Category: Education
Reuters Makes Glaring Error of Fact in Kansas Science Standards Story
Just when I think the major media are beginning to become a little more accurate in reporting on the evolution issue, something happens to bring me back to reality. Yesterday the international newswire Reuters sent out a story making the following preposterous claim: The new science standards would… eliminate core evolution theory as required curriculum. This claim is absolutely false. The draft science standards endorsed by the Kansas Board of Education continue to include evolution as part of the standard required curriculum. Indeed, the proposed benchmark on evolution is all but identical to the one in the current Kansas Science Standards. See for yourself:
CNN Sends Fabricator of Texas Textbook Story to Kansas; Nixes Debate between Meyer and Miller
CNN Reporter Ed Lavendera, who two years ago fabricated part of his story about the Texas textbook battle, has now been sent to Kansas to report on the controversy there. Not surprisingly, Ed gets the basic facts about Kansas wrong as well. He even recycles an old clip from his previous story while creating impression that it came from Kansas!
ID Makes the Cover of Time!
Intelligent Design (ID) has made it to the cover of Time magazine this week, and I’m delighted to say that the cover story is for the most part respecftul and fair. It’s certainly a far-cry from Time’s inaccurate and conspiracy-mongering tirade a few months ago. The cover story even gives a mostly correct definition of ID (adapted from the definition on Discovery Institute’s website). Time says that intelligent design is “the proposition that some aspects of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to natural selection.” A number of ID scientists were interviewed for the article, and Time assigned at least a dozen reporters to work on the story. Still, there are some misleading Read More ›
Gilder on the Content of ID
A Darwinist blog is trumpeting a quote by George Gilder in yesterday’s Boston Globe which they have taken out of context in an attempt to make him look bad. “Intelligent design itself does not have any content.” First, it would be helpful to see the quote in context of what was being discussed, namely Discovery Institute’s position on education policy. “I’m not pushing to have [ID] taught as an ‘alternative’ to Darwin, and neither are they,” he says in response to one question about Discovery’s agenda. “What’s being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there’s a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content.”
Eighty Years of Scopes Monkey Business
Eighty years ago Thursday the famous Scopes Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, Tennessee. Time for a quiz: History tells us that two great lawyers faced off. On the one side was (A) a progressive and a pacifist, an educated man who rejected the idea of a young earth and worried about efforts to peddle racism and eugenics in the South. On the other side was (B) a master orator who defended some flagrantly racist ideas long since discredited by science. Lawyer A sought a full and fair debate over the evidence. Lawyer B used a procedural tactic to shut down the debate so that only his position was heard. Surely Mr. A would be the darling of any contemporary liberal Read More ›