__edited

Discovery policy analyst Logan Gage was recently published in Washington DC’s up and coming political paper, The Examiner, commenting on the recent flurry of debate among presidential candidates over evolution.

“I’m curious, is there anyone on the stage that does not believe in evolution?” came the question at the first Republican presidential debate. Much has been made of the fact that three candidates raised their hands. The candidates were not allowed to elaborate, but what should they have said had they more time?

What makes the original question difficult to answer yes or no is that “evolution” can mean many things. It can range from simple change over time, which no one disputes, to the specifically Darwinian idea that all of life’s diversity — from bald eagles to newborn baby boys — is owed to the mindless process of natural selection and random mutations and nothing more. As the eminent Harvard Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson famously summarized it, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”

We mortals are easily impressed by palindromes — words or phrases that have the same spelling forwards and backwards. But try writing a sentence which has two different meanings: One meaning is gained when you start with one letter of the first word, and then an entirely different meaning is understood when you start reading with the second letter of the first word. Such a sentence would be most impressive, but what if such “sentences” existed in our DNA? Leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala recently wrote in Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that “Chance is an integral part of the evolutionary process.” Ayala then explained why he thinks Darwinian evolution is right and ID is wrong: “Biological Read More ›

Many public schools in the U.S. are still showing biology students the 2001 PBS Evolution series. This 8-hour propaganda extravaganza — like most modern biology textbooks — distorts and exaggerates the evidence to convince people that Darwinism is true. When the series was first released, Discovery Institute published a detailed 150-page Viewer’s Guide exposing the distortions and exaggerations. The Guide includes extensive references to the scientific and popular literature, as well as eight activities that teachers and students will find helpful in critically analyzing this work of pro-Darwin propaganda.

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer’s Guide to PBS’s Evolution:

Will the summer of 2007 be remembered for largest Darwin-related cultural earthquake to date? Dr. Thomas Woodward, author of Darwin Strikes Back, thinks it just might. Beyondthenews.com today published Woodward’s review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Woodward says the book “is shaping up as a major turning point in the growing controversy between Darwinian evolution and the movement known as Intelligent Design.” Behe’s first ID book, Darwin’s Black Box, broke new ground in the debate over natural selection, and Woodward sees Edge of Evolution doing the same in regards to random mutations. For example, Behe asks, where can we draw the line between what random mutations can do in biology and what they cannot do? To his own surprise, Read More ›

P.Z. Myers, materialistic neuroscientist and blogger at Pharyngula, is looking for altruism. Responding to my observation that ideas like altruism can’t be caused entirely by neurochemistry because ideas don’t share properties (like location) with matter, Myers asserted: …altruism does have a location. It’s the product of activity in [the] brain. Where else would it be, floating in the air, in [the] left foot, or nonexistent? Let’s take a closer look at Myers’ idea — that altruism, an immaterial idea, is located in the brain. What does it mean to say that altruism is located in the brain? If altruism is located in the brain, then some changes in location of the brain must, to use a mathematical term, ‘map’ to Read More ›

In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most esteemed physicists and astronomers of our day, as well as the founders of modern science. Hauptman and his fellow thought police at Iowa State have their summer work cut out for them.

Is altruism merely a matter of brain physiology- just the happy result of eons of evolution? Is the brain–an elegant piece of meat– the sufficient cause of the mind and of the ideas that the mind generates? Does the brain secrete altruism, just like the liver secretes bile?

Many neuroscientists believe that it does. In a recent Washington Post article entitled If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural, reporter Shankar Vedantam reveals some recent scientific studies of the relationship between the brain and altruism. Vedantam writes:

The Des Moines Register has published two differing views on ISU’s denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez.

The first, by Discovery senior fellow David Klinghoffer, looks at the current state of academic freedom at ISU and finds few defenders left there.

The second is by a colleague of Gonzalez’s, professor John Hauptman, who admits that intelligent design was the reason he voted against giving Gonzalez tenure, yet somehow doesn’t perceive that as a violation of Gonzalez’s academic freedom.

Ames, IA — Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet and an advocate of the scientific theory of intelligent design, has lost his first appeal to overturn the decision to deny him tenure at Iowa State University (ISU). President Gregory L. Geoffroy announced the decision yesterday to deny Dr. Gonzalez’s appeal, despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez published 350% more peer-reviewed journal articles than is “ordinarily” supposed to show research excellence in his department. “It’s a sad day for science and free inquiry when tenure is denied to a scientist of Guillermo Gonzalez’s caliber,” said Dr. John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, where Dr. Gonzalez is a senior fellow. “President Geoffroy has Read More ›

The President of Iowa State University, Gregory Geoffroy, has issued a statement defending his denial of the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. In the statement, Geoffroy claims that he concluded that Gonzalez “simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy.”

Ah, yes, President Geoffroy has such high standards of excellence that only the most outstanding professors are allowed to achieve tenure at ISU.

Geoffroy’s high standards must be why he approved 91% of the tenure applicants at ISU in 2007 (and why the tenure approval rate has gone up each year at ISU for the past five years).

Geoffroy’s high standards are presumably also why he promoted to full professor this year Hector Avalos, the ISU faculty member who argues in his “scholarship” that the Bible is worse than Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yes, according to President Geoffroy’s exalted standards, only the best and brightest are allowed to stay at ISU!

But there’s more.