texts supposedly showing that key ID supporters think ID makes religious claims after all. Mr. Brayton doth protest too much. First of all, if he had read the article I referenced in my blog post about why ID is not creationism, he would have known that I never deny that ID can have metaphysical implications. As I wrote in that article:

The World Summit on Evolution just happened earlier this month with less fanfare than one might expect in these days of overhyping Darwin’s legacy. It seems that about 200 biologists gathered in Chuck’s old stomping grounds in the Galapagos to compare notes on neo-Darwinian evolution and breathe some life back into the aging concept.

One blogging attendee explained why it had to be kept so hush-hush:

“Arrival details were kept under wraps, said one organizer, lest the Creationist community get wind of the fact that so many evolutionary luminaries would be on the same plane to the island.”

Today’s Boston Globe carries an inane editorial attacking intelligent design that demonstrates how a little learning (in this case, very little) can be a dangerous thing. The Globe editorialist no doubt thought he was valiantly defending good science, but instead he simply exposes how uninformed he is.

The editorial starts by dismissing Dr. Stephen Meyer’s peer-reviewed journal article from the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the Globe:

As pointed out in my blog post below, Science magazine is running a bogus news item asserting that the Kansas Board of Education is considering whether to mandate intelligent design. I challenge Science magazine to produce proof of its claim. If it can do so, I am willing to donate $100 to Science’s parent organization, the American Association for the Advacement of Science (AAAS), so that it can promote Darwinian evolution. This challenge is good until 5:00 pm Pacific Time on June 28. The staff of Science are invited to send their evidence to cscinfo@discovery.org. (And no, another false news report from another sloppy news organization doesn’t constitute evidence.)

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.