Calvin Ball at USA Today

Remember Calvin Ball? Calvin and Hobbes played a ball game where the victor was the one who could most nimbly change the rules to assure victory. Well, they’re playing Calvin Ball over at USA Today again. Gerald L. Zelizer writes: Can intelligent design and evolution reside in the same school building? Yes. In the same curriculum? No. Intelligent design belongs in history or social science class. Evolution belongs in science class. If one merely defines the scientific evidence against Darwinism as not-science, then, presto, you’ve cleared the field of all those stubborn, uncooperative facts that are better explained as the product of intelligent cause. Science writer Denyse O’Leary wrote USA Today, commenting thus: Regarding Rabbi Zelizer’s comments (February 6, 2005), Read More ›

The Non-Controversy Continues to be Controversial

Michael Behe’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times seems to have hit a nerve. Or two. Or three. Or perhaps all of them, if you’re a Darwinian dogmatist. Here’s a few. ID Hits the Times Op-Ed, Science Tuesday, De-Sign of the Times, ID is a “rival theory”. There were some blogs cheering Behe’s piece as well, most prominently the Evangelical Outpost. EO writes: ID in the NYT — Today’s New York Times presents an editorial by Michael Behe that does what no major media outlet has bothered to do: allow a prominent advocate of the theory to explain what Intelligent Design really is. Behe’s op-ed was the number two most e-mailed article from the Times’ website yesterday. Who says there’s Read More ›

Making the Case for Intelligent Design

CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Michael Behe has an opinon piece in today’s New York Times briefly laying out key aspects of the theory intelligent design. To date the MSM has been sadlly deficient in reporting what intelligent design theory is, and what it is not. This piece marks one of the first times that a major news outlet has let design advocates explain the theory in their own words. Hopefully other media will follow suit and instead of just regurgitating definitions from elsewhere they will accurately describe the theory itself. Let’s roll the highlight reel: “the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their Read More ›

What exactly is Dover design? Far from intelligent

The York Daily Record is reporting on the first ever reading of a statement about intelligent design to Dover School District ninth graders in biology classes. The story raises the issue of whether or not students are even learning about intelligent design theory, and seems to conclude that they are not. According to YDR the statement read to students says i part: “Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s views. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families.” One has to wonder why the ACLU and others are so upset that someone read a statement saying that there are other viewpoints. Intelligent design is never Read More ›

Another op-ed properly defending design theory

We’re starting to see occasional occurrences of coherent defenses of design theory popping up on editorial pages of all sorts of newspapers. For instance, Bruce Mclarty has an op-ed piece in The Daily Citizen (Arkansas) that nicely explains the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and correctly points out that creationism is a subset of intelligent design, not the other way around. “While all creationists would believe in intelligent design, the opposite is not true. One could adhere to the idea that nature reflects an intelligent designer without believing in the Bible, the God of the Bible, or the Genesis account of creation.” Mclarty also notes that: “When something appears to defy purely naturalistic explanation, it is attributed to being Read More ›