Author: Casey Luskin
Wikipedia “Intelligent Design” Entry Selectively Cites Poll Data to Present Misleading Picture of Support for Intelligent Design
I recently discussed how Wikipedia has inaccurate information on intelligent design, or constantly rebuts (fallaciously) the claims of ID proponents. This post looks at merely two sentences out of the long Wikipedia entry on intelligent design and finds inaccuracy, misrepresentation, bias, and hypocrisy. These two sentences come from Wikipedia’s discussion of polls and intelligent design. Wikipedia presently states: According to a 2005 Harris poll, ten percent of adults in the United States view human beings as “so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them”.[17] Although some polls commissioned by the Discovery Institute show more support, these polls have been criticized as suffering from considerable flaws, such as having a low response rate (248 Read More ›
Biologists Report Important Gene Regulation Function for Transposons
Transposons are a type of DNA which many Darwinists have written off as mere genetic junk. The pro-Darwin TalkOrigins archive tells us that transposons “can be thought of as intragenomic parasites.” But don’t feel bad for the poor transposons — it looks like they might be looking at a new career as “the DNA formerly known as junk”: biologists from Stanford and UC Santa Cruz are reporting that “‘Junk’ DNA Now Looks Like Powerful Regulator.” That type of “junk” is the transposon. As the press release about the study explains, “Large swaths of garbled human DNA once dismissed as junk appear to contain some valuable sections.” The scientists report that in the past, they “had identified a handful of transposons Read More ›
Who’s causing “division” in public schools? Assessing Kevin Trowel’s arguments against intelligent design
Darwinists sometimes make a highly suspect argument along the lines of, “don’t change evolution education because you’ll divide the community.” Most school districts presently teach only the scientific evidence which supports Darwinian evolution and nothing more on this topic. Does that satisfy the public or divide them? In fact, polls consistently show that Americans want more than just the pro-evolution side of the story taught in schools. A 2005 Harris poll found that 82% of Americans want alternatives to evolution taught. A 2006 Zogby poll corroborated that statistic, finding that a supermajority of Ohio adults want both scientific evidence for and against evolution taught, and 75% of Americans want intelligent design taught alongside evolution. In both polls, under 20% wanted Read More ›
Neanderthals: Are They Us, or Are We Them (or Both)? Overcoming the Icons of Evolution
Who were the Neanderthals? Were they ape-like primitives with low intelligence, or were they more like us–perhaps nearly identical to modern humans in both body and mind? Biology textbooks often portray Neanderthals as unintelligent versions of modern humans. For example, this graphic from Biology: The Dynamics of Life (pg. 483, 2000 ed.) portrays Neanderthals as stooped primitives struggling kill a giant bear using clubs, spears, and incompetently, a burning stick: But according to a recent article in the Washington Post, Neanderthals may have been virtually indistinguishable from modern humans in terms of both their appearance and intelligence. A lead author on the study declared that “we would understand both to be human. There’s good reason to think that they did Read More ›
Did an Anti-ID Wikipedia Editor Shut Down a Darwin-Dissenter?
It’s hardly news to observe that Wikipedia is biased against intelligent design (ID). Michael Egnor recently exposed how Wikipedians removed statements discussing how biological machines can be reverse-engineered, like human machines (an observation which has strong pro-ID implications). Errors persist from the very beginning of Wikipedia’s entry on ID, with very first paragraph stating, “ID’s primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, believe the designer to be the Abrahamic God.” I’m pretty sure that notable ID-friendly scientists like Mike Gene would ardently dispute that statement on many levels. The critics’ viewpoint dominates the ID page, with over 50% of the references presently containing citations to critics (like the ACLU-scripted Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling, the testimony of Read More ›