Author: Bruce Chapman
The Greatest Show on Earth — Another Circus Comes to Town
The New Scientist may sound like a scholarly science publication, but in covering news it often revels in uninformed and unprofessional attacks on critics of Darwinian evolution. So it is somewhat of a surprise to see the publication produce a not-so-veiled pan of The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins’ new book. If the evident disappointment expressed by science filmmaker Randy Olson is at all valid, Dawkins’ resemblance to the creator of the original “Greatest Show on Earth,” 19th Century circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, is confirmed. Dawkins doesn’t address his real adversaries. He simply ignores Stephen Meyer, whose Signature in the Cell is now leading the science book parade in several Amazon categories. He just dubs opponents creationist reactionaries and Read More ›
“Bloggingheads” Faces the Guillotine
How many intellectuals and media conveyers will defend free speech and the importance of an unfettered debate of ideas? Fewer and fewer. We are witnessing in America a kind of academic French Revolution, where leading opinion is fratricidal, enraged, fanatical — and then overthrown to make room for a newer fanaticism.
New York Times Expelled Ben Stein
Ben Stein probably thought he could do his work on the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and not himself endure the kind of personal attacks that, in the film, he defended Darwin critics against. In fact, what he found was that Darwinism is at the root of the worldview of the materialist Left and even the materialist Right. You can’t say or do anything to offend them. You can’t even advocate academic freedom. The people who demanded free speech in the 60s and shouted down figures of authority are now the tenured faculty and newsroom editors of the Establishment. And now they are disallowing any criticism at all. So, unlikely as it seems, Ben Stein became a martyr. Richard Dawkins Read More ›
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).
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.