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The Washington Post printed Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman's short op-ed in today's "Free For All" section of the Post. Blind Eye Toward Intelligent Design
There really is a scientific case against Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and another for the alternative of intelligent design, but you will not find them in The Post. Instead, we have Peter Slevin ["Evolution's Grass-Roots Defender Grows in Va.," Metro, July 20] regaling us about a group of underemployed 1960s activists who were looking for a cause and picked the defense of Darwin's theory. On June 3 a Post editorial derided "The Privileged Planet," a film about cosmology, as "religious" -- an untrue description that nonetheless has the apparent merit of ending discussion on any number of questions these days.
Darwin apologists are happy to opine on religion and politics, of course. What they will not do is address the growing evidence against Darwin's theory. More than 400 brave scientists now question that theory publicly. Whether to teach the evidence both for and against Darwin's theory is the only question before most school boards -- not intelligent design.
Intelligent design is another matter, and it is almost always misrepresented in the media. Simply put, intelligent-design theorists contend that scientists have uncovered demonstrable indicators of design in nature. The theory holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. It goes no further. It is not creationism. It is not religion.
The only religious believers in all this are the Darwinists who refuse to air the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin's theory and who seek to punish the scholars and teachers who do.
-- Bruce Chapman
More and more we’re seeing ridiculous charges from Darwinists that CSC scientists, and scientists skeptical of Darwinism in general, are religious zealots and right-wingers with theocratic leanings. It reminded me of Giuseppe Sermonti’s comment about Darwinism being the only politically correct science. So, now you have dogmatic Darwinists seeking to discredit anyone who speaks out against Darwinism in order to protect a politically correct scientific viewpoint. Response by John G. West (Discovery Institute) to Paul Gross article, “Intelligent Design and that Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” Science Insights, Volume 7, No. 5 (November 2003)
“Darwinism… is the ‘politically correct’ of science,” observes Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti. (“Darwin is a Prime Number,” Rivista di Biologia, 95 [2002], p. 10). Perhaps the best that can be said of Paul Gross’s “Intelligent Design and that Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” (Science Insights, Sept. 2003) is that Gross succeeds rather spectacularly in proving Sermonti right.
Click here to read more.
West, along with CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt, wrote another piece also making this point last year for Science & Theology News. No legitimate proponent of intelligent design opposes the separation of church and state, least of all Discovery Institute, a secular think tank whose various officers and fellows represent an eclectic range of religious views, from Jewish to Roman Catholic to Presbyterian to agnostic-hardly a fundamentalist cabal.
American Spectator editor George Neumayr has an insightful op-ed titled “The Monkey Wrench” on the efforts by dogmatic Darwinists to stifle any criticism of Darwin’s holy writ. Treat critics of evolution no more seriously than segregationists, Darwinists urge the media and school boards. Just as segregationists, whose views are manifestly irrational, don't deserve "equal time" in discussions, the critics of evolution don't deserve equal time either, Darwinists plead.
In a media forum aired on C-SPAN a while back, Slate 's Jacob Weisberg in effect said this to New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, upbraiding him for running stories about a school board controversy in Kansas that had quoted critics of evolution. Why did you give them equal time? Weisberg asked Keller. Would you give segregationists their say? Keller found Weisberg's criticism too radical and unfair, but assured him that anybody who read the Times 's Science section would know that the paper was in the tank for Darwin. It will be interesting to see whether in the future the nation’s paper of record will continue its unbridled support of Darwin, or will it begin to report more accurately and fairly on the evolution debate, much as Times’ reporter Jodi Wilgoren did last May when she covered the Kansas state board of education’s hearings on evolution?
Neumayr also highlights the viewpoint discrimination and increasing instances of infringement of academic freedom suffered by academics who dare to raise scientific criticisms of Darwinism. John West of the Discovery Institute has reported the ongoing harassment of scientists who dissent from Darwinism. He writes that at "the Smithsonian Institution, biologist Richard Sternberg, the former editor of a respected biology journal, says he faced discrimination and retaliation after accepting for publication a peer-reviewed article supportive of intelligent design last year."
At the Mississippi University for Women, West writes, "chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was removed as head of the division of natural sciences in 2003 after presenting scientific criticisms of biological and chemical evolution to a seminar of honors students."
A Darwinist blog is trumpeting a quote by George Gilder in yesterday's Boston Globe which they have taken out of context in an attempt to make him look bad. "Intelligent design itself does not have any content." First, it would be helpful to see the quote in context of what was being discussed, namely Discovery Institute's position on education policy. "I'm not pushing to have [ID] taught as an 'alternative' to Darwin, and neither are they," he says in response to one question about Discovery's agenda. "What's being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there's a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content."
I understood what Gilder was driving at, but decided to ask him to clarify the statement, which he has done: "My point was that intelligent design does not answer the question of the source of the design. Use of the term points the argument toward what we don't know scientifically and probably cannot know (the designer or intelligent force in the Universe) rather than toward what we do know: the flaws in the materialist Darwinian model." It is exactly those flaws that Discovery has always advocated be included in science classes. Gilder is right in insisting that be the focus in the classroom, not the requiring of inclusion of intelligent design or any other alternative theory.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this quote was truncated from what Gilder actually said in the interview, as it is likely that he gave a much longer answer than what we see in the article.
Anyone who wonders what Gilder thinks about the content of ID only need read a couple of his writings to get the picture.
Gilder Responds to Wired Magazine: The Materialist Superstition
The Materialist Superstion
If you listen hard enough you can hear the "I told you sos!" already.
"Wedge II" Discovery at Discovery Dumpster Reveals Theocracy Plan
The Boston Globe continues to report on the debate over evolution with nary a care for anything resembling a basic understanding of what's being debated. Today they have an interesting interview with Discovery co-founder and senior fellow George Gilder, "The Evolution of George Gilder."
Right out of the gate the reporter mischaracterizes the issue by giving some terrible definitions to three key terms. CREATIONISM: Ascribes creation of all matter and species to the work of a divine agency such as God.
EVOLUTION: Theorizes that plant and animal species developed from earlier life forms by a process of random mutation and natural selection.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN: Asserts that life is too complex to be explained by purely natural processes, and therefore some agent or agents of higher intelligence played a role in its creation. In fact, the theory of intelligent design simply holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent design theory does NOT claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause. All it proposes is that science can identify whether certain features of the natural world are the products of intelligence.
Gilder however can hold his own in any interview, no matter how ignorant the reporter might be. (Indeed, when speaking with Gilder about anything, most of us are ignorant in comparison.) In conversation, Gilder is something of a rhetorical hummingbird, darting from topic to topic so rapidly it's difficult to get a word (much less a question) in edgewise. Each topic arrives with its own set of footnotes, reference texts, and unvarnished -- some might say unhinged -- opinions. Predictable Gilder is not, however. On balance, it's much easier to peg him as a hip-shooting contrarian than a cookie-cutter conservative or raving holy roller.
At maximum conversational velocity, he waves his arms as though battling through nylon netting to get to the next point. And battle he does, with the energy of a 65-year-old man who runs 5 miles daily and could outtalk either Al, Franken or Sharpton, at the drop of a hat. Have you read this?, he asks frequently during a two-hour interview. Looked into that? Sixty-codon alphabets, amino-acid source codes, low-entropy carriers: Hey, check them out. Although a PhD in electrical engineering might be helpful, too.
Gilder sets the record straight on why he's interested in the debate over evolution, and why he's an ID proponent. Addressing the stereotype of ID proponents as scientific illiterates and Bible-thumping boobs, Gilder can barely restrain himself. The media-spun image is just that, he fumes: a cartoon version of people like himself.
"There's no biblical literalism -- none -- to the ID movement," he says flatly. ''So presenting us as troglodytes who believe in Noah's Ark is quite bizarre. If people want to attack me that way, fine. It's quite exhilarating, actually, to be shot at and totally missed."
A couple of letters to the editor caught my attention this last weekend, one in the Salt Lake Tribune and another in The Advocate in Baton Rouge, LA.
The Salt Lake Tribune letter is interesting because the writer takes the Tribune to task for the editor's unwillingness to have the paper's editorial pages engage in a dialogue. All persons must agree with your own limited scientific knowledge and your own biases or they are not to be listened to or even considered as a part of thinking society. The one sides opinions expressed in the paper have resulted in a monologue that I bet will turn readers to other sources rather quickly.
The Tribune recently refused to publish an op-ed by CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt. We submitted it to the paper for consideration because of a recent state senator's comment that he might propose legislation for the teaching of something he calle "divine design." Naturally, we wanted to clarify the issue for readers and provide a different and unique point of view. Unfortunately an asst. editor on the Tribune's editorial staff didn't want any other viewpoint appearing on their pages. In a phone conversation she called Witt a "liar" and said she wasn't going to run the piece because she had read all about us when she "researched Discovery Institute on the internet." It's good to see that Tribune staffers use premiere research tools and sources such as "the internet." It's even nicer to see a letter writer who noticed this independently and pointed it out.
The second letter makes this important point: Evolution as practiced today has become a right-wing, close-minded fundamentalist religion. If you do not convert you will be persecuted. If evolution is a real science I could question it without persecution. In academics, if I question established ideas, I am considered intellectual, except for evolution. ...
The reason you are losing the debate is you have taken the science of evolution and turned it into just one of those old, prehistoric religions of worshiping stones, animals, celestial bodies etc. It is encouraging to see letters from educated readers who understand the issue and are willing to take the time to set the record straight as needed.
In the wake of a libel lawsuit, NCSE, Inc. Director Eugenie Scott has a published a letter retracting her prior false statements concerning California parent Larry Caldwell. The letter is published in California Wild, the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences—and the same magazine that published her earlier article containing her false assertions about Caldwell. (Available online, here.) Caldwell’s letter in response to Scott was also published in California Wild.
John West has previously blogged about Scott’s defamatory article and attacks on Caldwell (here, here, and here). As Caldwell noted in a press release from last month:
It's a shame it took a lawsuit to get Scott, the author of the article, to retract some of the more outrageous factual misstatements in her article.
Caldwell’s response letter further elaborates upon some of Scott’s bogus claims and makes an important point:
The public policy debate over how we should teach evolution in America is too important to be based on such science fiction. At stake is whether our students will receive a quality science education, in which they learn the truth about evolution, or a science indoctrination, in which the truth is hidden from them.
Caldwell goes on to ask:
So why do Eugenie Scott and her National Center for Science Education feel the need to resort to such science fiction in order to prevail in this debate?
Quite so. How does such a group expect to maintain any sort of credibility when it undermines public understanding of the issues with blatant character attacks and inaccurate statements?
As noted earlier, NCSE, Inc. has demonstrated a pattern of making false claims and character attacks. In this instance, however, Caldwell's steadfastness has helped to restore some honesty to the debate over how to best teach students about the controversy over neo-Darwinian theory.
I would personally like to thank Washington Post reporter Peter Slevin for highlighting the deeply held convictions of the new branch campus of the Darwin-only lobby in Fairfax Virginia. Like the cause-heads of PCU this group of freeze dried protestors “led mostly by Vietnam-era protesters” who “came together in frustration after the November elections, have little political experience, apart from hoisting Kerry-Edwards signs.”
Said Richard Lawrence, 63: ‘"We're just a small group, maybe with a powerful idea. We don't have a clue, but we're not letting go."'
Without a clue is right. Like the Cause-heads they, in the words of Droz: “find a world-threatening issue and stick with it for about a week.”
Apparently, “Five months ago, they were choosing a mission…they selected evolution after deciding that other issues, such as Social Security revisions, were well-covered by bigger, richer groups.” Freeze dried indeed. All it takes to get them going is to add an issue and bring them to a boil. Just as their generation passes everything through the filter of Vietnam, The Message Group, as they call themselves, seems to have caught a case of Darrow-Mencken Sydrome and only seems able to see this issue through the lens of “Inherit the Wind”. One sure symptom of DMS has already appeared as they are going to: “hold a mock Scopes trial this fall, with the anti-Darwinian cause in the dock, the reverse of the 1925 Tennessee case that challenged the teaching of evolution” Way to be ingenuitive guys, but read up on what’s happened in the last thirty years. Critics of Darwinian evolution have been put in the dock and in some cases, like Roger DeHart, in the stocks and pilloried for saying things critical of Darwinian evolution that were already said in mainline science journals like Natural History Magazine (See Stephen Jay Gould’s “ Abscheulich! - Atrocious! - the precursor to the theory of natural selection,” March 2000) Way to fight for the establishment!
Discovery President Bruce Chapman has an essay --"A Darwinist's Declension (Nude Descending a Staircase)"-- with a delightful ending, that explains the hypocritical progression of argument employed to prevent questioning of Darwin's theory.
Chapman writes: If the Darwin-doubters and design advocates want to be taken seriously they must publish in peer-reviewed science journals. Never mind that the Darwinists work hard to blackball on principle any heretics whose work is submitted at such journals. Yet, even in the face of such tactics, more and more Darwin critics and design proponents began to break through in peer-reviewed journals. So the Darwinists (as in the Sternberg case at the Smithsonian) attacked the journal editors who allowed such outrages to occur. In the case of the Smithsonian, critics with relatively unimpressive scientific credentials besmirched an editor who has two doctorates in evolutionary biology. And: As usual, this standard does not apply to work by Darwinists, only to their adversaries. You can read the rest here.
Eighty years ago Thursday the famous Scopes Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, Tennessee. Time for a quiz:
History tells us that two great lawyers faced off. On the one side was (A) a progressive and a pacifist, an educated man who rejected the idea of a young earth and worried about efforts to peddle racism and eugenics in the South. On the other side was (B) a master orator who defended some flagrantly racist ideas long since discredited by science. Lawyer A sought a full and fair debate over the evidence. Lawyer B used a procedural tactic to shut down the debate so that only his position was heard.
Surely Mr. A would be the darling of any contemporary liberal journalist, right? But Mr. A was William Jennings Bryan, the creationist.
That's right. And Mr. B was Clarence Darrow, arguing for Darwinism and a textbook that explicitly promoted both racism and eugenics on Darwinian grounds--A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, by George William Hunter.
Do we learn that from Inherit the Wind, the Spencer Tracey film based on the play based on what some evolutionist somewhere wished had happened at the trial? Of course not.
But for many journalists, Inherit the Wind is The Scopes Monkey Trial. Worse, as Phillip Johnson explains, the film's cartoonish depiction of the trial has become the lens through which reporters see today's debate over neo-Darwinism.
Thus, anyone who promotes Darwinism must be the soulmate of Spencer Tracey, the film's voice of enlightened rationality. There is a parallel here, but not the one we usually hear. As noted above, the Spencer Tracey character's model, Clarence Darrow, used a procedural tactic to prevent Bryan from cross-examining him about Darwinism; likewise, today's ultra-Darwinists malign Discovery Institute for urging schools to teach both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinism so that students can critically analyze the theory.
Has anyone from the MSM ever reported that striking parallel? No, because it doesn't fit their rusty science vs. religion boilerplate. Thus, when an accomplished biologist like Italian geneticist Guiseppe Sermonti urges American public schools to dump bogus evidence for Darwinism and teach the controversy, he must be a narrow minded Bible thumping Southern fundamentalist in disguise because ... because ... well because Inherit the Wind said so.
The film sowed a lot of hot air. The question is, when will reporters begin to harvest from a better field?
NPR and the Darwinist Effort to Spin the Catholic Church
NPR had a story Sunday by Jason De Rose on the Catholic Church's position on evolution. The story was unbalanced, but it did report accurately, as some news outlets did not, that when Cardinal McCarrick of Washington spoke at the National Press Club last week he essentially backed up Cardinal Schoenborn. A theologian at Catholic University does the same in the story. On the other hand, the NPR piece takes the view that this is now an issue where the church is now opposed to "scientists." It never occurs to De Rose to suggest that some scientists agree with the church and, if interviewed, would contend that Darwinists have been claiming more for their materialist philosophy than their science can justify by the evidence.
So, instead, we have "Catholic Ken Miller" of Brown brought out as usual to say that he is dismayed. So is a theology professor at Georgetown University (are we surprised?). And they both are particularly alarmed, reports Jason De Rose, that the church may be adopting support for "intelligent design." Of course, Mr. De Rose never thought to ask a scientist in the intelligent design movement about this. Where was biologist Michael Behe, for example, in the NPR story? In any case, Schoenborn's essay speaks of "design", not necessarily "intelligent design", per se.
Plainly, the cheerleaders for scientific materialism are anxious. In the NPR piece De Rose hypes a mere letter from Miller and two other Darwinists (only one apparently a practicing Catholic) that was sent a few days ago to the Pope. The epistle writers ask the pontiff to "clarify" the church's position.
They may not have thought this through, however. Do they really want the Pope to clarify Church doctrine further? They could be sorry if he does.
Nonetheless, watch out: NPR's next story will probably be an editorial chastising the Catholic Church for meddling in science!
Just in time for the anniversary of the Scopes trial, the folks over at Panda's Thumb are continuing their unseemly crusade against Ohio State doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. Even though these Darwinian fundamentalists don't support academic freedom for teachers and scientists who are skeptical of Darwin, you'd think they might draw the line at going after students. Apparently, however, their bigotry and intolerance knows no bounds. Unhappy that Leonard's dissertation committee has effectively refuted the misinformation spread by Panda's Thumb and others, blogger Richard Hoppe has responded with even more smears. Here are replies to some of the new disinformation put out by Hoppe:
The Statement by Bryan Leonard's Dissertation Committee
Last week, Discovery Institute (DI) posted a document from two members of Bryan Leonard's dissertation committee. We posted it exactly as we received it. The title it came with was "STATEMENT BY BRYAN LEONARD’S DISSERTATION COMMITTEE," and it was signed by two of the three members of the dissertation committee, Glen Needham and Robert DiSilvestro. Hoppe complains:
The first misrepresentation is right up top in the Discovery Institute’s title: STATEMENT BY BRYAN LEONARD’S DISSERTATION COMMITTEE. But what follows is not a statement from Leonard’s dissertation committee. It is a statement from the two ID creationist members of the committee. Neither Paul Post, Leonard’s advisor who requested the delay in the defense, nor Dr. Joan Herbers, the Graduate School Representative on the committee, are signers of the D&N statement. So in fact it’s a statement from the creationist half of Leonard’s committee.
Mr. Hoppe doth protest too much.
First, as just noted, the title of the statement Hoppe cites is not "Discovery Institute's title." DI merely printed what it received from the two members of Leonard's dissertation committee. Presumably those members of the committee know better than Mr. Hoppe whether they are speaking for the committee as a whole.
Second, Hoppe inaccurately claims that Dr. Joan Herbers is a member of the dissertation committee. In fact, Dr. Herbers was "appointed" to the "Final Oral Examination Committee." The "Final Oral Examination Committee" is not the same thing as the dissertation committee. (If you don't believe me, check for yourself on p. 34 of the Ohio State University Graduate Handbook, 2004-05, available as a PDF document here. Or check Hoppe himself, who earlier quoted a section of the Handbook that makes clear the distinction.) (Special side note: I put "appointed" in quote marks because Dr. Herbers was inserted at the last minute in a highly irregular manner. The graduate school--for reasons that are still unclear--removed the original Graduate School Representative from the Final Oral Examination Committee and replaced her with Dr. Herbers. All of this was done without any consultation with Leonard's graduate advisor or anyone else on his dissertation committee. It certainly looks as if Dr. Herbers (an evolutionary biologist) was added at the last minute because of political pressures exerted by Darwinists who are determined to prevent Leonard from obtaining his doctorate. If Dr. Herbers was appointed because of Darwinsts political pressure, and if Leonard was subjected to differential treatment simply because of his views about evolution, the university may have violated Leonard's constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.)
Third, Mr. Hoppe falsely claims that Professors Glen Needham and Robert DiSilvestro are "creationists." Prof. DiSilvestro (a biochemist) supports intelligent design, and Prof. Needham (an entomologist) has expressed skepticism toward neo-Darwinism on scientific grounds. That doesn't make them creationists. Hoppe adopts the slimy tactic of labeling anyone who disagrees with Darwinism as a creationist.
The Darwinists' Media Blitz against Leonard
The dissertation committee statement cited by Hoppe criticizes members of the OSU community for campaigning against Bryan Leonard in the media and on the internet rather than through appropriate university channels. Hoppe offers an utterly unconvincing protest against this serious charge:
In fact, none of the three persons in the “OSU community” who raised concerns about the affair have sought out the press or blogged anything. I wrote the original blog entry on Panda’s Thumb, and notification of that entry to the press went out over my signature. While I know people in the “OSU community”, I am wholly independent of that institution. One of the three faculty members appropriately released the letter to a reporter when asked for it, knowing (after consultation with the graduate school) that it is a public document.
Hmm. And just how did Mr. Hoppe learn about internal complaints against Bryan Leonard? Perhaps he will tell us the names of the people from which he gleaned his original information? If they were professors or staff at OSU, then they certainly were guilty of trying to instigate a public campaign against Leonard. And just how did the Columbus Dispatch know to ask for the supposedly internal letter of complaint filed by Dr. Rissing, et. al. against Leonard? Hoppe didn't mention Rissing's letter in his original blog post, so how did this info. get to the reporter? Hoppe can't get around the fact that someone who works for the university had to leak info. about the letter to bloggers and/or the newsmedia. Otherwise, reporters wouldn't have known to ask for the document. Moreover, one of the professors who wrote the letter also gave an interview to the Columbus Dispatch. So despite Hoppe's protestations, one or more employees at OSU have certainly been spreading this information into the public arena. Frankly, I think it's outrageous that university employees would help publicly smear a student at their own university.
Hoppe should come clean and tell us about his own role in this sordid affair. What did he know and when did he know it? And from whom did he get his information?
Leonard's Dissertation and Ohio's Science Standards
Leonard's dissertation committee noted that Leonard's approach of teaching students about scientific criticisms of modern evolutionary theory merely follows the approach called for in Ohio's official science standards. Hoppe charges that the committee has mixed up its chronology, and points out that Bryan Leonard taught students criticisms of evolution before Ohio adopted its science standards in 2002:
The new science standards were adopted in 2002 and the scrubbed model lesson plan was accepted by the State BOE in March 2004. But in his testimony before a committee of the Kansas State Board of Education earlier this year, Leonard said he has been using the approach in question for years... Leonard’s been “doing it” since around 2000, years before any Ohio State Board of Education actions. D&N’s appeal to some sort of sanction for Leonard’s teaching by the Ohio State BOE would require time travel.
It's Hoppe who needs a lesson in chronology, not the members of Leonard's dissertation committee. As the dissertation committee members point out in their statement, Leonard's dissertation proposal WAS NOT APPROVED UNTIL 2003. Presumably, Leonard's dissertation research took place after his dissertation proposal was approved. Thus, Leonard's research for the dissertation occurred after 2002, when the science standards were adopted. The point made by the dissertation committee stands.
Fair-minded defenders of Darwin's theory should disown this latest crusade against academic freedom by Darwinian fundamentalists. Not content with blacklisting biology professors and science teachers, now the Darwin fundamentalists are going after students as well!
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the conviction of John Scopes for teaching evolution contrary to state law. Squandering the moral high ground, today's Darwinists seem all but determined to assume the role played by Scope's opponents. Instead, they ought to relearn the value of free speech for everyone. They can start by pondering the following words from Mr. Scopes himself: "By respecting the other man's views and by protecting his liberties, we gain respect for our own views and we protect our own liberties."
Many news stories and editorials from hyper-Darwinists and/or opponents of the theory of intelligent design (ID) have claimed that 12, 15 or even 20 states are considering legislation to MANDATE the teaching of ID in schools. This is completely false. Most of the stories and op-eds making these claims have lumped together local school board, state school board and state legislative activity relating IN SOME WAY to the teaching of evolution, misrepresenting the situation by lumping them all together as "states considering the mandating of ID."
Nonetheless, it is often difficult to track all of the activity taking place at the state and local level. A short overview of state legislative activity concerning evolution in 2005 here follows:
1) ALABAMA: Introduced in both the Senate and House was an anti-persecution act for teacher & students who discuss controversial scientific topics or the full range of scientific views on those topics;
2) ARKANSAS: A House bill was introduced that recommended provisions be made to allow for teaching of intelligent design, consistent with existing constitutional precedents;
3) GEORGIA: A proposed House bill called for textbooks to include valid scientific evidence for and against evolutionary theory (specifically human origins);
4) KANSAS: A House resolution was proposed, essentially repeating the Santorum language in the Conference Committee Report to the No Child Left Behind Act;
5) MISSISSIPPI: A Senate bill conflating the theory of intelligent design with creationism was proposed. It called for "equal treatment" of evolutionary theory and the bill’s ill-defined version of intelligent design;
6) MISSOURI: A proposed House bill called for inclusion of a critical analysis of evolution in school biology textbooks, repeating much of the Santorum language;
7) MONTANA: An anti-intelligent design Senate resolution was proposed in the legislature, blasting intelligent design theorists. It also attacked ID proponents for their purported influence in Kansas 1999 science standards process. A different House bill was placed in the drafting process, but NEVER submitted. Reportedly, the latter bill’s working title was: "Allow for competing theories of origin";
8) SOUTH CAROLINA: A proposed Senate bill called for the set up of a commission to study how evolution is taught, whether it should be and what the definition of science is;
9) NEW YORK: A House bill called for all public school students in grades K-12 to be instructed “in both theories of intelligent design and evolution”;
10) PENNSYLVANIA: A proposed House bill would permit local school boards to require students to learn about intelligent design theory of the origins of the earth and man where students are also taught about evolutionary theory.
The foregoing list does not include discussions concerning the teaching of evolution at the state level where no legislation expressly pertaining to the topic has been introduced. Such discussions have taken place in the following states:
a) Florida: where House floor and media discussion about evolution and alternative theories came up in the context of a student academic bill of rights in Florida;
b) Texas: a legislator’s discussion about treatment of evolution came up in the context of a bill concerning general textbook adoption procedures; and
c) Utah: media reports quote a legislator about instructing students in "divine design." In the former two situations, there was no explicit or implicit mention of evolution, Darwin, design or creationism in the bills respective texts.
Furthermore, there has been significant state-level activity before the Kansas Board of Education on the topic of how to teach evolution in public schools. Kansas has been in the process of revising their state science standards. As has been noted many places, the Kansas State Board of Education has been considering whether or not to include in those standards scientific criticisms of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and chemical evolutionary theory alongside the scientific strengths of those respective theories. (An FAQ and relevant blog post concerning the Kansas Board activity can be found here and here, respectively.)
2005 also has witnessed local school board activity (however big or small) on the evolution issue in places such as Texas, Minnesota, Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas and Tennessee. But only SOME of these places have dealt with the theory of intelligent design, and even fewer have concerned the mandating of ID.
John West's response to recent discussion of legislation in Utah can be found here. A recent Discovery Institute response to the proposed bill in Pennsylvania can be found here.
A short restatement of Discovery Institute's general public policy concerning the teaching of neo-Darwinian theory and chemical origin-of-life scenarios can be found here. An FAQ aptly summarizes DI's policy position here and here.
My letter responding to George Will's "A Debate That Does Not End" appears in the July 18 print edition of Newsweek.
George Will says the theory of intelligent design isn’t falsifiable—isn’t “a testable hypothesis.” Actually, particular design arguments are falsifiable. Design theorist Michael Behe, for instance, argues that we can detect design in the bacterial flagellum because the tiny motor needs all of its parts to function at all. That’s a problem for Darwinian evolution, which builds novel form one tiny functional mutation at a time. How to falsify Behe’s argument? Provide a detailed evolutionary pathway from simple ancestor to present motor. The flagellum might still be designed, but Behe’s argument that such design is detectable would have been falsified.
For a more in-depth discussion, see philosopher of science Stephen Meyer's analysis of observability and testability here.
Mark Franek had a piece in today's Philadelphia Inquirer showing off his ignorance on intelligent design. Here's his attempt to describe ID: "The basic tenet of intelligent design takes about five seconds to teach - the mechanisms of life are so complex that they could have only been orchestrated by a supreme power - but the implications of this belief are better taught and served in a religion or philosophy class, or better yet, in a place of worship." He's right, his definition of ID would be better suited for a religion class. But, that's not the standard definition of ID and is in fact a definiton that we reject outright.
Also interesting is this comment: "I can't prove the existence of macroevolution in a commentary, but I will bet one year's teaching salary on the hunch that biology teachers in the Dover area will quietly sidestep the requirement that they teach intelligent design." This is similar to one point I've made before which is that this is one reason we don't think it would be a good idea to mandate ID because teachers don't know what the theory really is about and wouldn't know how to teach it. So, they would likely do what he suggests here, ignore it. Or worse, they'd do like Franek does and make up out of whole cloth their own definition and description of the theory and teach that.
Last week a colleague of Guillermo Gonzalez's had a decidedly nasty letter published in the Ames Tribune. Rather than address any of the scientific arguments raised by Gonzalez and co-author Jay Richards in their book The Privileged Planet, this letter writer instead pens an ad hominem diatribe full of misinformation and falsehoods.
The Ames Tribune has published Gonzalez's response. While the letter tries to make out all ID supporters as ultra right-wing zealots --even to the point of comparing ID scientists to the Taliban-- Gonzalez poinst out: Early in his letter Patterson informs readers that “to those ignorant of the history and logic of modern science, the Intelligent Design (ID) arguments and inferences championed in ‘The Privileged Planet’ will seem scientifically sound, even compelling.” From this unsupported assertion it follows that Harvard astrophysicist and historian of astronomy Owen Gingerich, Cambridge evolutionary paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, and Notre Dame historian of science Michael Crowe are “ignorant of the history and logic of modern science.” They endorsed our book. The rest of Gonzalez letter can be read here.
CSC senior fellow William Dembski’s blog about an article in The New Scientist’s recent issue on intelligent design paints the perfect picture of the exact problem ID proponents and Darwinian skeptics face with almost all media.
Reporters sometimes wonder why CSC fellows don’t immediately stop whatever they’re doing and spend hours answering their questions and trying to explain our side of the issue to them when they call.
Well, this is exactly why we're hesitant to give reporters very much time and access. All too often the reporter has not read any of our materials or made any attempt to familiarize themselves with the arguments we’re presenting. Instead, they’d rather regurgitate the criticisms delivered to them by the NCSE and others as if that was the final word on the issue.
A number of large, mainstream publications are currently working on stories about the work of our scientists and it will be interesting to see if the reporters for these larger outlets will do any better job than their counterparts have in smaller venues.
You'd think that after the Jayson Blair scandal, the New York Times would be exceptionally careful about questions of journalistic ethics. Why, then, is the Times allowing a reporter who regularly covers the evolution controversy on its news pages to ALSO write opinion articles on the same subject?
Cornelia Dean has written a number of news stories for the Times about the the controversy over evolution, including one about the Kansas science standards and another one last weekend about the Catholic church and evolution.
But the day after Dean's news piece appeared about Catholics and evolution, a commentary by her promoting evolution appeared on the op-ed page of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania! In this op-ed, Dean advised evolutionists about how they can win the public debate over evolution:
Usually, when confronting the opponents of evolution, biologists make the case that evolution should be taught because it is true...
The battling biologists are right. But someone uneducated in the scientific method who listens to the arguments over evolution could be forgiven for thinking that they boil down to “my theory is better than your theory,” with both sides preaching with theological fervor.
Scientists don’t talk often enough or loud enough about the real strength of evolution — not that it is correct, but that it meets the definition of science.
Dean went on to describe how evolutionists can strengthen their public argument for evolution by talking about the scientific method. Ms. Dean wrote as if she was a public relations consultant for the Darwinists, telling them how best to frame their arguments in order to convince the public.
Dean ended her op-ed by claiming that intelligent design's belief that an "intelligent agent" was involved in the development of life is "a matter of faith, not science." Hmm. Isn't that what the whole debate is about? Critics of intelligent design claim the idea must be religious, while proponents argue that the design inference in nature is a scientific inference based on empirical evidence. While Ms. Dean is certainly entitled to her own view about which side is correct, publicly taking sides with one side of the debate in an op-ed at the same time she is covering the debate on the news pages is rather unseemly.
It turns out that Dean's op-ed in the York Daily Record originally ran in the Times itself billed as an "essay." So Dean's editors at the Times had to have known about this piece of editorializing by their reporter.
Doesn't anyone at the Times recognize that there is a problem here? On any other issue, one would think that the ethical questions raised would be obvious even to the most oblivious editor.
For example, what if a Times reporter covering the Kerry campaign last year had written an op-ed offering the Kerry campaign advice on how to win the presidential election?
Or what if a Times reporter covering judicial confirmations penned an op-ed expressing solidarity with Senate Democrats and offering them advice on how to stop conservative judicial nominations?
Ms. Dean may well be a conscientious reporter. On the one occasion she interviewed me for a story, she quoted me fairly and accurately. Given the garbled accounts of my comments published by many other reporters, Ms. Dean's accuracy wins high-marks in my book, even though the overall story she wrote was pretty one-sided. However, no matter how good a reporter Ms. Dean may be, her blurring of news and editorial functions poses a problem for an old-guard media outlet like the Times.
If the Times happened to be an opinion journal, the blurring would be fine. Indeed, I think opinion journalism--of the type found today on blogsites and in magazines like The Weekly Standard and The New Republic --is far more helpful to the public debate than straight "news stories." But the Times still purports to separate opinion and news functions, and it it still claims to offer fair and impartial coverage of the news by reporters who are not promoting their own ideological agendas. So long as the Times continues to claim that this is what it is doing, its news reporters shouldn't be writing op-eds about the stories they are covering.
Someone at the Times might want to re-read the Code of Ethics adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists:
Journalists should:
Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
I will be sending a letter of concern about this issue to the New York Times "Public Editor," Byron Calame. I will keep you posted about any response I receive.
Over the past month, Darwinists have been waging a vicious campaign of defamation against Ohio State University science education doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. (For more information about Leonard's situation, see here.) Mr. Leonard's doctoral dissertation defense has been put in limbo after certain Darwinist professors alleged that his research was "unethical" because it involved teaching students about scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory, an approach called for in Ohio's official science standards!
Darwinists have variously claimed that members of Leonard's doctoral committee were improperly selected, that Leonard engaged in "unethical" research, or that he taught his students intelligent design. According to members of Leonard's dissertation committee, however, all of these charges are false. Two members of the committee have just issued a detailed public statement correcting the record about Leonard's dissertation. Discovery Institute has posted the statement on its website as a public service, here.
It seems clear that Leonard, a public high school biology teacher as well as a grad student, has been targeted by Darwinists for pay-back because of his views on how to teach evolution. Last year, the Ohio Board of Education adopted for use in Ohio schools a lesson plan on the "Critical Analysis of Evolution" that Leonard helped draft. Darwinists were outraged by the adoption of this lesson plan, and now they are apparently trying to destroy the educational career of the person who wrote it.
It remains to be seen whether officals at OSU will defend Leonard's academic freedom.
Science magazine has published an article about what it is calling a "mea culpa" by Eugenie Scott of the NCSE for spreading false information about California parent Larry Caldwell. (For background on Scott's defamation of Caldwell, see here.) Science writes:
In the face of a libel suit, the head of an organization that tracks the ongoing battle over teaching Darwin in schools has agreed to publicly acknowledge errors in a recent article.
This spring, Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, published an article in California Wild, the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences, mentioning that lawyer Larry Caldwell had proposed the names of two creationist books to his local school board and quoting a scientist accusing him of "gross misunderstanding" of science.
In April, Caldwell slapped Scott and the center with a libel suit. Although it does not mention the magazine, editor Keith Howell agreed to remove the online link to Scott's article and to publish a letter from Caldwell as well as a mea culpa from Scott. The latter acknowledges that Caldwell did not introduce the two books, and that the comment about misunderstanding science referred to someone else.
Science neglects to mention that Eugenie Scott and the NCSE originally stonewalled when Caldwell asked them to correct the record. That's why he had to file lawsuit in the first place, and only under the threat of a lawsuit did Eugenie Scott see fit to retract her defamatory statements. I wish a reporter would ask Scott why she had to be sued before she was willing to tell the truth about Caldwell.
According to Science, Caldwell also faults Scott for wrongly labeling him a "creationist" in the past, but Scott now insists that she stopped doing this as soon as Caldwell objected. Really? In an e-mail to me, Larry Caldwell reported:
It's interesting that Scott claims that she stopped calling me a "creationist" after I complained to her about being labeled a "creationist activist" on the NCSE website [in 2003], yet Scott chose to feature me in an article subtitled "Creationists in California" in 2005. This just underscores why I felt it was necessary to file a lawsuit against Scott and NCSE this time. Hopefully, now they'll get it.
Yes, one hopes that members of the NCSE will stop their campaign of disinformation against those with whom they disagree. At the very least, perhaps the newsmedia will be more careful in the future before simply recycling claims put forward by Scott and the NCSE without verification.
A final observation about the way in which Science covered this story: Although the story itself is OK, the headline, "Creationism Skirmish," displays blatant bias. As the article makes clear, Caldwell was FALSELY accused of promoting creationism in his school district. Thus, Caldwell's lawsuit wasn't about creationism, it was about a Darwinist group FALSELY claiming that Caldwell was promoting creationism.
Given Science's track record when reporting about evolution, I guess I should be happy that at least the text of the article was accurate. After all, those of you who read about my $100 challenge to Science a couple of weeks ago know just how inaccurate Science news stories can be. (By the way, Science never did take up my earlier challenge, nor did it correct the misstatements in its previous story.)
Today’s New York Times has a fascinating page-one article about Catholic Cardinal Christoph Schönborn's recent op-ed declaring that Darwinism is incompatible with Roman Catholic doctrine as well as the findings of human reason. As we've come to expect from the major media, this "news" article contains errors of fact as well as editorializing by reporters Cornelia Dean and Laurie Goodstein, but it is nevertheless informative--and for a piece by the major media, relatively balanced. The article quotes both Bruce Chapman and Mark Ryland from Discovery Institute. The main thrust of the story is summarized early on in the following paragraphs:
The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
In a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church's position on evolution. "I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on," said Cardinal Schönborn.
He said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.
Unfortunately, the article recycles erroneous statements about Discovery Institute and intelligent design, stating:
One of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort.
In fact, Discovery advocates teaching scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory, not alternatives to it. One of the writers of this article (Cornelia Dean) ought to know this fact. After an interview with me last month, Ms. Dean accurately reported Discovery Institute's real position on science education. Old myths apparently die hard.
The Times' definition of intelligent design (ID) is also inaccurate. ID proposes that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause because of their highly-ordered complexity. Contrary to the Times, it's not just that things are complex; it's that they are complex in a certain kind of way (what mathematician William Dembski calls "specified complexity," or what I've labeled "highly-ordered complexity"). In addition, ID does not claim that it is logically impossible for Darwinism to explain the complexity of life ("the complexity of life cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer..."). Instead, it argues that based on available empirical evidence, the BEST (most plausible) explanation for certain features of life is that they are the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
Elsewhere in the article the reporters veer into outright editorializing, claiming:
Darwinian evolution is the foundation of modern biology. While researchers may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution plays out, there is no credible scientific challenge to the underlying theory.
Well, at least these Times reporters are open about their own bias. While it would be accurate for them to state that the majority of biologists believe in Darwinism, it is blatant editorializing, not factual reporting, to claim that there is "no credible scientific challenge" to the theory--when that is precisely the point being debated right now by a growing minority of scientists.
AP education reporter Ben Feller has a wire story about the debate over how to teach evolution. I was pleased to see that Feller actually got our position correct, and let us describe our policy in our own words. This is what he got from a recent interview with Discovery president Bruce Chapman: "The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design, is not seeking to require schools to teach the theory. Nor is it out to diminish the teaching of evolution, said Bruce Chapman, the institute's president.
``We want the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory taught. That's it,'' Chapman said. And he has a better definition of intelligent design than we usually see from the AP: Another theory fueling debate, intelligent design, asserts that some features of the natural world are so ordered and complex that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.
Now that the dust has settled from the very sucessful national premiere of The Privileged Planet, I can post a few of the photos (taken by expert photographer Brian Gage who also designed all the materials for The Privileged Planet premiere, not to mention the book cover and the DVD cover as well.)
The event itself went very well and it appeared that everyone of the 220 guests in attendance had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
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