Category: Education
How Kenneth Miller Used Smoke-and-Mirrors to Misrepresent Michael Behe on the Irreducible Complexity of the Blood-Clotting Cascade (Part 3)
In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller purported to refute Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade, but actually badly misrepresented Behe’s arguments to Judge Jones. In short, the purported knockout experiments (in the form comparative biochemistry) that Ken Miller cited to Judge Jones, where the blood-clotting cascade still worked in the absence of certain factors, dealt entirely with factors that Behe specifically did not claim were part of the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade. Behe explained this problem in Miller’s argument to Judge Jones, but apparently Behe’s testimony fell on deaf ears. In Part 2, I discussed how Miller might not have even refuted the more expansive arguments for irreducible complexity of Read More ›
Judge Jones and His Groupies
Earlier this month, the peer-reviewed science journal PloS Genetics published its latest earth-shaking contribution to the field of genetics: a personal interview with none other than Judge John Jones of Kitzmiller v. Dover fame. The interview was conducted by Jane Gitschier of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California San Francisco, who gushes over the Judge like a school-girl with a crush on her teacher. The non-scientist might be forgiven for thinking that a journal bearing a name like PLoS Genetics would restrict its articles to, well, genetics… or at least, to biology… or at the very least, to science. Not to worry! If the article extols Judge Jones, a lack of scientific content apparently is no Read More ›
Dover Plus Three: The More One Looks, the Less That’s There
Today marks the third anniversary of Judge John Jones’ attempt to ban science classroom discussions of intelligent design in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. In the three years since Jones’ decision was announced, it has not worn well. Judge Jones’ supposedly devastating critique of intelligent design turned out to be cut and pasted (factual errors and all) from a document written by lawyers working with the ACLU. Law professors (including some who oppose intelligent design) have skewered Jones’ embarrassing judicial opinion as poorly argued and unpersuasive. And many of the alleged factual claims on which Judge Jones based his opinion have been refuted. In the meantime, public interest in intelligent design has continued to grow, as has support for academic Read More ›
Materialist Science Fiction Promoted to Students at a Local Public Library
Recently I went to a public library to do some work, and I saw a book featured on top of a reference desk titled Life on Other Planets (by Rhonda Lucas Donald, Watts Library, 2003). The title page featured little green men with big alien bug-eyes, the kind of picture you might see on some nutty UFO website. The book and its display were clearly aimed at students — perhaps junior high or high school-aged. Fun and silly pictures don’t bother me if they get kids interested in reading about science. The problem here was that when I opened the book, what I found was not science, but science-fiction. Where Does Your Information Come From?The second page of the first Read More ›
Darwinist Gerald Skoog Recommends Imposing Dogmatism in Expert Review of Texas Science Standards (Part 3)
Three of the six reviewers of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are recommending that students apply less, rather than more, critical thinking when studying evolution. In Part 1 I discussed the recommendations of David Hills, and in Part 2, I discussed the recommendations of Ronald Wetherington. Like Wetherington and Hillis, TEKS reviewer Gerald Skoog wants the TEKS to include many more standards on evolution which dogmatically only present the evidence for evolution. Here are some of the new standards he wants the TEKS to include: “EXPLAIN HOW NATURAL SELECTION AND ITS EVOLUTIONARY CONSEQUENCES PROVIDE A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR THE FOSSIL RECORD OF ANCIENT LIFE FORMS, AS WELL AS FOR THE STRIKING MOLECULAR SIMILARITIES OBSERVED AMONG LIVING ORGANISMS.” and Read More ›