Category: Culture
New Law Review Article: Zeal for Darwin’s House Consumes Them: How Supporters of Evolution Encourage Violations of the Establishment Clause
A few months back, Liberty University Law Review released an article, “Zeal for Darwin’s House Consumes Them: How Supporters of Evolution Encourage Violations of the Establishment Clause,” I published in their journal last year. The article came after a legal symposium they hosted last year that included speakers such as Ed Sisson, Jay Wexler, Arnold Loewy, John Calvert, and myself. Wexler and Loewy are, of course, ID-critics so it made for an interesting dialogue. My experience at the symposium was that all were highly civil and thoughtful in the exchange. Below I reproduce the introduction to my article, and in a subsequent post will reprint my analysis of the decision in C.F. v. Capistrano Unified School District from last year. Read More ›
Dear Lauri Lebo, Please Help Me Understand Your Conspiracy Theory
At Religion Dispatches, Lauri Lebo has a perplexing post up criticizing Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman for being “disingenuous.” He had written at the American Spectator website against the move by school board members in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, to explore teaching “creationism” to students. In Chapman’s comments, Lauri Lebo finds evidence of cowardliness as well as deceit: Once again, after pushing for anti-evolution language that opens the door to teaching creationism, the good fellows at the Discovery Institute bravely turned around and ran away from the local creationist-talking school board members who want to champion their cause. She’s referring to the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, which establishes the parameters under which teachers may introduce scientific supplements in the classroom Read More ›
A Classic Evolution Policy Blunder
Bruce Chapman has a piece published at American Spectator today about recent rumblings amongst school board’s over the Louisiana Science Education Act. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law last year an act that sets parameters for teachers who introduce scientific supplements on Darwinian evolution, global warming, human cloning and other controversial subjects. The state’s Science Education Act encourages “open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied.” It specifically prohibits religious instruction or interpretations (or irreligious interpretations, for that matter). The law is simple, reasonable and avoids constitutional and scientific mistakes that afflicted earlier laws in Louisiana and elsewhere. But in Livingston Parish, east of Baton Rouge, some enthusiasts for a literal Biblical account of creation decided that the Read More ›
New York Times Finds Science Blogs “Class-War Claptrap”
While we often are correcting mistakes and misinformation in news reports about intelligent design and evolution, it’s encouraging to know that solid, thoughtful pieces are still being produced. This story from The New York Times is making the rounds, causing Denyse O’Leary to wonder, “Have the Times people actually started connecting with the public again?” The surprising article by Virginia Heffernan examines the strange microcosm that is Science Blogs, where, as Bruce Chapman put it, she finds “not science, but self-referencial sophomoric pranks, vitriol and cavil.” Her acute analysis: Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast Read More ›
Nature‘s Microevolutionary Gems Part 1: Lizards, Fish, Snakes, and Clams
Links to our 9-Part Series Responding to Nature‘s Evolution Evangelism Packet: • Part 1: Evaluating Nature’s 2009 “15 Evolutionary Gems” Darwin-Evangelism Kit • Part 2 (This Article): Microevolutionary Gems: Lizards, Fish, Snakes, and Clams • Part 3: Microevolutionary Gems: Bird-Sized Evolutionary Change • Part 4: Microevolutionary Gems: Flea and Guppy-Sized Evolutionary Change • Part 5: Microevolution Meets Microevolution • Part 6: Evolutionary “Gems” or “Narrative Gloss”? • Part 7: Muscling Past Homology Problems in Nature’s Vertebrate Skeleton “Evolutionary Gem” • Part 8: Of Whale and Feather Evolution: Two Macroevolutionary Lumps of Coal • Part 9: Evolutionary Biologists Are Unaware of Their Own Arguments: Reappraising Nature‘s Prized “Gem,” Tiktaalik Download Our Full Response to the Packet as a PDF. Early in Read More ›