Royal Society on Creationism vs. Evolution: “No Comment”

If you watch baseball then you are probably familiar with the time-honored tradition of a team president or general manager expressing on Tuesday night after a game how they stand 100% behind the manager, who is summarily fired on Wednesday morning. Such statements of support are almost always a signal that the end is near for a team’s manager. Consider this statement in The Times last Friday, reportedly issued by the Royal Society in the wake of Prof. Michael Reiss, a biologist and the Society’s director of education, suggesting discussion of creationism in science classes to explain how it isn’t science, but Darwinian evolution is. “A spokesman for the organisation, which counts 21 Nobel Prize winners among its Fellows, confirmed Read More ›

Darwin’s Dogmatic Defenders Say Follow Only Some of the Evidence When Teaching Evolution

The recent comments by a Royal Society scientist and education expert about creationism being taught in science classes in the UK have got PZ Myers’ panties all in a bunch. Of course, Myers’ panties are used to being in a bunch because it doesn’t take much to get his dander up. To be clear Discovery does not support the inclusion of creation science in science curricula. However, teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific theory, such as Darwinian evolution, is a far cry from teaching creationism, or any other alternative views. For Myers it is too much for anyone to even suggest discussing creationism with the intent to knock it down, and ultimately to uphold a dogmatic view Read More ›

NCSE Promotes Shrill Editorial Suggesting “Students be Forced to Consider the Possibility that There Is No God”

“Bastion of ignorance”? “Right-wing political ideology”? “Pseudo-scientific claptrap”? Not exactly the sorts of taunts you expect from a purportedly calm, collected, objective scientific source like the president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Undoubtedly, such over-the-top rhetoric brings coos of approval from ID’s most vehement critics, such as those at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Gregory A. Petsko, president of the ASBMB, recently published an article in ASBMB Today attacking intelligent design (ID) printing the rhetoric quoted above. But that’s not all he did. His article (which was also published in the journal Genome Biology) goes so far as to insinuate that people believe in religion due to “insecurity and need for certainty” and Read More ›

Steve Fuller Returns A.C. Grayling’s Favor

Those of you who read A.C. Grayling’s arrogant and intellectually vacuous thrashing of Steve Fuller’s new book, Dissent Over Descent: Evolution’s 500-Year War on Intelligent Design, will want to know that Fuller now has a reply available at the New Humanist. Grayling’s method is to simplify opponents’ arguments to the point of misrepresenting them. Just as bad, Grayling’s “review” reveals a woefully disappointing grasp of the the origins of modern science and the history of Christianity. One begins to wonder whether the days of truly intellectual atheists are over. Perhaps it is no longer possible for atheists, uneducated in the history of Christianity and its doctrines, to level serious, challenging criticisms of the faith. It seems they just have too Read More ›

Barbara Forrest Thinks Intelligent Design Video Game Spore Could Help Student Interest in Evolution

Today a story on the new video game Spore in Education Week has some interesting comments from Barbara Forrest and commentary on evolution: The game allows users to create living things, from their inception as “pond scum” to fully evolved beings, by choosing advantageous features. Players can also build civilizations and entire worlds. The theory of evolution, advanced most famously by Charles Darwin, posits that humans and other living things have evolved over millions of years through the process of natural selection –basically, survival of the fittest –along with random mutation. In allowing students to control how a creature evolves, Spore employs a process of “external manipulation” that mainstream scientists would reject as unscientific, said Barbara Forrest, a professor of Read More ›