Author: Anika Smith
SMU profs challenged to debate at Darwin vs. Design conference
Late last week, Discovery Institute sent the letter below from Bruce Chapman to the chairs of the three departments at SMU which were calling for the Darwin vs. Design conference to be removed from campus, inviting them to a debate about intelligent design. It seems that The Dallas Morning News agrees with us that open discussion belongs at a university. On Saturday the DMN ran a brief editorial short on the SMU controversy: But if there’s any place where an idea like this can be examined and debated, you’d think that a university . . . would be it. But a group of SMU professors got the vapors and demanded that the university bar the Discovery Institute from campus. SMU’s Read More ›
The truth about Haeckel’s Embryos
The length some Darwinists have gone to in their efforts to deny that Haeckel’s embryo drawings were fraudulently used in modern biology textbooks has made for some interesting reading over the years. That these efforts were often used to paint intelligent design scientists such as Jonathan Wells as liars is even more outrageous. Where is the evidence for these claims? Or, as Casey Luskin puts it in a new article, “What Do Modern Textbooks Really Say about Haeckel’s Embryos?“
The Debate over Darwin vs. Design Continues at SMU
First Darwinists at SMU demanded that the school keep the debate over Darwin off-campus, arguing for the Darwin vs. Design conference to be cancelled and denied use of campus facilities. Now their attempts at censorship have sparked more controversy than they intended, as evidenced by a response printed in the SMU Daily Campus: I was amused to read that some of the science department faculty at SMU had protested the proposed Intelligent Design Conference.
A List of Selected Responses to Kenneth R. Miller
For as long as Darwinian biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth R. Miller has attacked intelligent design (ID), design proponents have refuted him. While there are occasions where Miller has wisely dropped his refuted objections, more often he will keep trotting out the same stale arguments. His tendency to hold onto his misconceptions means design theorists have to continually point out how he misrepresents their arguments. Several of these responses to Miller are worth revisiting, and because we’ve recently had some new rebuttals to Miller, we’ve now put together a list of links to some of the best:
Entrenched Science Departments Call for Censorship at Southern Methodist University
DALLAS–Darwinists at Southern Methodist University issued a demand this week that the university withdraw permission for a scientific conference about intelligent design to be held on campus. Discovery Institute and the SMU Christian Legal Society obtained permission to rent McFarlin Auditorium for a two-day conference on “Darwin vs. Design,” featuring presentations by the nation’s leading intelligent design scientists. The Departments of Anthropology, Biological Sciences, and Geological Sciences reacted with a letter objecting to the university’s agreement to host the conference. The Institute described the letter as an effort to censor scientists and stifle debate.