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Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 2: “Following the evidence wherever it leads” (from JudgingPBS.com)
[Editor’s Note: This is slide 2 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] No one doubts that Darwin was a gifted scientist who made careful observations of the natural world. The same could be said for Sir Isaac Newton, an early proponent of intelligent design whose ideas inspired both modern physics and modern science as a whole. Yet despite the long-lasting success of Newton’s ideas, technological advancements in the early 20th century overturned Newtonian physics and replaced them with Einstein’s theories. If history is to be our guide, science must always be open to following the Read More ›
Devolve Your Beliefs
At festive Winter Solstice Luncheons across the country, determined atheists are gathering to celebrate one of the oldest and most superstitious holidays of human history. As speakers present lectures on the history of Solstice celebrations, participants give and receive Winter Solstice Cards. These vary little from the general theme of my favorite card, which depicts Charles Darwin as Santa Claus on the front. Apparently, Darwin is the Patron Saint of Solstice. Inside, it reads simply: evolve your beliefs.CELEBRATE WINTER SOLSTICE
Chairman of the Texas Board of Education Don McLeroy Corrects Dallas Morning News
After yesterday’s article in the Dallas Morning News portrayed Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education Don McLeroy’s Sunday school comments as if they were the basis for his science education policy, McLeroy has a response in the Dallas Morning News today. McLeroy asks a simple question — what do you teach in science class? — then clarifies for the record his “motivations for questioning evolution:”
Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 1: “Evolution happens. So what?” (from JudgingPBS.com)
[Editor’s Note: This is slide 1 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS confidently instructs us that “evolution happens.” But should that matter? Even Darwin’s scientific critics agree that evolution happens. PBS is introducing equivocation into the discussion by failing to clearly define “evolution.” Some use “evolution” to refer to something as simple as minor changes within individual species that occur over short periods of time (Evolution #1). Others use the same word to mean something much more far-reaching, such as claiming that all living organisms are descended from a single common ancestor (Evolution #2), Read More ›
The Questions Larry Arnhart Won’t — Or Can’t — Answer
Fresh from our debate at Seattle Pacific University last month, Larry Arnhart resumed his on-again-off-again attack on Darwin Day in America—a book he alternately praises and condemns. Arnhart originally misrepresented (here and here) Darwin Day by alleging that I tried to tie every example of scientific reductionism in my book back to Darwin. As I pointed out in a previous blog, Arnhart’s claim is untrue, and I showed how he had misread or misrepresented the particular examples he had cited. Rather than correct his erroneous claim, however, Arnhart now asserts that I engaged in “bait and switch” when I pointed out in my book that Darwinism is “only one part of [the] larger story” of “materialistic reductionism” even while also Read More ›