On a very important question that goes to the heart of the debate about Darwinism and intelligent design, Dr. Jeffrey Shallit is exercising his right to remain silent. Dr. Shallit had recently used the example of S.E.T.I. research on a blog post in which he ridiculed author and editor Tom Bethell for defending intelligent design. Mr. Bethell pointed out that it’s perfectly appropriate for scientists use the inference to design under certain circumstances, and he believes that biology is one of them. Dr.Shallit ridiculed him, calling him a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ”simply stupid’ and categorizing his views as “Idiocy”. I was taken back by Dr. Shallit’s incivility and lack of professionalism- he’s a professor responsible for Read More ›

Darwinist Dr. Jeffery Shallit posted an odd response to my comments on his ridicule of Tom Bethell. Mr. Bethell had reiterated the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and he pointed out that the inference to design was valid for some kinds of scientific research. Dr. Shallit, in his post entitled

Dr. Jeffrey Shallit, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo and a Darwinist, has a few unkind words for Tom Bethell on his blog Recursivity. Mr. Bethell’s sin, it seems, is that he pointed out the rather obvious differences between creationism and intelligent design. Creationism is the belief that the Book of Genesis is literally, scientifically true — that the earth was created in six days, etc. Intelligent design is the opinion that some aspects of biology, such as the genetic code and the molecular nanotechnology inside cells, are most reasonably explained as the product of intelligent agency. The difference between these viewpoints continues to elude Dr. Shallit. Consequently, Dr. Shallit calls Mr. Bethell a “blathering buffoon.”

The National Research Council’s report — The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems — is a must read. Not for the science — what there is of it can be summed up simply: we have no clue how life began. No, the report is a must read for the insight it offers into the current state of origin of life research:

We’ve gotten a couple of e-mails challenging my observation in a recent post that questioning Darwin’s theory in a public school is a federal crime. The reader implied that, because there is no federal statute explicitly censoring criticism of Darwin’s theory in public schools, it wasn’t a federal crime to do so. The issue of censorship in science classes in public schools is worth examining more closely. Is it a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school? In some public schools it certainly is. It’s a federal crime to violate a federal court ruling, such as the ruling by federal judge John E. Jones banning criticism of Darwin’s theory in the curriculum of biology classes in Dover, Read More ›