Month: January 2005
Barbara’s BLACKLIST
Anti-intelligent design gurus Barbara Forrest and Glenn Branch have fired a shot across the bow to those in academia who have given intellectual assent to intelligent design theory (ID). The message: don’t count on academic freedom to protect you. Beyond Barbara and Branch’s hackneyed diatribe against ID as a conspiracy theory — like something out of an X-Files caper — the authors call upon others in academia to try to undermine the careers of academics that have pursued research in ID. Their article reads like an anti-ID hit list, with the authors taking great care to drop the names of many ID proponents between propagandistic, red herring bits involving the author’s slanted discussions of the apparent religious motives of certain ID Read More ›
Growing Complexity in Federal ID Court Case
The recent Dover design/intelligent design federal court case (aka Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District) just got a little bit more interesting, with the Rutherford Institute filing a motion to intervene on behalf of several parents. If successful, the parents will be made a third party to the ACLU’s lawsuit. The parents hope to vindicate the rights of students to be able to learn about scientific information concerning the scientific controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, defending the marketplace of ideas from the ACLU’s efforts to suppress all scientific information that call neo-Darwinian theory into question. Quoting U.S. Supreme Court precedents, Rutherford’s motion makes an important point: The Constitution protects not just the right to express information and ideas but also Read More ›
Yes, Virginia, there is scientific evidence against Darwinian evolution
CSC Senior Fellow Jonathan Wells had a letter published in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Wells responds in brief detail to earlier letters asserting that there is no scientific evidence against Darwin’s theory of evolution.
What exactly is Dover design? Far from intelligent
The York Daily Record is reporting on the first ever reading of a statement about intelligent design to Dover School District ninth graders in biology classes. The story raises the issue of whether or not students are even learning about intelligent design theory, and seems to conclude that they are not. According to YDR the statement read to students says i part: “Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s views. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families.” One has to wonder why the ACLU and others are so upset that someone read a statement saying that there are other viewpoints. Intelligent design is never Read More ›
Another op-ed properly defending design theory
We’re starting to see occasional occurrences of coherent defenses of design theory popping up on editorial pages of all sorts of newspapers. For instance, Bruce Mclarty has an op-ed piece in The Daily Citizen (Arkansas) that nicely explains the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and correctly points out that creationism is a subset of intelligent design, not the other way around. “While all creationists would believe in intelligent design, the opposite is not true. One could adhere to the idea that nature reflects an intelligent designer without believing in the Bible, the God of the Bible, or the Genesis account of creation.” Mclarty also notes that: “When something appears to defy purely naturalistic explanation, it is attributed to being Read More ›