Month: March 2009
Gonzaga University Conference on Atheism and Science
[Editor’s Note: This is cross-posted at Discovery Blog.] Senior Fellows David Berlinski and Bruce Gordon spoke last week at the ninth annual “Physics and the God of Abraham” conference, held at Gonzaga University in Spokane. The event was organized by Fr. Robert Spitzer, President of Gonzaga, physicist and adjunct fellow of Discovery Institute. This year’s theme, “Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions,” was taken from the subtitle of Berlinski’s latest book, The Devil’s Delusion (Crown Forum, 2008).
Mansfield Mans Up in Critique of Evolution
Harvard University’s Harvey Mansfield has an excellent critique of evolution published by Forbes.com, where he is more commonly debating feminism or discussing Solzhenitsyn. In a book review of Men: Evolutionary and Life History, Mansfield takes a look at the moral implications of Darwinian theory when applied to the obvious differences between the sexes: What ought a man to do, given this discrepancy between men and women? Like many scientists, Bribiescas lives under the yoke of a crude positivism which denies that scientific fact has any ethical implications. “Darwinian evolutionary theory does not support any moral stance.” But of course it does. The trouble is not that Darwinian theory has no implications, but that it contradicts itself with two opposing implications. Read More ›
My Son the Expert! Part I: An Introduction to the Debate Over Evolution in Texas
As I was listening online to last week’s Texas State Board of Education hearings, two comments by Board members stuck with me. The TSBE was in its final deliberations on science standards and liberal Republican Pat Hardy delivered an encomium to “experts.” She went on about how if you get sick and require the medical knowledge of an expert in the field, why then you’d better go to that expert and follow his advice! She pleaded with other Board members to listen to the “experts” on evolution, which would mean voting to accept the “expert” view that there’s no debate on evolution worthy of being shared with high school biology students. The same day, Board member Don McLeroy, who was Read More ›
John West in The Washington Post:
Who Wants to Discuss Science in the Debate Over Evolution?
In all the excitement of the debate over Texas science standards last week, one thing was made eminently clear: generally speaking, there is one side of this debate that focuses on the science at hand, and another side that keeps bringing up religion. Contrary to the stereotype (but not the actual experience of those who care to see things as they actually are), it’s the Darwinists in this debate who keep wanting to talk about religion. People who question Darwin’s theory want to talk about the scientific evidence for and against it, as John West explains in The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog: Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried Read More ›
Darwinists Trick Themselves in Texas
From my Discovery Blog The New York Times got the preview story wrong, and the Washington Post editorial writer probably was too rushed to question the charges of “creationism” coming from the National Center for Science Education, the Darwin-only lobby. So this week’s important decisions by the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) on how to teach evolution were predicated in the media by the big question of whether teachers should provide both “strengths and weaknesses” of Darwin’s theory. Those words might sound benign, readers were told, but they really are “code words” (take the press’ word for it) for creationism and religion.