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A hallmark of tyranny is when leaders believe they are so correct that they have the right to criminalize dissent. The Council of Europe claims to be a leading “human rights” body in Europe, but last June its “Committee on Culture, Science and Education” issued a report (“Committee Report”) proposing a ban on intelligent design (ID) in science classrooms, suggesting ID may pose a “threat to human rights.” Uncommon Descent has covered this issue in detail, and ARN recently reported that the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ), an ID-friendly legal group affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), has written a Memo (“ECLJ Memo”) exposing the Committee Report’s hypocrisy. The ECLJ Memo observes that the Read More ›

A few months ago Nick Matzke of the NCSE was on a podcast giving the usual NCSE line that opposition to evolution is a fundamentally “Protestant” Christian phenomenon. Matzke stated, “I’m not sure if the evolution issue will go away until Biblical inerrancy declines in popularity,” and he expressed his hope that, “maybe in a few hundred years people will get over it.” Mr. Matzke should have attended a recent lecture, “Is Darwinism Kosher?,” given at Discovery Institute by Jonathan Rosenblum, an Orthodox Jewish scholar and popular columnist of The Jerusalem Post. Mr. Rosenblum stated that he is comfortable with the literal meaning of Genesis being a “mystery” or an “analogy,” yet he rejects Neo-Darwinism. Speaking at Discovery Institute to Read More ›

We have blogged in the past about the growing numbers of doctors who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution to explain the complexity of life. Those numbers are continuing to grow, and conesquently doctors are beginning to organize themselves and reach out to others who hold similar positions. Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI) has for sometime had a website at www.doctorsdoubtingdarwin.com. Recently they have begun using the site to organize and promote conferences about Darwinian evolution around the world. According to a recent e-mail, they have 264 members from 15 different countries and are planning a number of major events in the next 18 months, including a series of public events in Spain this January, titled “What Darwin Didn’t Read More ›

The Daily News, a newspaper in the predominantly Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka, has an excellent article authored by Dr. V.J.M. de Silva expressing skepticism towards Darwinian evolution. Silva states, “This article is not meant to be a critique of any Buddhist doctrine, for which I have the highest regard,” and he then explains, “Life, it seems, did not wait for blind chance to roll the dice, but erupted at the first available instant, leaving Darwinists with no time at all for their probabilistic processes. . . . Evolution (neo-Darwinism) is not a theory that has been proved. It is not like physics and chemistry. However, it is presented in the news media as an accomplished fact of science and Read More ›

There’s a new resource for those wanting to learn more about the ID debate. Jason Rennie, an Australian podcaster, has a series of 25 podcasts, called “Darwin or Design?“

Rennie has compiled 25 interviews with prominent thinkers on both sides of the ID debate into a sort of “audiobook” which gives the listener a chance to hear each individual in their own words (and voice!). Interviews include Mike Behe on irreducible complexity, Guillermo Gonzalez on The Privileged Planet, Joey Campana on ID research, and Denyse O’Leary on ID and the media. On the critics’ side, evolutionists like Sean Carroll and PZ Myers gave their two cents.

Fancisco J. Ayala is an esteemed evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was dubbed the “Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology” by the New York Times. Ayala is not only former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), but he helped found, chair, and organize the AAAS Dialogues on Science, Ethics, and Religion. He’s widely acclaimed by the Darwinian scientific community as a guru on science and religion. So what does Ayala say about evolutionary biology and religion? In May, 2007 Ayala published an article in the prestigious journal Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences USA entitled “Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer,” explaining that “evolution conveys chance and necessity jointly enmeshed in Read More ›

Last summer I reported how theistic evolutionist and biologist Kenneth Miller gave some inaccurate testimony during the Dover trial when he wrongly claiming that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” exists only in the third edition of his textbook. Miller claimed, “[T]hat statement was not in the first edition the book, it was not in the second edition, it was not in the fourth edition.” The problem is that the phrase “[e]volution is random and undirected” was in the first, second, and fourth editions. As I noted, “The facts are very different from Miller’s testimony. All of the first four editions of his ‘elephant’ Biology textbook contain the phrase ‘[e]volution is random and undirected.’” Now, I have recently discovered Read More ›

Orac over at Scienceblogs is starting to develop a reputation as someone more interested in calling his opponents names than in accurately representing their positions. His latest misrepresentation involves ENV contributor Casey Luskin and his post on junk-DNA, which Orac called “breathtakingly idiotic” (perhaps like Judge Jones calling ID “breathtakingly inane,” as anything which poses a challenge to the status quo must be to a Darwinist?). Orac explained to his readers that Luskin’s argument was that “‘junk DNA’ somehow disproves evolution.”
This is a blatant mischaracterization of Luskin’s argument. According to Luskin,

Mathematician and intelligent design supporter Granville Sewell has posted an article, entitled “How Evolution Will Be Taught Someday,” where he makes some interesting predictions about the future state of teaching science. He asks whether intelligent design will be taught and says, “probably not in my lifetime.” In Sewell’s view, “in the not-too-distant future, biology texts will refer to evolution as an amazing, mysterious ‘natural’ process, which scientists do not now understand, but hope to understand some day.” Sewell continues to explain that this result would not be opposed by Discovery Institute, which is not trying to push ID into schools: But for most ID proponents, this will be a quite satisfactory outcome, certainly a huge improvement over the current sad Read More ›

Question: What do you do when a theory logically predicts both (a) and not (a)? Answer: Apparently you heavily promote it. MSNBC recently published two articles promoting Darwinian just-so stories to the public. The first article about the evolution of Waterfowl genitalia contends, “Scientists had speculated that male waterfowl evolved longer phalluses to give them a competitive edge over those not as well-endowed when it came to successfully fertilizing females.” That makes sense, I suppose. But the article makes one admission that strikingly contradicts that little just-so hypothesis: “Most birds lack phalluses, organs like human penises. Waterfowl are among the just 3 percent of all living bird species that retain the grooved phallus…” If long phalluses are so advantageous for Read More ›