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The Des Moines Register has today published a letter by CSC Senior Fellow, Dr. Jay Richards, defending his and Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’s work in their book The Privileged Planet. Below you will find the complete text of Dr. Richard’s letter.
There were additional letters published today in support of Gonzalez following the president of Iowa State University’s decision last week to uphold his denial of tenure. Two challenge Dr. John Hauptman’s op-ed from last week. Amazingly, Hauptman admitted his complete disregard for academic freedom and said that he denied tenure to Gonzalez, who he said was “very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher,” because Gonzalez was a proponent of intelligent design. One letter pointed out:

Coincidentally, on the same day that Hauptman’s lengthy defense of his “no” vote appeared in the Register, another article in the paper noted that ISU president Gregory Geoffroy “said that, Gonzalez’s advocacy of the ‘intelligent design’ concept was not a factor in the decision to turn down his request for tenure.”

Michael Behe was featured on the Michael Medved Show this week to talk about his new book, Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, and the audio is now available here.

Bringing up the way evolution has been popping up in the presidential debates, Michael Medved had the fortunate insight to note that this isn’t an issue about evolution per se. Behe was able to respond by clarifying the debate with the right question to ask: is life the result of purpose or an accident?

P.Z. Myers over at Pharyngula has responded to my recent post in which I criticized strict materialist explanations for the human mind. I have argued that the mind is not completely caused by the brain. By that, I mean that there are properties of the mind, such as ideas, that are not caused by brain matter alone. Brain matter cannot be the complete cause for ideas because matter and ideas share no properties. Cause and effect can’t be ‘linked’ between substances that have no properties in common. I pointed out that the materialist view that matter alone causes ideas is substantially the same as the view that ideas alone move matter, which is the pseudoscience of ‘telekinesis’.

I believe that materialism is incapable of providing an adequate explanation for the mind. Clearly ideas can influence the movement of matter (via the brain), and vice-versa, but materialism alone is inadequate to explain the link. The link between the mind and the brain must involve agency that has such non-material properties as purpose and judgment, and, as such, an adequate explanation for the mind must necessarily be open to immaterial causes.

The current issue of the Montana Law Review features a lively exchange of views about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design decision, and the articles are now available online at the law review’s website. The lead article on the Dover decision (“Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover“) is co-authored by David DeWolf, me, and Casey Luskin. A second article by Peter Irons (“Disaster in Dover”) responds to our article, followed by a short rebuttal by DeWolf, me, and Luskin. There is also an editors’ introduction with a timeline of the Dover case (currently not available online).

Does Panda’s Black Box really contribute something new or is it just more Darwinist “name-calling and fingerpointing”? A book has come out about intelligent design, published by Johns Hopkins University Press and titled The Panda’s Black Box, that promises on its dust-jacket that it “moves beyond mere name-calling and fingerpointing.” Does it live up to its promise? Let’s look at some of the statements in the book to find out. We’ll start with my favorite quote, by bioethicist Jane Maienschein: “There is no doubt, there is no evidence against evolution, and there is no controversy about the science of evolution.” Just keep repeating that to yourself over and over again until you believe it. Other examples include Scott F. Gilbert’s Read More ›

Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (Hill House Publishers Ltd., Melbourne and London, 2007) is the first biology textbook to present the scientific evidence both for and against key aspects of Darwinian evolution. “Sadly, the majority of biology textbooks in use today are ‘dumbed-down’ and do a poor job explaining evolution,” said Dr. John West of Discovery Institute, the book’s United States distributor. “Explore Evolution will improve the teaching of evolution by providing teachers and students with more information about evolution than they are likely to find in any other textbook written at the same level.” West is Associate Director of the Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Explore Evolution promotes inquiry-based learning, encouraging students to participate in Read More ›

Two new law review articles were recently published in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion discussing the teaching of evolution. Asma T. Uddin authored an article entitled, “Evolution Disclaimers, Establishment Jurisprudence Confusions, and a Proposal of Untainted Fruits of a Poisonous Tree,” which aimed to “determine the constitutionality of disclaimers” regarding the teaching of evolution. The second article, “Evolution and the Holy Ghost of Scopes: Can Science Lose the Next Round,” by New York Law School professor Stephen A. Newman, provides a shimmering example of how mainstream academics support blatant censorship of the pro-intelligent design viewpoint. A series of two posts will discuss these articles. Disclaiming Disclaimers I’ve discussed recently why think textbook disclaimers are not an effective way to Read More ›

Links of Interest:

Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos
Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube)

The late Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders of biological evolution during the later decades of the Twentieth Century. As a Harvard professor who published many scholarly articles and books and taught biology, geology and the history of science, Gould was often viewed as a spokesperson for science and one of the most prestigious scientists in the world. As a frequent essayist in the popular press, Gould was also well known to the general public.

To the consternation of fellow Darwinists, Gould often told the truth about Darwin’s theory of natural selection and how it measured up against the real world. In 2000, he published an article, entitled “Abscheulich (Atrocious!): Haeckel’s distortions did not help Darwin” (Natural History, March, 2000), that gave a frank assessment of Ernst Haeckel’s infamous embryo drawings and the ethics of using them to sell Darwin’s theory to students and the public.

The Privileged Planet argues for design based upon a testable prediction of a convergence of the requirements for both habitability and scientific discovery. Rob Crowther recently discussed the intolerance of ISU physicist John Hauptman’s Des Moines Register op-ed that supported ousting ID-proponents from the academy.  Hauptman is a member of Guillermo Gonzalez’s department at ISU who voted against Dr. Gonzalez because Gonzalez believes ID is science.  Hauptman justifies his intolerance by claiming that “Intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor suffered its first test by measurement.”  (In fact, Hauptman holds scientific theories to a very high standard, writing, “Any single wrong prediction, and you must junk the theory.” If that’s the case, Read More ›

Guillermo Gonzalez has issued a statement about the rejection of his tenure appeal by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy: I learned on the morning of June 1, 2007 that President Geoffroy has denied my tenure appeal. I understand that this was a very difficult decision for him to make given its far-reaching implications. It is now clear to me that this decision, in effect, had been predetermined by August 2005, when Hector Avalos and other ISU professors began circulating a petition statement condemning Intelligent Design. At the same time several of the same ISU faculty spread misinformation about me and the nature of my Intelligent Design research in the local press. These events poisoned the atmosphere among the faculty and administration Read More ›