Category: Culture
Inaccurate reporting of intelligent design continues unabated
The York Dispatch has a story about the legal activity ongoing in Dover, PA with regards to the school board’s decision to mandate intelligent design theory. What’s troubling is that so many media outlets continue to incorrectly define intelligent design theory. The Dispatch’s Heidi Bernhard-Bubb puts it this way: intelligent design theory, which attributes the origin of life to an intelligent being. It counters the theory of evolution, which says that people evolved from less complex beings. If reporters are going to use definitions that come from critics of intelligent design they should at least label them that way. This is the kind of definition given out by the NCSE or the ACLU, not by design proponents themselves. This is Read More ›
ACLU won’t put Darwin on trial.
Dave Dentel, copy editor of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania had an insightful, and pleasantly objective, op-ed over the holiday weekend. Dentel makes the point that the ACLU, aided by Darwin-only supporters within the ranks of mainstream scientists, is unlikely to acknowledge any of Darwinian evolutionary theory’s shortcomings. Indeed he points out that the very things they mistakenly claim of intelligent design theory, namely that it isn’t testable, Darwinian evolution itself is truly guilty.
Post article “reports” on intelligent design as just more creationism
The Washington Post for all its prominence as a national newspaper continues to help spread the idea that design theory is just a new form of creationism. Admittedly the article is better than recent error riddled reports by Post reporter Valerie Strauss, especially since it does give more background on what design theory is, and quotes Mike Behe. However, the article doesn’t provide any quotes from design proponents that explain the distinctions and clear differences between creationism and intelligent design. And this even after the reporter was offered a chance for an e-mail interview and then spoke with Discovery Institute’s John West, who he then mistakenly calls Paul. It’s frustrating when reporters can’t even get names right, how can you Read More ›
Witt Letter In London Times
Senior Fellow Jonathan Witt responded to a frightfully stereotypical attack on ID in general in a recent edition of the The (London) Times with this letter. The Times apparently opted not to use the longer op-ed we had submitted.
Scientists not as newsworthy as church-goers?
The York Daily Record (Dover, PA) ran an article (“Church Backs Dover Board” Sunday, Dec. 20) about a local church that is endorsing the Dover School Board’s recent decision to mandate the teaching of intelligent design. Why is it news when 300 church goers weigh in on the issue, but not when 300 scientists make their dissent from Darwin known? Discovery’s Logan Gage sent this letter to the editor to the YDR, which as of yet has not been published: Dear Editor:I was shocked the other day when The National Center for Health Statistics reported that less than a third of American teens are having sex. Why? Because judging from T.V. I thought otherwise. Similarly, even though hundreds of doctoral Read More ›