Science and Culture Today | Page 1516 | Discovering Design in Nature

When a news reporter doesn’t bother to accurately and fairly report the small issues, is it any wonder when they fail to accurately and fairly report the big issues? Take the recent, un-credited article by an AP reporter entitled “Lawmakers draft bills to address debate over evolution,” concerning two legislative proposals in the state of Montana concerning the teaching of evolutionary theory in their public schools.

AP REPORTER’S PROBLEMS WITH THE FACTS ON DARBY

The AP reporter discusses two legislators from Big Sky Country who are considering two very different legislative approaches to the issue. According to the AP reporter, these respective proposals were

“driven by curriculum changes in Darby schools earlier this year that mandates the discussion of ‘intelligent design’ theory in science classes.”

Seeing as the AP reporter identifies the actions of the Darby school board in 2004 as the impetus for such legislation, one would think the AP reporter would be sure to get the facts right about what happened in Darby. But the AP reporter got the facts wrong.

World Net Daily has published the first article that has appeared in response to Discovery’s press release yesterday about PBS station KNME banning Unlocking the Mystery of Life (UMOL). The station now claims in a World Net Daily article that this was all just a scheduling mistake, which is laughable whenyou realize that they’ve been considering running this film since last spring. You can see for yourself the ad that KNME itself designed and arranged to put in newspapers — then cancelled on Monday. You can also see the TV guide listings. Obviously, this program had been in process for some time (and they were well down the road of advertising and publicizing the show. While we’ve yet to speak Read More ›

Casey Luskin, the Co-President of Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA), has posted an article entitled, “A Holiday Truce: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out.” This important and carefully written article contains an interview with a Holocaust survivor and discusses the abuse of human atrocities in the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. As Luskin points out in his commentary, some of the more extreme hyper-Darwinists have resorted to equating skepticism of some of the more far-reaching claims of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory with denial of the Holocaust. The low-ball tactic of using genocide to score debating points was brought home to me late last month, when Washington State ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan responded to my presentation on the teaching of Read More ›

The Darwin versus design debate has taken center stage on the blogosphere these past couple weeks. Old Media’s dissemination of disinformation has been particularly brutal to intelligent design theory and its proponents, but the facts are now coming to light through the diligent work of bloggers. One lucid and cogent contribution to the discussion is provided by David Limbaugh. “Slamming Intelligent Design” is his recent blog post supporting intelligent design, as he takes Old Media to task for its coverage the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolution. Limbaugh has the intellectual honesty and discipline to recognize the clear distinctions between intelligent design theory and creationism. (See John West’s Research News article for more on this.) Limbaugh rightly acknowledges the strong objections Read More ›

When will the censorship end? Albuquerque, NM PBS station KNME has pulled the plug at the last minute on a schedule airing of Unlocking the Mystery of Life (UMOL) the documentary detailing pioneering scientific research behind intelligent design theory. Read the full press release here. Apparently KNME doesn’t realize that dozens of PBS stations have already shown UMOL and that PBS national website sells the video. Local scientist Phil Robinson has been urging the station to air UMOL for months. They recently agreed, and yesterday he was surprised to find out by accident that the show had been yanked from the schedule. The show was scheduled and listed in the local TV listings. The station even developed an ad for Read More ›

The York Dispatch has a story about the legal activity ongoing in Dover, PA with regards to the school board’s decision to mandate intelligent design theory. What’s troubling is that so many media outlets continue to incorrectly define intelligent design theory. The Dispatch’s Heidi Bernhard-Bubb puts it this way: intelligent design theory, which attributes the origin of life to an intelligent being. It counters the theory of evolution, which says that people evolved from less complex beings. If reporters are going to use definitions that come from critics of intelligent design they should at least label them that way. This is the kind of definition given out by the NCSE or the ACLU, not by design proponents themselves. This is Read More ›

Photo credit: George Gilliland

Dave Dentel, copy editor of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania had an insightful, and pleasantly objective, op-ed over the holiday weekend. Dentel makes the point that the ACLU, aided by Darwin-only supporters within the ranks of mainstream scientists, is unlikely to acknowledge any of Darwinian evolutionary theory’s shortcomings. Indeed he points out that the very things they mistakenly claim of intelligent design theory, namely that it isn’t testable, Darwinian evolution itself is truly guilty.

The Washington Post for all its prominence as a national newspaper continues to help spread the idea that design theory is just a new form of creationism. Admittedly the article is better than recent error riddled reports by Post reporter Valerie Strauss, especially since it does give more background on what design theory is, and quotes Mike Behe. However, the article doesn’t provide any quotes from design proponents that explain the distinctions and clear differences between creationism and intelligent design. And this even after the reporter was offered a chance for an e-mail interview and then spoke with Discovery Institute’s John West, who he then mistakenly calls Paul. It’s frustrating when reporters can’t even get names right, how can you Read More ›

Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center has published a column looking at the current court cases involving evolution. While he mistakenly looks at intelligent design theory as just the next step after creationism in the anti-evolutionary chain, he does have some interesting insights into the drawbacks for science of shutting down the debate. “If school board resolutions aren’t the answer, who decides what, if any, critiques of evolution get into the curriculum? The short answer is – or should be – scientists decide. But many in the science establishment worry that teaching the controversy – even conflicts among scientists about some aspects of evolutionary theory – would open the door to creationist or other religious views. That’s why so Read More ›

American Daily has posted an interesting article by writer Robert Myers, “The Face of Evolution,” making the case that neo-Darwinism may be unfit for the classroom as it is a religion itself and that if it is allowed in other theories should be as well. “The first time that I heard the concept of evolution presented as a religion or philosophy, I snickered at the audacity of such a proposition. But the more I have taken notice of how the arguments are made, the more I see the religious aspects of the evolutionary position.” I have to point out — lest we be misquoted — that our position remains that intelligent design theory should NOT be mandated, but that it Read More ›