Month: April 2010
The Biggest Problem in Asking About Life Is Botching Evolutionary Science, Not Attacking Religion (Updated)
There have been recent news reports about a parent in Tennessee who wants his local school district to reject a textbook, Asking About Life, because it calls young earth creationism a “biblical myth.” I picked up a copy of the 1998 edition of Asking About Life and it’s true: the textbook consistently attacks, inhibits, denigrates, opposes, disparages, and shows hostility towards certain religious viewpoints. Evolution should be taught, but I see no reason why it must be taught in this manner alongside constitutionally questionable attacks upon religion. But the real travesty about the textbook is the fact that it (a) teaches students only about the pro-evolution evidence and never mentions any data as a scientific challenge to evolution, and (b) Read More ›
Recent Genetic Research Shows Chimps More Distant From Humans, Neanderthals Closer
Research published in Nature over the past few months is showing a much greater genetic distance between humans and chimps than previously thought, while revealing a closer one between humans and Neanderthals. A Nature paper from January, 2010 titled, “Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content,” found that Y chromosomes in humans and chimps “differ radically in sequence structure and gene content,” showing “extraordinary divergence” where “wholesale renovation is the paramount theme.” Of course, the paper attributes these dramatic genetic changes to “rapid evolution during the past 6 million years.” One of the scientists behind the study was quoted in a Nature news article stating, “It looks like there’s been a dramatic renovation or reinvention Read More ›
Correcting Myths About Coppedge’s Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit
http://www.discovery.org/a/14511
Watch Stephen Meyer Talk On Intelligent Design Live From Sao Paulo, Brazil At 3PM Today
Stephen Meyer is in Brazil this week at the “Intelligent Design: Science and Religion” conference at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo, one of Brazil’s oldest and most prestigious universities. He speaks today at 3:00PM PST (7:00PM in Sao Paolo) about Signature in The Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.The Symposium lectures are being transmitted live on the university website and you can watch Dr. Meyer’s lecture this afternoon there. Once on that page click on the Symposium logo to stream the speeches in real time. Also in attendance at the conference is University of Idaho biologist Scott Minnich, who spoke this morning about “Irreducible Complexity and the Bacterial Flagellar Motor: Assessment of Recent Controversies”. On Wednesday at Read More ›
The ACLU Has a History of Advocating Disparate Treatment for Intelligent Design
In my prior post, I critiqued ACLU-affiliated law professor Gary Williams for claiming that David Coppedge’s case “probably won’t have a shot in court.” If Coppedge has no case, then Mr. Williams must be saying that an employee discussing a matter relevant to the workplace and that is not prohibited by any employer policy–in a non-disruptive fashion–can be targeted when other employees expressing different views about the same topic are not penalized. But this is exactly what happened at JPL, a taxpayer funded entity: JPL has no policy against talking about intelligent design (ID), and permits employees to express viewpoints that are hostile towards ID, but when an employee expresses pro-ID speech, he’s suddenly harassed, investigated, demoted, and told to Read More ›