Mooney and Nisbet Recommend: Drop the Science, Up the Rhetoric

Over at ARN’s Literature Update, David Tyler has an excellent post titled “An Orwellian framing of the debate about evolution and ID,” reporting on an article in Science by Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet, who tell scientists how to discuss controversial scientific issues. This same pair wrote the cover article for the influential media journal Columbia Journalism Review just before the Dover trial in September, 2005, encouraging news media to avoid “a quest to achieve ‘balance’” when covering evolution. They even stated, “newspaper editors should think twice about assigning reporters who are fresh to the evolution issue and allowing them to default to the typical strategy frame, carefully balancing ‘both sides’ of the issue.” We have noted that this provides Read More ›

Some SMU Faculty May Need a Refresher Course on What Their University Stands For

A helpful correspondent directed us to the following statement on the website of Southern Methodist University, the location of the upcoming Darwin v. Design conference this Friday and Saturday: Founded in 1911 by what is now The United Methodist Church, SMU opened in 1915 with support from Dallas leaders. The University is nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to freedom of inquiry. (emphasis added) SMU faculty who want the Darwin v. Design conference banned from their campus might benefit from re-reading—and heeding—this statement.

Darwin vs. Design: An Engaging Debate Topic

From the very beginning, the Darwin vs Design conferences organized by Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture were always envisioned as educational endeavors. Many people don’t understand what intellligent design is, and they don’t understand what it is that scientists and scholars at the Discovery Institute are arguing for in the ongoing debate over Darwinian evolution and ID. These conferences are a chance for us to present some of the work and research we’ve done on these subjects. When some of the science faculty at SMU demanded that the conference planned for their campus be cancelled we decided to issue an invitation to them to come and air their objections to intelligent design in public, and to ask their most Read More ›

Will SMU Faculty Debate Intelligent Design?

Newsmedia are covering Discovery Institute’s invitation to SMU faculty to debate intelligent design. One Darwinist who urged against debating reportedly said: “ID and evolution are not two scientific theories to be weighed against one another, as if on a balance scale. One is a scientific theory, supported so massively and consistently by empirical evidence as to be virtually unassailable.” If that’s true, then the SMU faculty should have no trouble winning the debate, right? Since a recent Newsweek poll shows that at least half of Americans reject evolution, it would seem that Darwinists need to convince the public of the truth of their theory. Given that Darwinists (a) plainly have a need to convince people that evolution is true, and Read More ›

The Positive Case for Intelligent Design Presented at Boise State University–Darwinists choose to “abstain.”

On March 19 I lectured at Boise State University (BSU) to about 50 mostly-friendly students and community members on “The Positive Case for Intelligent Design.” (The lecture was largely based upon a document I produced by the same title, available here.) BSU is the notorious home of their beloved undefeated-but-yet-#5-ranked Bronco football team, but my lecture was only sponsored by the IDEA Club at Boise State. The club’s leader reports that he’s recently received unfriendly e-mails from a hostile Darwinist. The club’s leader responded nicely, saying, “I hope that you would be willing to come [to Casey Luskin’s lecture],” and also defended himself saying “I am quite content for someone to disagree with my view, but I do not respect Read More ›