In the mainstream media, it’s a talking point that “fake news” is a phony, dangerous concept. It doesn’t exist, they tell us. But as I noted here last week, we’ve demonstrated exhaustively at Evolution News that it is in fact a very real phenomenon. Coverage of the evolution debate is a powerful illustration of that, with reporters, commentators, and Wikipedia editors obsessively hammering home the falsehood that skepticism on Darwinian theory is only a cover for “right-wing” politics, “scientific illiteracy,” “creationism” in disguise, etc.

One of the important functions of the intelligent design community is to rebut these fake charges that you hear all the time. We do that, prominently, through our daily voice at Evolution News. And what we do here is far from free. We need you with us as our partner for 2018. Now at the end of the year, I ask our readers to take a moment to contribute generously to the ongoing effort to counter fake news.

You can do so by donating here, whatever you can, to join with us in this effort.

Our writers include the top scientists and scholars in the discussion about intelligent design, the uplifting scientific alternative to rigid Darwinism — Stephen Meyer, Douglas Axe, Jonathan Wells, Ann Gauger, Günter Bechly, John West, Paul Nelson, Michel Egnor, Brian Miller, Denyse O’Leary, and more. Evolution News is an amazing resource that I’m privileged to edit. Intellectually responsible but also forthright and unafraid, we speak truth to power, every day.

Many of us have the scars to prove it. Dr. Bechly, for his support of ID, was first pushed out of his position as a paleontological curator at the State University of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. That was before he was erased from Wikipedia. It was all eerily reminiscent of what happened to another colleague of ours, dissenting evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, pressured by supervisors to give up his post at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History after he published, in a peer-reviewed science journal, an article by Stephen Meyer favorable to ID.

In a recent Facebook Live interview, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Sternberg about his turning point as a proponent of ID. These courageous scientists are the kind of strengths we bring to bear daily in meeting the challenge of claims, in the media and in the science world, that are made on behalf of Darwinian evolution against ID.

A lot is at stake. You probably know a student with an inquiring mind, interested in questions of origins. For this young person, a Google search for “intelligent design” would be a logical step in her exploration. And what will she find? Well, the first hit to come up will be Wikipedia, whose entry on ID is grotesquely misleading, denouncing the case for design in nature as “pseudoscience.” But see the screen grab here.

I’ve circled the Wiki entry at the top, but drop your eyes down, not far, and under “Top stories” is a very relevant headline from Evolution News. Yes!

• “Wikipedia Co-Founder Blasts ‘Appallingly Biased’ Wikipedia Entry on Intelligent Design”

No one could miss that. And do you know what made it possible? You, and your support of our work.

Darwinism isn’t just a scientific idea. It’s a cultural and spiritual acid. See our report with recent survey data, “Darwin’s Corrosive Idea,” by political scientist and CSC associate director John West. Proponents of intelligent design seek and share the truth for its own sake, but let’s not forget, either: The health of our culture is directly impacted by what adults and young people understand about the origins of life and of the cosmos. The image of a human being as a cosmic accident, cast up amid other flotsam of the universe, by an unguided process without purpose or design — that is what Darwinian evolutionary theory teaches.

It is the relentless message of most fake news about evolution. I’m sorry to say it’s also the implication, however piously denied, of what people of faith hear from theistic evolutionists. We answer them, too.

Darwinists have most universities and media plus vast government funding on their side. What we have is more potent, though. We have the truth. And we have you. Only a credible scientific answer to Darwinism can make a difference. Please help keep Evolution News going strong in 2018. Until the end of this month, another kind donor has offered to add 50 percent to whatever you give. Again, I ask you take a moment now to contribute your own resources to this crucial intellectual, cultural, and spiritual battle.

Photo: Darwin’s statue, Natural History Museum, by http://www.cgpgrey.com [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.