Month: September 2007
Busting another Darwinist Myth: Have ID Proponents Invented Terms like “Microevolution” and “Macroevolution”?
In 2005 I busted the Darwinist myth that ID-proponents have invented terms like “Darwinist” or “Darwinism” by noting that, well, Darwinists themselves have long-used such terms to describe themselves and their viewpoints. Jonathan Wells also recently busted this same myth, and Anika Smith recently busted the myth that evolution is not “random.” In 2006, I also busted the myth that skeptics of neo-Darwinism don’t exist outside the United States. When engaging in debates, every once in a while I hear the claim that Darwin-critics also invented terms like “microevolution” or “macroevolution.” For example, Jonathan Wells reports, “In 2005, Darwinist Gary Hurd claimed that the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution was just a creationist fabrication. … Hurd wrote to the Kansas Read More ›
Where’s Sharon Begley When We Need Her?
Returning to Newsweek after a five year stint as a science writer for the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley posted a blog piece yesterday about Darwinist biology professor Richard Colling. Colling teaches at a small Nazarene university in Illinois and, according to Begley, has come under fire by church leaders because he is a theistic evolutionist and authored a book called Random Designer. Anger over his work had been building for two years. When classes resumed in late August, things finally came to a head. Colling is prohibited from teaching the general biology class, a version of which he had taught since 1991, and college president John Bowling has banned professors from assigning his book. Two years? Robert Marks’ evolutionary Read More ›
Political Science, Meet Politicized Science
One has to be careful about accepting the accuracy of news articles that describe scientific papers, so bear that in mind in my mention of a new paper by “scientists” at UCLA and NYU. Their actual paper in Nature Neuroscience (unavailable online so far) is reported in a joint Chicago Tribune/Los Angeles Times article today . It claims that people’s political convictions derive from (you guessed it), differences in biology. “..(A) specific region of the brain’s cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives,” they advise us.Read the rest on Discovery Blog.
How to Teach Intelligent Design, SMU Style: “You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap”
This past spring, anti-ID faculty at Southern Methodist University (SMU) refused to engage in a debate over intelligent design. Now that Discovery Institute’s activities on the SMU campus are over, some of these faculty are sponsoring a course entitled “The Scientific Method – Critical and Creative Thinking (Debunking Pseudoscience).” The course has a clear bias against ID, as the course website has a page devoted to ID titled “(Un)Intelligent Design,” which states, “You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap.” They remain true to their promise to offer a one-sided and biased presentation: Their listing of course readings on ID lacks a single article that is friendly towards ID! The Read More ›
Jeff Shallit, Blueprints, and the Genetic Code
Dr. Jeffrey Shallit, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo and a Darwinist, has a few unkind words for Tom Bethell on his blog Recursivity. Mr. Bethell’s sin, it seems, is that he pointed out the rather obvious differences between creationism and intelligent design. Creationism is the belief that the Book of Genesis is literally, scientifically true — that the earth was created in six days, etc. Intelligent design is the opinion that some aspects of biology, such as the genetic code and the molecular nanotechnology inside cells, are most reasonably explained as the product of intelligent agency. The difference between these viewpoints continues to elude Dr. Shallit. Consequently, Dr. Shallit calls Mr. Bethell a “blathering buffoon.”