Category: Evolution
Evolution Academic Freedom Bill Submitted in South Carolina is Sixth this Year
South Carolina Senator Mike Fair has submitted an Academic Freedom Bill into the South Carolina State Legislature. This is now the sixth academic freedom bill submitted this legislative session, as other bills have been submitted in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Alabama, and Louisiana. The text of Senator Fair’s bill would require that, “The State Board of Education, superintendents of public school districts, and public school administrators may not prohibit a teacher in a public school of this State from helping his students understand, analyze, critique, and review the scientific strengths and weaknesses of biological and chemical evolution in an objective manner.” Meanwhile, like other commentators, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) cannot admit that South Carolina’s state science standards require Read More ›
Another MCAT-Taker Weighs In on Evolution Indoctrination
Last month, I blogged about a pre-med student who recently took the MCAT and found emotionally-charged pro-evolution-biased language on reading comprehension questions. As he concluded, the MCAT exam is “just supposed to be a way to evaluate how you process information, and they don’t want to influence your reasoning by making you answer emotionally charged questions. This passage was distracting while I was taking the test. It was distracting because it’s about an emotionally controversial topic, and I don’t agree with everything they said. This crosses the line.” Following that post, another pre-med student (who is about to matriculate into medical school) contacted me and had this to say about the distracting pro-evolution bias on the MCAT: I sat for Read More ›
Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene
Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history. Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of “junk” DNA, now known to have function. In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function. Here’s where it gets interesting: Functionless structures may have been originally designed but were later rendered functionless by natural processes. For example, if you leave a laptop computer on the top of a mountain for 1000 years where it is exposed to Read More ›
Francisco Ayala Makes Confused Religious Arguments for Evolution
The mainstream media’s “framing” of the evolution-debate would have us believe that Darwin-skeptics are the ones who make religious arguments and try to push religion into the science classroom. But the evidence shows that the Darwinists are often the ones who push religion — and in an unashamed manner, at that. A recent UC Irvine news article reports on a lecture given by leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala where he suggested that religion should be discussed in science classes. Ayala said, “the fact that science is compatible with religion is an important thing to state in science classes.” He continued making religious arguments for evolution, contending, “The theory of evolution is better for religion than intelligent design.” But the most Read More ›
Ronald Bailey Attacks Expelled, Endorses Discrimination Against Intelligent Design Proponents
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] Over at Reason.com, Ronald Bailey has taken the Michael Shermer (i.e., Fact Free) approach to attacking Expelled. Bailey charges that “the film is entirely free of scientific content–no scientific evidence against biological evolution and none for ‘intelligent design’ (ID) theory is given.” But last time I saw the film, it featured well-credentialed scientists arguing that natural selection lacks information-generative power and arguing the digitally-encoded information in DNA and highly efficient micromachines and factories in the cell strongly indicate an intelligent cause. Bailey makes the simplistic (and inadequate) argument for neo-Darwinism based upon the fact that the fossil record shows that species Read More ›