Science and Culture Today | Page 1472 | Discovering Design in Nature

We’re starting to see occasional occurrences of coherent defenses of design theory popping up on editorial pages of all sorts of newspapers. For instance, Bruce Mclarty has an op-ed piece in The Daily Citizen (Arkansas) that nicely explains the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and correctly points out that creationism is a subset of intelligent design, not the other way around. “While all creationists would believe in intelligent design, the opposite is not true. One could adhere to the idea that nature reflects an intelligent designer without believing in the Bible, the God of the Bible, or the Genesis account of creation.” Mclarty also notes that: “When something appears to defy purely naturalistic explanation, it is attributed to being Read More ›

Expect to see California resident Larry Caldwell’s lawsuit against the Roseville Joint Union High School District to be misreported on a regular basis. Already Sacramento Bee reporter Laurel Rosen mistakenly asserted that Caldwell’s case is anti-evolution. Now, Kimberly Horg of the The Press-Tribune takes it one step further. “The suit was set into motion because, according to Caldwell, his constitutional rights to free speech, equal protection and religious freedom were violated in his efforts to remove the teaching of evolution in the district.” As Cooper pointed out yesterday this is exactly the opposite of what Caldwell has been trying to do. He has never tried to “remove the teaching of evolution.”

The lawsuit filed by attorney and parent Larry Caldwell against the Roseville Joint Union High School District for violation of his civil rights has been making waves in the media.

World Net Daily and The Sacramento Bee have stories discussing Caldwell’s suit and the inequities he was subjected to by the District over the course of a whole year.

In the interests of accuracy, note that Sacramento Bee‘s Laurel Rosen reports inaccurately when she (mistakenly) asserts that Caldwell tried to introduce “anti-evolution material” in the District. “Anti-evolution” entails the removal of chemical and biological evolutionary theories from curriculum, but what Caldwell sought to do was precisely the opposite: teach students even more about existing scientific theories by requiring them to learn the scientific weaknesses of such theories as well as their scientific strengths. (Caldwell’s proposal did not even call for the teaching of the scientific theory of intelligent design.)

Caldwell’s 96-page complaint to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California (available here) tells of the long train of abuses that Caldwell was subjected to by the District because it disagreed with Caldwell’s position that students should be able to learn about the scientific controversies surrounding biological and chemical evolutionary theories. Caldwell’s complaint leaves the District with a lot of explaining to do — particularly its pattern of ignoring its own procedures or making up new ones and applying them only to Caldwell.

For eight long months the Board sought to prevent Caldwell from exercising his rights as a citizen and parent to put his policy proposal on the Board’s agenda. Caldwell’s
“Quality Science Education” simply states:

The York Daily Record on Sunday published a brief opinion piece from a York resident challenging the paper’s definition of intelligent design. What is intelligent design? Are our kids being taught to think? Do schools want to give a good education? The York Daily Record definition says, “ID holds that all living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by an unspecified divine being.” The YDR is not alone in using this description which is actually how critics of design define the theory. Hopefully the YDR will begin using a more accurate description, or at least attribute this one to critics rather than leaving it as if it were the proper, working definition. Once more, with feeling: Read More ›

Last Sunday’s episode of Boston Legal (“From Whence We Came”) was ripped straight from the headlines in typical David Kelley style. Hotshot young attorney Lori (Monica Potter), with help from Denny Crane (played by William Shatner, and for which he won a Golden Globe the same Sunday night) and Shirley Schmidt (the newest addition to the show, played by Candace Bergen), defends a school superintendent being sued by two science teachers who were fired for refusing to teach creationism.

Kelley’s writing is always sharp and his dialogue is witty, but his take on the evolution issue merely regurgitates the old Inherit The Wind trope of religion vs. science. He never even bothers to really define evolution or intelligent design, which is used interchangeably with creationism.

Leave it to the capitalists at Amazon.com and the free market system to captialize on the censorship of UMOL by the Darwinists. Several months ago UMOL sales were languishing well below 7,000 on Amazon.com’s sales ranking system. However, thanks to KNME censorship , the film actually peaked at 2,500 over the weekend. Currently it has slipped a bit to 4,540. Still this shows a serious spike in sales. We’ve received dozens of requests for the film ourselves. Nothing spurs sales quite like a good controversy. Had KNME just let well enough alone this whole thing would have blown over by now. But, thanks to their protectionism more and more people are seeing UMOL than otherwise would have been the case. Read More ›

Scrappleface.com has skewered last week’s federal court ruling on Cobb Co.’s textbook disclaimers with a clever bit of satire. “U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that the old labels could “confuse” public school students, who are not accustomed to thinking critically.” Indeed! The Scrapplers report that the newly evolved stickers now in textbooks read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a fact, not a theory, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with childlike trust, accepted obediently and defended vigorously against the attacks of ignorant monotheists.” Read the entire ScrappleFace satire here (and yes, the Cooper quotations are pure fiction).

CSC writer in residence, Jonathan Witt had an op-ed published in the Albuquerque Journal Sunday commenting on PBS affiliate KNME’s censorship troubles. The thing that Witt’s op-ed nicely brings to light is the double standard about funding and editorial control that exists at PBS from the top down. He gives specific examples suggesting that KNME normally follows a very different (and much more sane) test for private funders, one that allows foundations who fund documentaries to have points of view and even worldviews. KNME proclaims that they must not let public get the “perception” that funders of a program “might” have had control over the content. “Indeed, no PBS affiliate consistently follows the smell test laid out by KNME. If Read More ›

The censorship issue has obviously struck a nerve in New Mexico, as evidenced by this cartoon from Friday’s Albuquerque Journal. Creationism evolves. How original. I think this is only about the 499th time that this has been in a cartoon or headline.

A California school district has been sued in federal court for allegedly violating a parent’s civil rights during a controversy over how to teach evolution. For more than a year, Larry Caldwell tried to get the Roseville Joint Union High School District outside of Sacramento to consider changing how it taught the theory of evolution in its biology classes. Caldwell, who has three children, says he wanted the district to correct factual errors in its biology textbooks as well as to introduce students to some scientific criticisms of modern evolutionary theory. Caldwell did not propose that the district teach creationism or alternatives to evolution. The Roseville district ultimately rejected Caldwell’s recommendations. But in the process of trying to scuttle his Read More ›