Discovery Institute Honors Charles Darwin With Academic Freedom Day

Discovery Institute today announced the launch of Academic Freedom Day in honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday on February 12, 2009. “We’re celebrating Charles Darwin’s birthday by supporting what he supported: academic freedom,” said Robert Crowther, Director of Communications at Discovery Institute. “Like Darwin, we recognize the importance of having an open and honest debate between evolution and intelligent design.” In his revolutionary On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” This quote is the cornerstone of the Institute’s Academic Freedom Day efforts. The Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is sponsoring Academic Freedom Day, assisting student groups, clubs, Read More ›

University of Vermont President Engages in Double-Speak and Double-Standards When It Comes to Disavowing Pro-Intelligent Design Commencement Speaker Ben Stein

Let your voice be heard: If you think it was wrong for Ben Stein to be pushed out as this year’s commencement speaker at University of Vermont, send a message to University President Daniel Fogel at Daniel.Fogel@uvm.edu or 802-656-3186. Apologizing for inviting gifted actor and writer Ben Stein to be commencement speaker at the University of Vermont, University President Daniel Fogel has highlighted what he called Stein’s “highly controversial views” about “evolutionary theory, intelligent design, and the role of science in the Holocaust.” Fogel went on to express penance for inviting Stein by claiming that “Commencement should be a time when our community gathers inclusively, not divisively.” I guess inclusivity is why in 2007 Fogel chose as commencement speaker Democratic Read More ›

Darwin Defenders Get Ben Stein Expelled from University of Vermont’s Commencement Address

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ben Stein “has withdrawn from an engagement to speak at the University of Vermont’s spring commencement after his invitation drew complaints about his views on biological evolution.” The article reports: “According to the Burlington Free Press, the vast majority of protesters were not affiliated with the University of Vermont; only ‘about a half dozen’ objections came from the campus.” So why did protests about Stein start pouring in from outside the University of Vermont (UVM)? The answer seems clear: Stein’s invitation to speak at UVM was first raised to the Darwinist community in a post by PZ Myers titled, “University of Vermont makes an embarrassing decision.” Given the large following of PZ’s blog, Read More ›

Evolution Researcher Sees Scientific Challenges to Darwin’s Theory in 2009

[Editor’s Note: Douglas Axe is actually a molecular biologist, not a microbiologist. And it’s been pointed out that the quote I used from Axe’s piece that describes the Darwinian story as requiring 400 million years had a context — the supposed evolution of a proto-insect into a wide variety of insect life forms. However, the way I presented it makes it sound like the whole of Darwinian evolution was only supposed to require 400 million years, which wasn’t what Axe was saying.] As the number of celebrations of Darwin and his theory mount ad nauseam, one evolution researcher suggests that the emperor has no clothes. Douglas Axe, a microbiologist and director of the Biologic Institute, has posted an article pointing Read More ›

Bold Biology For 2009

Original Article It’s a big year for all things Darwin.  This month, two centuries after his birth, we commemorate the man and his accomplishments.  And in November, a century and a half after On the Origin of Species was published, we commemorate the beginnings of the theory by which we all know him. But how exactly should we think of his theory?  Is it to be remembered the way we remember the man–as an important part of the past?  Or is it to be remembered as something more than that–as an intellectual seed that grew into something that thrives to this day? Many, of course, would like to think of Darwin’s theory in these flourishing terms.  But the growth of Read More ›