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Is “Evolution” a “Theory” or “Fact” or Is This Just a Trivial Game of Semantics? (Part 5)
[Editor’s Note: This is a Part 5 of a 5 part series on whether evolution should be called a “theory” or a “fact.” For the installments, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. The full article can be found here.] Many intelligent people use the “evolution is just a theory, not a fact” line–but they immediately get into trouble because, as I discussed in Part 1, the formal scientific definition of theory is typically understood to mean a “well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world.” In other words, when talking to a scientifically minded crowd, calling evolution “just a theory” is not a good way to express scientific doubts about neo-Darwinism. As Read More ›
Washington Post Mimics New York Times’ Mistakes on Texas Evolution Debate
It isn’t just the New York Times that ignores the facts when reporting about the debate over how to teach evolution. Not to be outdone by its competitor the Washington Post catches up today with an ill-informed opinion piece (Evolving Toward a Compromise) that yet again completely misreports what is going on in the upcoming review of Texas’ state science standards. A proposal before the Texas Board of Education calls for including the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution in the state’s science curriculum. This initiative is understood by supporters and opponents to be a strategic effort to get around First Amendment restrictions on teaching religion in science class. First, there is no such proposal. The Texas state science standards currently Read More ›
Is “Evolution” a “Theory” or “Fact” or Is This Just a Trivial Game of Semantics? (Part 4)
[Editor’s Note: This is a Part 4 of a 5 part series on whether evolution should be called a “theory” or a “fact.” For the installments, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. The full article can be found here.] Darwinists love to bash Darwin-skeptics who call evolution “just a theory, not a fact.” The truth is that I rarely, if ever, hear people who are closely involved with the ID movement using this line to oppose evolution. The “evolution is just a theory, not a fact” phrase tends to come from the vox populi–intelligent people who studied this issue in their biology class or perhaps have read books like Darwin’s Black Box, Icons of Read More ›
Is “Evolution” a “Theory” or “Fact” or Is This Just a Trivial Game of Semantics? (Part 3)
[Editor’s Note: This is a Part 3 of a 5 part series on whether evolution should be called a “theory” or a “fact.” See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. The full article can be found here.] Darwinists claim that it is inappropriate to call “evolution a theory, not a fact” because a theory means “a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world.” In Part 1 and in Part 2, I discussed the fact that the word “theory” can have multiple meanings, ranging from a conjecture or guess (the soft definition) to “a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world” (the hard definition). In this installment, I will address the Read More ›
Little Green Footballs Fumbles the Ball by Making False Claims about Discovery Institute, Islam, and Intelligent Design
The blog site Little Green Footballs has slandered Discovery Institute, whether intentionally or not, by implying that we are in league with Islamic radicals in Turkey. They base this fantasy, apparently, on a CBC radio report of a year ago that was so poorly researched that it called Discovery Senior Fellow David Berlinski “Paul Berlinski” and referred to us as the “Christian Discovery organization.” Then they interview a host of people of varying views in Turkey who are critical of Darwinism and imply that they are all connected. They seemingly imply Discovery’s involvement in this situation based on the fact that Berlinski was invited to speak at a conference held by the municipal government of Istanbul last year. Big deal. Read More ›