The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased. Evolution News & Views presents analysis of that coverage, as well as original reporting that accurately delivers information about the current state of the debate over Darwinian evolution. Click here to read more.
When it comes to citing examples of purposeful design, nearly every author likes to point out the hen’s egg. It’s really quite remarkable. Despite having a shell that is a mere 0.35 mm think, they don’t break when a parent sits on them. According to Dr. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen,
A bird egg is a mechanical structure strong enough to hold a chick securely during development, yet weak enough to break out of. The shell must let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, yet be sufficiently impermeable to water to keep the contents from drying out.
Under microscopy, one can see the shell is a foamlike structure that resists cracking. Gases and water pass through 10,000 pores that average 17 micrometers in diameter. Ultimately, 6 liters of oxygen will have been taken in and 4.5 liters of carbon dioxide given off. The yolk is its food. All life support systems are self-contained, like a space shuttle.
All hen’s eggs are ready to hatch on the twenty-first day. Every day is precisely preprogrammed. The heart starts beating on the sixth day. On the nineteenth day the embryo uses its egg tooth to puncture the air sac (beneath the flat end) and then takes two days to crack through the shell.
Criticism of evolution not safe for discussion in Florida schools
Robert Crowther
The Florida state legislature's inability to push through an academic freedom bill highlights the difficulty of passing any legislation, expecially one that has strong opposition. Any legislation dealing with the teaching of evolution is bound to face an uphill battle as Darwinists are effective at organizing groups and people to pressure the legislators. Where does that leave the teachers in Florida?
Could Science and the Chronicle of Higher Education Be Any More Biased – or Wrong?
Casey Luskin
The documentary Expelled keenly observes that scientific ideas begin in the academy, but if they're to get out to the people, they must pass through a series of barriers and “checkpoints,” which means they can be hindered or stopped at any point along the way. In the film, the first checkpoint is the academy, which polices journals and controls research grants and funding. The second checkpoint is comprised of watchdog groups, like the NCSE, that work hard to organize and kindle opposition against Darwin-skeptics. The next checkpoint is the media, which carefully selects the sources of information it will broadcast to the public on this issue. When all those checkpoints fail, the final checkpoint is the courts. (This idea is explained in the diagram at left.) The film features various animated sequences explaining how Darwinists use these “checkpoints” to prevent scientific dissent from evolution from reaching the public.
Some members of the media don’t like being seen as a “checkpoint,” so they have been working hard in their coverage of Expelled and academic freedom legislation to misinform the public on these topics. The latest examples are a biased and error-filled post at the Chronicle of Higher Education by Richard Monastersky and a one-sided article about academic freedom legislation in the journal Science
Monasterky's post unashamedly praises the fact that “University professors have joined other science advocates to battle so-called ‘academic freedom’ bills under consideration in Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri.” Monastersky does his part to oppose academic freedom legislation, never quoting the actual text of the bills (which state that they “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine”) and instead quoting Barbara Forrest, who reportedly “called it a ‘stealth creationism bill.’” Monastersky apparently missed the fact that just last week, University of Missouri Professor of Medicine John Marshall testified in favor of an academic freedom bill before the Missouri House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education.
Monastersky shows his true colors in this debate by favorably referring readers to the NCSE and Panda’s Thumb for more information on the legislation. He even quotes Panda’s Thumb’s self-description as a blog for “defenders of the integrity of science.” In the one sentence where Monastersky mentions the proponents of the legislation, he writes: “The Discovery Institute, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design, supports the passage of the legislation.” He misrepresents our position because Discovery Institute has long opposed mandating intelligent design in the classroom, and these bills are not about pushing alternatives to evolution into schools. In fact, the bills in Michigan, Louisiana, and Missouri have language that would not even protect the teaching of scientific alternatives to evolution, such as intelligent design.
Science also recently published an article about the bills, which wrongly equates intelligent design with creationism and then states that "creationism is a mutating virus." The article quotes no supporters of the bill, and only quotes critics of the legislation. Eugenie Scott, Executive Directof of the NCSE, was quoted echoing Barbara Forrest's talking points, falsely claiming that the academic freedom bills, "provide a permission slip for teachers to teach creationism." Again, Science chose not to even report any of the actual language of the bills (see above), which could never sanction the teaching of creationism.
So what we see here is the media checkpoint working closely with the watchdog checkpoint to endorse the misinformation coming from the academia checkpoint. Collectively, they coordinate efforts to promote distorted and one-sided information about academic freedom legislation to the public. It seems that balanced and objective reporting on evolution has been expelled from Science and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Richard Dawkins Compares Rabbi to Hitler, Then Refuses to Apologize
John West
Richard Dawkins just can’t seem to keep his foot out of his mouth. He has spent the last several weeks trying to recover from his embarrassing interview in the film Expelled where he concedes that intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis after all—so long as you limit the intelligence being studied to space aliens. Now, after denouncing Expelled as “wicked, evil” and an “outrage” for pointing out that Darwinism was one of the intellectual influences on Nazism, Dawkins has compared a popular Rabbi who dares to criticize him to Hitler! And he did it no less on World Holocaust Remembrance Day. No, I’m not joking. As I’ve said before, it’s getting really hard to parody the Darwinists. They do it so well themselves.
No, We Didn’t Make Up The Controversies – A Reply to John Timmer
Paul Nelson
Does the biology textbook Explore Evolution manufacture false controversies about evolution, while ignoring real ones?
That’s what biologist and science writer John Timmer claimed in a post earlier this week at Ars Technica. Timmer attended a two-day symposium on evolution at Rockefeller University and noted the many debates brewing there. “Evolution clearly has no shortage of controversies,” he concluded . But those real controversies have “no overlap,” he claimed, with the “ostensible” (i.e., fake) controversies supposedly “manufactured” by Explore Evolution. Bottom line for Timmer: while students may, or may not, need to learn about controversies in evolution – he leans strongly towards “not” – Explore Evolution is misleading at best, and the academic freedom bills being introduced around the country aren’t needed.
Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene
Casey Luskin
Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history. Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of “junk” DNA, now known to have function. In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function.
My Denialism and Dr. Stephen Novella's Latest Fumble on the Mind-Brain Problem
Michael Egnor
"Denialist" has become the slur du-jour of materialists. Dr. Stephen Novella, ardent acceptist, takes me to task for denying the truth of his personal materialist ideology of mind-brain causation. He believes that the brain causes the mind entirely, without remainder. I believe that the brain causes the mind partly, with remainder. He’s a materialist, I’m a dualist. That makes Dr. Novella angry:
Dr. Egnor must be tired of always being wrong - or at least he would be if he had the insight and intellectual honesty to see how persistently wrong he is. Alas, so far he has not demonstrated such insight. I have been engaged in an ongoing blog debate with Dr. Michael Egnor, who writes for the propaganda blog…Egnor has mangled most of his arguments, has misrepresented my opinions, has cruelly assaulted logic (as you can see he has a proper home at the Discovery Institute) - but now he demonstrates that he is incapable of reading a simple sentence and comprehending its meaning…His arguments are persistently wrong. He has not acknowledged his prior egregious errors - which is evidence for lack of insight and/or intellectual dishonesty. He completely misrepresented what I wrote -so either he did not understand it, or didn’t care. Egnor has mangled his arguments and abused logic. These are NOT personal attacks - these are legitimate criticisms of his behavior.
My "cruel assault on logic" and "incapability of reading a simple sentence" have seduced me into very bad behavior…denialism:
Francisco Ayala Makes Confused Religious Arguments for Evolution
Casey Luskin
The mainstream media's “framing” of the evolution-debate would have us believe that Darwin-skeptics are the ones who make religious arguments and try to push religion into the science classroom. But the evidence shows that the Darwinists are often the ones who push religion — and in an unashamed manner, at that. A recent UC Irvine news article reports on a lecture given by leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala where he suggested that religion should be discussed in science classes. Ayala said, “the fact that science is compatible with religion is an important thing to state in science classes.” He continued making religious arguments for evolution, contending, “The theory of evolution is better for religion than intelligent design.”
But the evidence suggests no such thing. Instead, it points to the willingness of evolutionary biologists to believe just-so stories, and to the ideological corruption of the National Institutes of Health and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
Darwinists have always recognized the existence of an intuitive barrier that prevents many of us from joining them. Human understanding of complex things is strongly shaped by our experiences with human technology. You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate in some way the extraordinary difficulty of getting physical systems to perform extraordinary tasks. Technology doesn’t just happen. It only comes with sizable investments of genius and diligence, along with more than a little patience.
Velvet worms are thought to be descended of insects, but the evidence for this is scanty; they look a lot like worms, and they have remained unchanged for millions of years. They live along fallen leaves in tropical forests and have two nozzles, one on each side of their head, which can fire off a very quickly drying glue at their prey. These two sprays crisscross back and forth, as if lassoing the victim. Once the victim is securely ensnared, the worm bites a hole in its body, injects digestive juices, and then slurps up the dissolving victim. Curiously, this glue does not dry within the worm’s body, and its digestive juices are well contained. Imagine the difficulty if the intermediate glue dried within the velvet worm, clogging the nozzles, or dried too slowly, allowing the victim to get away before becoming ensnared.
John Derbyshire on "Expelled," or How to Review a Movie without Really Trying
Martin Cothran
I have always admired G. K. Chesterton's dictum that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, but I never appreciated the full scope of its application until reading John Derbyshire's recent review of Ben Stein's "Expelled" at National Review Online.
"What on earth has happened to Ben Stein?" asks Derbyshire. "He and I go a long way back." Are the two close? Are they old pals who have been through a lot together? "No," he says, "I've never met the guy."
But wait. How can this be? How can Derbyshire have forged this bond of friendship with Stein without actually knowing him? "Though I've never met him," he explains, "I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him."
Got it.
In fact, Derbyshire displays an amazing ability, far beyond that of the rest of us, to engage with people and things even though he has had no direct contact with them. Take "Expelled" for example. "So what's going on here with this stupid 'Expelled' movie?" he asks — a question which could have been answered by the simple expedient of actually watching it. A man with Derbyshire's special talent, however, is not hampered by such constraints:
Much the way Marxist determinism was marshaled in the past to explain practically everything, an "evolutionary advantage" is now sought. Endless grant money seems to be available and journalists are eager to report the research speculations as "science." I am collecting a file of such stories.
So here I am trying to figure out how a study might be concocted to explain this moving account of a sports team that showed great conscience and panache. Surely someone can get a government grant to find a Darwinian answer to replace the common sense one.
Ronald Bailey Attacks Expelled, Endorses Discrimination Against Intelligent Design Proponents
Casey Luskin
Over at Reason.com, Ronald Bailey has taken the Michael Shermer (i.e. Fact Free) approach to attacking Expelled. Bailey charges that "the film is entirely free of scientific content—no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for 'intelligent design' (ID) theory is given." But last time I saw the film, it featured well-credentialed scientists arguing that natural selection lacks information-generative power and arguing the digitally-encoded information in DNA and highly efficient micromachines and factories in the cell strongly indicate an intelligent cause. Bailey makes the simplistic (and inadequate) argument for neo-Darwinism based upon the fact that the fossil record shows that species have changed over time and younger fossils more closely resemble living species than older fossils. But this argument makes three mistakes:
(1) 2001 car models more closely resemble 2008 car models than do 1922 car models, but no one is arguing that cars evolved without intelligent design;
(2) It ignores that ID does not dispute the notion that species on earth have changed over time, but merely disputes the claim that the main driving force generating all complex biological features is natural selection acting on random mutation; and
(3) It forgets the much bigger problem that Neo-Darwinism has trouble explaining the paucity of intermediate forms in the fossil record;
David Berlinski is back at NRO with a take down of the odious and tiresome John Derbyshire. Derbyshire has sunk to new lows recently in his attacks on Discovery Institute, Expelled, and anyone who has the temerity to advocate intelligent design or simply question Darwinism. Berlinski is in no mood to pull his punches in going after Derbyshire.
Having not seen the documentary that he proposes to criticize, Derbyshire is nonetheless quite certain that he knows what it conveys. “It is pretty plain,” he asserts, “that it is a piece of creationist porn.” Perhaps I will be forgiven for suggesting that John Derbyshire’s late-night scrutiny of the Internet may have corrupted his habitual search for le mot juste. Expelled has nothing to do with creationism, and if it is pornographic, the details have not become widely known.
Expelled makes a point far plainer than pornography and points to a phenomenon just as widespread. The scientific community is intolerant of dissent and morbidly so when it comes to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Those who reject criticism because it is unwelcome have in John Derbyshire acquired an ally of the best sort. He is not disposed to ask questions of his friends; and he is eager uncritically to attack their enemies.
What You Ought To Know About Intelligent Design and Evolution
Robert Crowther
There's a fascinating new series of video clips about all manner of subjects called What You Ought To Know. This clip on intelligent design and evolution is one of the best summaries of the debate I've ever seen, and all done in just a few minutes. With some laughs thrown in even.
Now that you've watched that, watch this clip on Open Minds and think about how you felt when you watched the first one.
The Devil’s Delusion
The documentary 
