Academic Freedom for Politically Correct Professors Thrives at KU

My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “The fundies [fundamentalists] want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology.”

Stop CNN Before They Edit Again

CNN strikes again, delivering a completely biased story about the debate over intelligent desgin. In their treatment of Dr. Behe, CNN’s editors used short quotes from Dr. Behe interspersed with factually inaccurate voiceovers to mislead viewers about Dr. Behe’s views on intelligent design. Rather than let Dr. Behe in his own words define intelligent design, and his work related to it, CNN correspondent Delia Gallegher puts words in his mouth wrongly stating: “Michael Behe is a major player behind intelligent design, the movement that’s trying to bring the supernatural into science.”

False Facts Syndrome Infects Article on Caldwell Lawsuit

Media coverage of a recent lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley and NSF shows again the media’s inability to cover the debate over evolution accurately and without bias. Casey Luskin’s reports: “The AP wrongly insinuates that attorney Larry Caldwell is arguing that government funding of a website promoting neo-Darwinian theory is itself unconstitutional. It also falsely insinuates that Caldwell is somehow arguing that teaching neo-Darwinian theory is inherently religious or inherently unconstitutional. In reality, Caldwell’s legal arguments are altogether different, and very precise.” Read the rest of this story at www.evolutionnews.org.

Responses to the San Diego Union Tribune’s anti-ID editorial

The recent actions by the Kansas State Board of Education have given a site like Evolution News and Views, which is dedicated to help correct misinformation in the media about the debate over Darwin, an endless supply of material. This time, however, the IDEA Center has also posted some good responses to the San Diego Union Tribune’s (SDUT) recent anti-ID editorial chastely titled “Voodoo Science.” The SDUT piece makes a number of mistakes about the recent events in Kansas.

Don’t Bash it ‘Til You’ve Tried It: A response to Krauthammer and Kriegel

In the last week, two anti-ID editorials have been posted on various major media sites. This includes an article by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post entitled, Phony Theory, False Conflict and an article at Tech Central Station by Uriah Kriegel entitled, Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?. Both articles critique intelligent design, but Krauthammer’s misrepresents the theory quite badly. Kriegel makes some interesting arguments about ID and falsification–if only he would understand that ID theory is structured to disallow explanation by natural selection because natural selection is a fundamentally non-intelligent cause, and then apply his Popperian demarcation criteria to evolution as well. Citing to Unfriendly Authorities Krauthammer’s line of attack is to imply that Read More ›