Category: Culture
Does LA County Natural History Museum Scientist Kirk Fitzhugh Oppose “Freedom of Thought” for Intelligent Design?
In my prior post, I explained that Kirk Fitzhugh, a scientist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), wrongly claims that intelligent design (ID) is not testable. Fitzhugh’s error that ID is “immune to testing” is important. While he should have the academic freedom to believe and contend that ID is “immune to testing” and not scientific, he uses his claim that ID is not testable to justify suppressing ID. He anticipates this deficiency in his position, and thus writes: First, there’s the claim that science precludes expression of thought. In the context of ID, such a claim of overt suppression is inaccurate. Science is a process of acquiring ever-increasing causal understanding, and such a process has Read More ›
Adaptive Immunity: Chance or Necessity?
[Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, in a series of posts on the BioLogos website (“Adaptive Immunity: How Randomness Comes to the Rescue” and “Evolution and Immunity: Same Story“), Kathryn Applegate argued that the “random” processes of the vertebrate adaptive immune system serve as an example of how Darwinian mechanisms can generate biological complexity. Today, Discovery Institute presents part one of a response to Dr. Applegate from Donald L. Ewert, a research immunologist/virologist who spent much of his career studying the molecular and cell biology of the immune system, as well as theories about its evolution. Dr. Ewert received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1976. As a microbiologist, he operated a research laboratory at the Wistar Institute in Read More ›
“Intelligent Design” in Hebrew?
In the Hebrew version of Wikipedia, the page on intelligent design translates ID with the phrase “tichnun tivoni,” which means something like “intelligent planning.” And so it’s translated regularly too in Ha’aretz and other Israeli news sources. The Wiki page is well supplied with the usual distortions that you’d expect from Wikipedia in any language, but never mind that. The question of how to translate “intelligent design” into the language of the Bible is an interesting one. Is there an actual Biblical phrase that captures the idea? In the journal Azure, published by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, an essay on the “Secret of the Sabbath” indirectly suggests an answer. Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz reflects on the passage from the Read More ›
Darwin, Racism, and Eugenics in Detroit
Last week I participated in a stimulating panel discussion on Darwin, scientific racism, and eugenics at the Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Other participants included distinguished evolutionary biologist Morris Goodman of Wayne State University, historian Damon Salesa of the University of Michigan, and biology professor Jerry Bergman of Northwest State College in Ohio. The moderator was author and broadcast journalist Edward Foxworth. The Charles Wright Museum is the world’s largest institution devoted to the subject of African American history, and it’s well worth a visit. The museum’s presentation of the African American experience is outstanding; its galleries place you in the very midst of history, including a slave ship, plantation life, and early twentieth century Detroit. Read More ›
Correcting Kirk Fithzhugh’s Misunderstandings About Intelligent Design
In my prior post, I noted that for years I’ve owned a graduate assignment on evolutionary classification by LA County Museum of Natural History scientist Kirk Fitzhugh. After completing this “Classification” project, he went on to earn his PhD in biology and today is Curator of Polychaetes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC). Fitzhugh was part of the internal discussions at NHMLAC that I’ve been writing about, in which participants at one point planned to tell the California Science Center (CSC), “We urge you to cancel this event.” Fitzhugh, however, is not nearly so private about his disagreement with ID as some of his NHMLAC colleagues. It’s important to note that Dr. Fitzhugh should have every Read More ›