What You Ought To Know About Intelligent Design and Evolution

There’s a fascinating new series of video clips about all manner of subjects called What You Ought To Know. This clip on intelligent design and evolution is one of the best summaries of the debate I’ve ever seen, and all done in just a few minutes. With some laughs thrown in even. Now that you’ve watched that, watch this clip on Open Minds and think about how you felt when you watched the first one.

Florida House Republicans Kill Evolution Academic Freedom Measure

Well, it’s official. The Florida House of Representatives refused today to pass the academic freedom measure on evolution previously passed by the state Senate, and so the measure is now dead because the legislative session has ended. Supposedly, the Florida House refused to pass the Senate bill because it favored a stronger measure to require the critical analysis of evolution. As a former political science professor, I can tell you that this explanation doesn’t hold water. If the Republican House leadership in Florida really supported academic freedom on evolution, they would have passed the Senate bill. Instead, they shamefully passed a bill earlier this week with language that the Senate had previously rejected, knowing full well this would likely mean Read More ›

Academic Freedom Fight Highlighted by Wall Street Journal

Today’s Wall Street Journal is running an article about the growing battle over academic freedom on evolution. For the establishment media, the article is pretty standard-issue — which means it’s fairly shallow, conflates lots of things, and is written almost entirely from the Darwinists’ point of view. But the fact that the Journal is highlighting this issue at all shows how the academic freedom issue may be reaching a level that is hard to ignore. A couple of the specific problems of the Journal piece: In the article proper, the reporter doesn’t allow us to respond to the phony claim that there are no scientific criticisms of Darwinism, although we were allowed to briefly make our points in an internet-only Read More ›

Intelligent Design: It’s a Creationist Plot

There are people who apparently have a deep-seated need to believe that Intelligent Design proponents are really creationists in disguise, and that once they have control over the nation’s schools, they’re going to rip off their clever scientist disguises to reveal men in short sleeve dress shirts and horn-rimmed glasses who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Acting on a preordained set of instructions, this view seems to suggest, they will proceed to outlaw any mention of evolution in schools, and will execute plans that involve, among other things, taking students on weekly field trips to Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. It is a frightening vision of the future: a flood of creationism let loose Read More ›

Stanford’s Fair Use Project to Defend Expelled against Yoko Ono’s Lawsuit

According to a press release just issued, the Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society has announced that it will defend Premise Media’s use in Expelled of a clip from John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” Yoko Ono, EMI and Columbia have all filed suit against Premise, which has claimed they used the clip under the fair use doctrine. “The right to quote from copyrighted works in order to criticize them and discuss the views they may represent lies at the heart of the fair use doctrine,” said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project. “These rights are under attack here, and we plan to defend them.” You might want to get out and see Read More ›