Month: April 2008
ISU Alumni Band Together to Raise Support For Astronomer Ousted Because of Advocating Intelligent Design
Freegonzalez.com website launched to raise research funds Des Moines, IA — Iowa State University alumni — upset by the recent denial of tenure to former ISU assistant professor Guillermo Gonzalez — are taking matters into their own hands. “As alumni at ISU, we are appalled that the current Iowa State administration would stoop to expelling a brilliant young scientist and gifted instructor from the classroom, not for teaching about intelligent design or even mentioning it in his classroom, but for simply committing the thought crime of advocating it as science,” said ISU alumnus David Eaton.
Name Calling in Lieu of an Argument
[Note: For a comprehensive rebuttal to critics of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] It does not seem that Arthur Caplan, the toast of MSNBC, has even seen the film Expelled, his representations of it are so uninformed. Yet he is prepared to charge in public that Ben Stein is a “Holocaust denier,” someone whose name should be forever “a source of scorn.” Would this be same Ben Stein who takes his Expelled audience through Dachau to show them where the Holocaust took place? Some denier!
The Historical Connection from Darwin to Hitler
If you’re wondering about the historical connection from Darwin to Hitler, here are a few recently published articles you should take a look at: Last week David Klinghoffer ran a series of posts on the historical link from Darwin to Hitler here at ENV: [Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]
“Poof, there goes another major prop in the battle against intelligent design”
Richard Dawkins’ concession that the design we see in nature could be the result of alien activity continues to be a hot topic. CSC senior fellow David DeWolf e-mailed me with some interesting insights. The point of Dawkins’ concession in the movie [Expelled] is not that panspermia is a preferable alternative to evolutionary theory, but rather THAT IT CAN BE STUDIED SCIENTIFICALLY. (Sorry for shouting, but I get excited about these things.) Dawkins concedes that you could scientifically investigate whether or not the origin of life reflected natural processes or whether it was likely the result of intervention from an external, intelligent source. If you concede this point, which Dawkins appears to do on camera, then Robert Pennock, Eugenie Scott, Read More ›
Is the “Science” of Richard Dawkins Science Fiction?
Following closely on the heels of Bruce Gordon, Jonathan Wells –himself a player in Expelled— has just published a response to Richard Dawkins’ recent LA Times opinion piece. Atheist Richard Dawkins is hopping mad at the makers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Dawkins accuses the filmmakers of “lying for Jesus” because they make it seem that he believes in intelligent design and space aliens.Dawkins is an outspoken critic of intelligent design (ID). In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins defined biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Design is only an appearance, because (as the subtitle of the book indicated) “the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without Read More ›