Public Schools Still Using PBS’s Evolution

Many public schools in the U.S. are still showing biology students the 2001 PBS Evolution series. This 8-hour propaganda extravaganza — like most modern biology textbooks — distorts and exaggerates the evidence to convince people that Darwinism is true. When the series was first released, Discovery Institute published a detailed 150-page Viewer’s Guide exposing the distortions and exaggerations. The Guide includes extensive references to the scientific and popular literature, as well as eight activities that teachers and students will find helpful in critically analyzing this work of pro-Darwin propaganda. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer’s Guide to PBS’s Evolution:

Intelligent Design and the Death of the “Junk-DNA” Neo-Darwinian Paradigm

Two recent news articles are discussing the death of the junk-DNA icon of Neo-Darwinism. Wired Magazine has an article pejoratively titled “One Scientist’s Junk Is a Creationist’s Treasure” that emphasizes the positive point that intelligent design has made successful predictions on the question of “junk-DNA.” The article reports: [A] surprising group is embracing the results: intelligent-design advocates. Since the early ’70s, many scientists have believed that a large amount of many organisms’ DNA is useless junk. But recently, genome researchers are finding that these “noncoding” genome regions are responsible for important biological functions. The Wired Magazine article then quotes Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer explaining that this is a prediction of intelligent design that was largely unexpected under neo-Darwinian thought: “It Read More ›

Science Historian Sees Behe’s Edge of Evolution as a Cultural Earthquake

Will the summer of 2007 be remembered for largest Darwin-related cultural earthquake to date? Dr. Thomas Woodward, author of Darwin Strikes Back, thinks it just might. Beyondthenews.com today published Woodward’s review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Woodward says the book “is shaping up as a major turning point in the growing controversy between Darwinian evolution and the movement known as Intelligent Design.” Behe’s first ID book, Darwin’s Black Box, broke new ground in the debate over natural selection, and Woodward sees Edge of Evolution doing the same in regards to random mutations. For example, Behe asks, where can we draw the line between what random mutations can do in biology and what they cannot do? To his own surprise, Read More ›

‘Verizon Deniers’ Find a Cellphone

Is the brain alone necessary and sufficient to cause the mind? Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine scientists living on an isolated island who have developed sophisticated science and culture, with one exception: they deny that telecommunication is possible. For assorted reasons, they deny that the human voice can be transmitted through space, except as vibrations in air. We’ll call this civilization the ‘Verizon Deniers.’ One day, they find a cell phone (it dropped from a plane or something). They turn it on, and they hear things. They hear hissing, cracking, and what sounds like voices!

Plain Talk About Mike Behe’s New Book, The Edge of Evolution

The folllowing is from a sympathetic academic observer: Having watched the spectacle of the Panda’s Thumb feeding frenzy, not to mention the Sean Carroll and Jerry Coyne reviews (and more are coming), I wanted to pass on a bit of plain talk about Mike Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution (EE). 1. Don’t expect the sort of reviews that met Darwin’s Black Box (DBB) — but not because EE is inferior to DBB. Far from it.