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Casey Luskin recently highlighted the mocking, anti-religious attitude expressed by Darwinists promoting the so-called “Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Now in an interview with the Toronto Star, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has defended such mocking of traditional religion by Darwinists as “light hearted fun” that is “probably healthy.” Indeed, according to Branch, such mockery seems to be a perfectly legitimate activity for Darwinists “who need the chance to blow off steam” after engaging in the “tiring and often thankless chore” of battling “creationist activity.” Branch further suggests that criticism of anti-religious Darwinist propaganda by Luskin and others affiliated with Discovery Institute is illegitimate, asking: “Why would mocking traditional religion be of concern to a purely scientific organization?”

There is a perfectly obvious answer to Branch’s question, which I will get to in a moment. But first I have a question of my own: Why is mocking traditional religion in the name of science apparently OK for the NCSE?

This is the second installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first installment can be found here.

2. Darwinism, Free Will, and the Soul

In my book I pointed out that leading Darwinists and Darwin himself drew implications from Darwinism contrary to human free will and moral responsibility. In response, Arnhart says that he regards “human moral freedom as an ’emergent’ product of the evolution of the human brain.” But it is highly questionable whether the Darwinian account of evolution can account even for the emergence of human intelligence let alone the emergence of human moral freedom. After all, how does intelligence “emerge” from a completely unintelligent material process of chance and necessity? If you begin with unintelligent matter and energy alone, how do you magically get mind somewhere later in the process?

John Derbyshire, the vitriolic anti-ID crusader over at National Review Online, must have had a really bad Christmas. Or something. In his post-Christmas column at NRO, he is more shrill and bombastic in his denunciations of ID than ever, if that’s possible.

Political science professor Larry Arnhart, author of the book Darwinian Conservatism, is probably the most thoughtful and articulate proponent of Darwinism as a support for conservatism. My recent book Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest is largely framed as a response to Arnhart’s arguments. I appreciate how seriously Arnhart takes the debate over the implications of Darwin’s theory, and also how committed he is to a civil discussion. Arnhart has now responded to my book in two posts (here and here) on his Darwinian Conservatism blog, and in a four-part series over the next several days I will be offering my response to his comments. After some initial clarifications, today’s post will focus on the issue of Darwinism and traditional morality.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the ID The Future podcasts, you will want to make doing so one of your new year’s resolutions. IDTF has become quite popular and recently has started producing occasional video podcasts as well. Today there is a short podcast about how to properly define and explain what the theory of intelligent design is. Last Friday IDTF featured a short video clip from Dr. Stephen Meyer’s recent appearance on the PBS program Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg. Previous podcasts have included: These are just a few of the IDTF podcasts from 2006. There is a complete archive of every podcast currently available here.

Part I of this series discussed two exciting papers which support the claims of intelligent design (ID), and in Part II, I discussed how the molecular data is failing to support Neo-Darwinian common descent with modification. This final post of a 3-part series recounting some interesting scientific discoveries reported since the Kitzmiller ruling will discuss how Darwinists have tried to oversell evolution to the public while ID-proponents have continued to do some exciting research. But what is striking is how many key discoveries — some of which are said explicitly to support ID — are being made by scientists outside the United States. It will be exciting to see what scientific discoveries await the world in 2007!

Over at ID The Future, Casey Luskin has a year-end interview with Access Research Network’s Dennis Wagner who has compiled a list of the top intelligent design stories of the past year. His list spans the globe and includes such highlights as:

TVW here in Washington state has chosen to rebroadcast Seattle’s Townhall debate on intelligent design between Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer and University of Washington’s Peter Ward as part of their “Best of 2006.”For those who missed this debate, it is available on our website here. We debate. You decide.

Part I of this series discussed two exciting papers which support the claims of intelligent design (ID). While ID is certainly compatible with common ancestry, molecular evidence against the Neo-Darwinian icon, “Darwin’s Tree of Life,” continues to mount. This paper will discuss how molecular data is posing great challenges to the Darwinist assumption that life forms a nested hierarchy. Perhaps with time, common design will be considered as a serious option.