Month: December 2008
What Is More Important Than Your Freedom?
We are teaming up with the IDEA Center (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) to help students in starting IDEA chapters on their campuses. Such campus clubs are a fun and educational way for students to examine all sides of the debate over evolution. Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Clubs are student-initiated clubs that foster academic freedom as students learn about scientific evidence that supports intelligent design and also learn about modern evolutionary theory. IDEA Clubs are a growing network of student-led clubs on university and high school campuses around the United States with thirty new chapters formed to date. Visit www.ideacenter.org or e-mail Brian Westad at brianw@ideacenter.org for information on how you can start an IDEA club in your Read More ›
By Chance or by Design?
You decide.
Stanford Medical School Dean Indulges Intelligent Design “Theocracy” Fantasies While Projecting Charges of Viewpoint Suppression
Multiple choice quiz. Where did the following words first appear? “We need to move forward in our human evolution and not regress to the flawed passions of the crusades, the suppression of science by religion, or the intolerance of theocracy over freedom of the human spirit.” Was it:A. The latest blog post from PZ Myers?B. The bumper sticker on some 1968 VW Bus owned by a hippie commune?C. The manifesto of the Allied Atheist Alliance?D. The latest Dean’s newsletter from Philip A. Pizzo, Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine? If you guessed… …D, you’re correct. As I reported recently, Dean Pizzo’s latest December 1, 2008 newsletter extols those who would make scientific research “free” by keeping it “protected Read More ›
Mike Dunford: “Alleles That Survive, Survive”
Recently I used the analogy of a genetic disease (spinal bifida) that kept afflicted men out of the army in WWI to point out the vacuousness of “evolutionary” explanations for disease. The “evolutionary adaptation” provided by the handicap may have led to a transient increased prevalence of men with spina bifida in England, but from the standpoint of medicine, the evolutionary vignette was of no tangible value. Medicine needs more than stories about differential survival, which is the only unique thing that evolutionary biology offers to medicine. The genuine accomplishments of medical science and practice, for which Darwinists persistently claim credit, such as the understanding of bacterial antibiotic resistance or heterozygote advantage in the protection from disease (such as the Read More ›
Stanford Medical School Dean’s Newsletter and Koch Foundation Redefine Freedom to Mean Censorship of Intelligent Design
The recent Dean’s Newsletter from Philip A. Pizzo, Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, announces a statement from the “Scientific Advisory Board” of the Koch Foundation that recommends creating a brave new world of censorship. According to Dean Pizzo’s newsletter, when giving an award recently to a biology researcher, the Koch Foundation’s “Scientific Advisory Board” stated: “Research must remain free and therefore has to be protected from non-scientific influences such as ‘Creationism,’ ‘Fundamentalism,’ ‘Intelligent Design,’ or other non-scientific ideas or religious convictions.” Ignoring their inappropriate lumping of intelligent design with “creationism,” “fundamentalism,” “non-scientific ideas” and “religious convictions,” it seems that in the Koch Foundation’s vision of the future, being “free” means that ID cannot have any influence upon Read More ›