Darwin and Mao

A reader of my blog, Paul Burnett taunts me: Go ahead, David, say it: “Darwin taught Hitler (and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot) how to kill millions of people.” That is of course a ridiculous parody of what I’ve written on Darwinism and its historical consequences, and I’ve never written a word about Darwin-Mao, but…now that you mention it, Paul, I just so happen to have before me on my desk China and Charles Darwin, by China scholar James Reeve Pusey of Bucknell University, published in 1983 by Harvard University Press. Pusey is a son of the illustrious late Harvard president Nathan Pusey. (They don’t give people names like that anymore, do they? Too bad.) Let’s just look up Read More ›

Bah Humbug! British Librarian Tries to Ban Explore Evolution in the Name of Darwin

It’s the holiday season, which means that cheer and values like charity, academic freedom, tolerance, and diversity are abounding–but apparently not among Darwin’s defenders in the United Kingdom. A recent angry editorial by the “Atheist Examiner” titled “Creationists try to sneak Intelligent Design into school libraries” tells the story — except that it’s not the actual story. The correct story is that “Truth in Science,” a British organization allied with a number of credible British scientists and academics, is offering Explore Evolution to school libraries. Contra the “Atheist Examiner” article, the textbook Explore Evolution does not argue for intelligent design, but rather presents students with the scientific evidence both for and against neo-Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design is not advocated in Read More ›

Darwin Fatigue Sets In

2009 is almost over, but the hangover from the Darwin parties has already begun. Jonathan Wells has the story at American Spectator: The Darwin Year delirium reached such an extreme that even evolutionists grew weary of it. Cambridge University paleontologist Simon Conway Morris wrote in Current Biology, “More than one of my colleagues has cast her eye around the packed conference room and then murmured sotte voce that, well, she was suffering a little from Darwin fatigue.” Conway Morris wondered whether the “obsession” with Darwin and the “endless cycle” of centennial celebrations reflected “a loss of way, an eclipse of confidence,” and he criticized those who “caper around the Darwinian totem” while ignoring the contributions of others. University of Florida Read More ›

“One Could Not Ask for More” Than Signature in the Cell

Those who follow the debate over evolution will remember 2009 as the year Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell convincingly made a new scientific case for intelligent design. In fact, according to Doug Groothuis, “Its publication may prove to be a decisive moment for the Intelligent Design movement. One could not ask for more in a philosophy of science treatise than what we find in The Signature in the Cell. The book is no less than magisterial, an adjective that curmudgeons such as myself seldom use. At every level–philosophical, scientific, historical and literary–it is a superb treatise. Reading every word of its 508 pages of text (not counting end notes)–as I did–repays the reader greatly. Meyer thoroughly examines a most Read More ›

New Peer-Reviewed Paper Demolishes Fallacious Objection: “Aren’t There Vast Eons of Time for Evolution?”

When debating intelligent design (ID), there are countless times I’ve heard the old objection, “But aren’t there millions of years for Darwinian evolution?” Perhaps there are, but that doesn’t mean the Darwinian mechanism has sufficient opportunities to produce the observed complexity found in life. Darwin put forward a falsifiable theory, stating that his mechanism must work by “numerous successive slight modifications.” Michael Behe took Darwin at his word, and argued in Darwin’s Black Box that irreducible complexity refuted Darwinian evolution because there exist complex structures that cannot be built in such a stepwise manner. Darwin’s latter day defenders responded to Behe by effectively putting Darwinism into an unfalsifiable position: they put forth wildly speculative and unlikely appeals to indirect evolution. Read More ›