If you don’t think a civilized discussion of the evolution controversy is possible, watch the May 7 edition of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” which held a low-key and eminently reasonable discussion of the Kansas hearings and the controversy over how best to teach evolution. The program featured Mark Ryland, director of Discovery Institute’s Washington, D.C. office, and Peter Folger of the American Geophysical Union. If only the Darwinists in Kansas were as respectful and dignified as Mr. Folger! You can watch the program on the web by going here and clicking on the program for May 7. The discussion of evolution starts about an hour and twenty-two minutes into the show.

An essay of mine ran in today’s Kansas City Star. It begins: It seems the Darwinists in Kansas are living in the past. Not the past of, say, the fossil record. The history written there tells of the abrupt appearance of major animal forms, nothing like the gradually branching tree of life that Darwin envisioned. The past that some evolutionists are living in, rather, is the Kansas science curriculum battle of 1999.

Knight-Ridder Newspapers is circulating a false news report after apparently being bamboozled by the Darwinist spin-machine in Kansas. The article claims that the expert witnesses in the Kansas evolution hearings have not read the science standards they are seeking to change. But the charge is false, and the fact that a major news organization would promote such a bogus story makes one wonder about how many reporters have actually read the science standards in question. The article begins:

This morning’s New York Times article on Kansas has a much improved title, and despite its failure to report on the substance of the science testimony that took place yesterday, the article does drop good hints about what went on, such as: a parade of Ph.D.’s testified Thursday about the flaws they saw in mainstream science’s explanation of the origins of life. It was one part biology lesson, one part political theater, and the biggest stage yet for the emerging movement known as intelligent design.

The Washington Times has an excellent editorial this morning outlining the real issue in Kansas. It concludes by faulting Darwinists for not being willing to engage in legitimate scientific debate, quoting Discovery Senior Fellow David Berlinski in the process: “The defense of Darwin’s theory … has fallen into the hands of biologists who believe in suppressing criticism when possible and ignoring it when not,” wrote David Berlinski recently in the Wichita Eagle. Mr. Berlinski, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is widely recognized as a leading Darwinian skeptic. He continues, “It is not a strategy calculated to induce confidence in the scientific method.” It also doesn’t help our students.