Science and Culture Today | Page 1462 | Discovering Design in Nature

That great bastion of journalist integrity (no not the Washington Post) L.A. Beat has a laughable story about the recent Kansas SBOE hearings on evolution.

Andrew Gumbel, Darwin’s pitbull in this instance, reports in breathless tones of the evolution of creationism and warns left-coasters that it could happen there too.

“They no longer talk about creationism or biblical literalism but rather about Intelligent Design – a much more sophisticated argument that merely seeks to leave open the possibility that science, on its own, cannot account for the full story of life on Earth and that therefore some designing consciousness (for the sake of argument, God) must have been involved.”

CSC fellow Jonathan Wells wrote a short response taking a Nature letter writer to task for spreading the old flat-earth BS knee deep. The spherical shape of the Earth was known to the ancient Greeks, who even made some pretty good estimates of its circumference. Christian theologians likewise knew that the Earth was a sphere. The only two Christian writers who seem to have advocated a flat Earth were a 4th-century heretic, Lactantius, and an obscure 6th-century eccentric, Cosmas Indicopleustes. And he makes a couple of suggestions of how to keep your feet clean in those Darwinian pastures. For an objective and very readable account of the Flat Earth Myth, see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth (Praeger, 1991).

There’s no doubt that Nature got an earful for publishing an article in which writer Geoff Brumfiel didn’t adaquately skewer the theory of intelligent design. Nor do the letter writers think he delivered a satisfactorily vicious enough savaging to the theory’s proponents. One letter writer proclaimed:

ID creationism is not science, despite the editors’ suggestion that ID “tries to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature”. Rather, advocates of ID pretend to use scientific methods to support their religious preconceptions.

Another was aghast that Nature published a short sidebar that actually verified some of the persecution scientists suffer for criticizing Darwinian evolution or even mentioning ID.

World has a good news story on the Kansas science hearings, one that goes well beyond the MSM’s rusty boilerplate about scientists clashing with Bible thumpers:

In Kansas, Darwinists won back control of the State Board of Education in 2000 and restored the older standards. But conservatives have now retaken the board, and they are expected to vote this summer to adopt the revisions debated in Topeka.

The Darwinist response to such a challenge is no secret. “My strategy at this point is the same as it was in 1999,” wrote Liz Craig of Kansas Citizens For Science on the group’s discussion board in February. “Notify the national and local media about what’s going on and portray them in the harshest light possible, as political opportunists, evangelical activists, ignoramuses, breakers of rules, unprincipled bullies, etc. . . . we can sure make them look like asses as they do what they do.”

Then there are these facts, widely misreported by several major newspapers and magazines:

Biologist and Icons of Evolution author Jonathan Wells takes The New York Times and physicist Lawrence Krauss to task here and here for persistent misreporting of the science curricula battles in the state of Kansas.

Associated Press reporter John Hanna’s story about the definition of science currently used in Kansas appeared in papers all across the country over the weekend, and other reporters have touched on this issue as well.

And rightly so. This is one of the most important issues before the Kansas state board of education, namely, what is the proper definition of science.

Science writer Denyse O’Leary is bringing her incisive humor to the blogosphere. Post-Darwinist is a must read. An excerpt from her discussion of the Nightline debate between Michael Ruse and William Dembski epitomizes her style:

Here’s the transcript of the CNN debate that included Discovery Institute senior fellow Jonathan Wells, prominent evolutionist Michael Ruse, and the ICR’s John Morris. Use the search word “Tucker” to scroll down to the evolution segment.

Lou Dobbs’ tackles the evolution education debate with Jonathan Wells (whom they correctly identify as a scientist, a molecular biologist no less), John Morris of ICR and Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse. Poor Michael, this is the second time this week he’s lost this debate.

“Lou Dobbs Tonight” airs 6-7pm EST, but is regularly rebroadcast throughout the evening, so be sure to check your local listings (For instance, it is rerun again in Seattle from 8-9pm).