Author: Jonathan Witt
From Scopes to Dover, and Everything in Between
Just in time for Monday’s thought-crime trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, H. Wayne House has an extensive review here of cases in the U.S. dealing with Darwinism and the public schools: “Darwinism and the Law: Can Non-Naturalistic Scientific Theories Survive Constitutional Challenge?” It’s an excellent resource for anyone covering the trial, though I could quibble with a few elements. For instance, if House means to include contemporary design arguments in biology, it would be more precise to say “Non-Materialist Scientific Theories.”
Over to Dover
I’ll be flying to Harrisburg, PA to cover the Dover trial. It begins in federal court Monday. As Discovery Institute explains here: In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the ACLU is suing the school board of Dover, Pennsylvania for adopting a policy that requires students to be informed about the theory of intelligent design. The ACLU claims that the Dover policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by promoting a religious doctrine. What does the Dover policy consist of? Administrators read the following statement to biology students:
Darwinism is a Foundation for Speculation and Revision, Not for Modern Experimental Biology
A recent essay in The Scientist and a second piece newly available here show that Darwinism is not the cornerstone of modern experimental biology. I blogged Philip Skell’s essay from The Scientist on Tuesday. There’s now also available online a paper by Roland Hirsch arguing, as William Dembski explains in the introduction to the book of essays where it’s found, “Roland Hirsch overviews many of the recent advances in molecular biology and biochemistry, showing how Darwinism has failed both to anticipate and to explain them.” The International Society for Complexity, Information and Design website says that Hirsch is the “program manager in the Medical Sciences Division in the Office of Biological and Environmental Research at the DOE, where he is Read More ›
New York Times Story About God and Science
The New York Times has another front page story about the origins debate, “Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science.” The reporter, Cornelia Dean, does a good job of interviewing both theists and atheists, but she leaves out of the picture scientists like Michael Behe, who has made it clear that his religious background left him perfectly open to the possibility that God had front-loaded design into the fine-tuned laws of nature at the instant of the Big Bang, allowing it to evolve from there all the way to our living earth. Behe and other Darwin-doubters, like quantum chemist Henry F. Schaefer III and evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe, reject the Darwinian story simply because Read More ›
Darwinists Fling Straw in NYT Science Piece
(Updated) Despite getting plenty of ink, the Darwinists don’t come off looking so well in Kenneth Chang’s story about intelligent design in the Science section of today’s New York Times. Imagine intelligent design is an elephant in the next room. A cat lies crushed on the floor before us, with the clear mark of an elephant’s toe imprinted on his poor, flat, fuzzy body.