Author: Jonathan Witt
NYT Story Misinforms on Intelligent Design and Templeton
he New York Times published a letter from the president of Discovery Institute, Bruce Chapman, correcting Laurie Goodstein’s piece “Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker.” In addition to the misinformation Chapman notes, the story also passed along an error concerning the Templeton Foundation.
Academic Freedom for Politically Correct Professors Thrives at KU
My old college town paper, the Lawrence Journal-World, reports that two new classes at the University of Kansas will work to discredit the theory of intelligent design. One class, taught by religion professor Paul Mirecki, chairman of KU’s religious studies department, was initially titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies. In an e-mail to an atheist listserv, Mirecki wrote: “The fundies [fundamentalists] want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology.”
Krauthammer’s ID Strawman
Charles Krauthammer’s syndicated essay against intelligent design ran opposite mine in today’s Seattle Times. The piece is full of problems, which Tom Gilson and Lawrence Seldon explore in loving detail here and here. Now I would have framed a couple of points in their otherwise fine analysis a little differently. In one place,
Dilbert Designer Discusses ID
Each branch of science, they say, has pro-Darwinists who acknowledge that while they assume the other branches of science have more solid evidence for Darwinism, their own branch is lacking in that high level of certainty. In other words, the scientists are in a weird peer pressure, herd mentality loop where they think that the other guy must have the “good stuff.”
LA Times Lets Behe Be Himself
In today’s LA Times, Josh Getlin discusses biochemist Michael Behe’s testimony in the Dover trial: “Even some of Behe’s strongest critics believe he may have scored important points in his mid-October court appearance.”