Month: August 2008
“Expelled” and the Darwinism-Nazi Connection: Richard Weikart Responds to Jeff Schloss
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] CSC Fellow Richard Weikart sent us his article, “‘Expelled’ and the Darwinism-Nazi Connection: A Response to Jeff Schloss,” which is now up at the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) website. Weikart details the historical connection between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s Nazi ideology, responding to a similarly ASA-published article by Jeff Schloss.There’s a history with Schloss, which Bill Dembski explains over at Uncommon Descent. Suffice it to say that Schloss is critical of intelligent design and quick to repeat the standard objections to the connection Expelled draws between Darwin and Hitler… and Weikart doesn’t let him get away with it: In his Read More ›
The Human Eye Is so Poorly Designed That Engineers Mimic It
How many times have we heard the old Darwinist canard that the human eye is “poorly designed”? As the argument goes, the vertebrate eye is poorly designed because our photoreceptor cells face away from the incoming light and the optic nerve extends over them, allegedly blocking some light. William Dembski and Sean McDowell’s new book Understanding Intelligent Design has an easily accessible and forceful rebuttal to this poorly designed Darwinist objection to ID, explaining that the design of the human eye is actually quite optimal: The photoreceptors in the human eye are oriented away from incoming light and placed behind nerves through which light must pass before reaching the photoreceptors. Why? A visual system needs three things: speed, sensitivity, and Read More ›
New Scientist Thinks Complexity Argues Against Intelligence
It’s not easy being an evolutionist these days. You have to feel a pang of pity for the critics at New Scientist, who have resorted to a new argument against intelligent design:The more complex things are, the more we see that there’s no way intelligence could have created them.That’s right — complexity is now an argument against intelligent design. From yesterday’s print edition: As Socrates knew, the really intelligent know the limits of their own ability, an idea we seem to be relearning. You might say supporters of intelligent design have it backwards: the more we observe the complex workings of our universe, the more we must conclude that no single intelligence could have created them.
Canadian Evolution Pollsters or Hucksters?
The Toronto Sun is reporting on a new poll finding that “58% of Canucks think humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and 22% believe God created people in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” The article thus proudly asserts that “[a] majority of Canadians believe in the theory of evolution.” But what about those Canadians who accept the conventional geological age of the earth but are skeptical of neo-Darwinian evolution? Obviously they don’t accept the young earth creationist view, but contrary to what the pollsters and newsmedia suggest, they also might not “believe in the theory of evolution.” Or what about those Canadians who believe in some form of God-guided evolution, where God’s Read More ›
Gutsy Article on Science Students Still Avoids Problem of Anti-Religious Prejudice
The Chronicle of Higher Education shows courage in publishing a non-P.C. article by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars that describes the real, as opposed to the putative, obstacles to increasing the number of American-born and educated scientists. Anti-intellectualism is a big part of it. There is a problem, however, that Peter Woods overlooks, either because it doesn’t occur to him or because he doesn’t wish to spur the science establishment to even more outrage by mentioning it. That problem is the contemporary hostility that many committed Christian young people, and perhaps other religious youth, encounter in the sciences these days. Even those who have not experienced it become alert to it and, in turn, may be discouraged. Read More ›