Category: News Media
Media Overblows Claims of “Human Evolution”: Examining the Newest “Missing Link”
Recently I highlighted how the coverage of Tiktaalik revealed the fascinating phenomenon that only after discovering a new “missing link” will evolutionists acknowledge the previously paltry state of fossil evidence for evolution. This behavior is again witnessed in coverage of the discovery of Australopithecus anamensis fossils in Ethiopia. The media has also exaggerated and overblown claims that this evidence supports “human evolution.” The latest “missing link” is actually comprised of a few tooth and bone fragments of Au. anamensis, an ape-like species that lived a little over 4 million years ago. Incredibly, claims of “intermediacy” are based upon 2-3 fragmented canines of “intermediate” size and shape. This has now led to grand claims in the media of finding a “missing Read More ›
Setting the York Daily Record Straight, Again
We have made it well known that we wish the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania had taken our advice. This has been reiterated countless times — before, during and after the litigation and decision. (WE even recently published an entire book about the Dover decision, Traipsing Into Evolution.) Our long-standing policy has been to urge a more robust treatment of evolution in public schools, so that students might learn both the scientific weaknesses and strength’s of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and chemical origin-of-life scenarios. But this is NOT the path that was taken in Dover. This too has been communicated all throughout the Kitzmiller saga. But an article from two weeks ago in the York Daily Record shows that some Read More ›
Attempts to Misconstrue Intelligent Design in Kentucky Fail
In the most recent news about the controversy about intelligent design in Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Ledger‘s Political Notebook reports on the nomination of Kentucky’s State Board of Education candidates. Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher took heat for speaking favorably about teaching intelligent design just before Judge Jones’ Kitzmiller decision was issued. The Governor had mentioned intelligent design in his State of the Commonwealth address in January, 2006 and then in February sent a letter about teaching intelligent design to the Kentucky Academy of Sciences. (The letter was in response to the Academy’s December vote to reject any teaching about intelligent design.)After the Kitzmiller decision struck down the Dover Area School Board’s intelligent design policy, some states, such as Ohio, began retreating Read More ›
The Science Stories that Fizzled (and the one that Might Have Been)
There were three kinds of stories that could have developed from the news that Science magazine released a paper by professors at the University of Oregon’s Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology that supposedly falsifies Michael Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity (as an indication of intelligent design). That Science accompanied the paper with an interpretive piece by Christoph Adami of Claremont, underscores the coup Science hoped it had accomplished. What, studying the paper and commentary, should be done with this news? The first possible story was the one that Science hoped: that finally someone in the science world had done actual research to refute Behe’s theory. Hence, intelligent design could be dismissed conclusively as bad science. Trouble was, in preparing Read More ›
Updated: Latest Fossil Find “No Threat” To Theory of Intelligent Design
“This latest fossil find poses no threat to intelligent design.” So says Discovery Institute senior fellow and leading intelligent design theorist Dr. William Dembski, adding: “Intelligent design does not so much challenge whether evolution occurred but how it occurred. In particular, it questions whether purposeless material processes–as opposed to intelligence–can create biological complexity and diversity.” The journal Nature is making news by publishing a report today that a group of researchers claim to have uncovered the skeleton of a 375-million-year-old fish in the Canadian Arctic that they believe is a missing link in the evolution of some fishes to becoming land walking vertebrates. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, meaning “large shallow water fish.” Even though this find does Read More ›