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Banned Item of the Year: Dr. Robert Marks’ Evolutionary Informatics Website
Last year John West nominated Of Pandas and People as Banned Book of the Year after the ACLU tried to have it banned from Dover Science Classrooms. We are again celebrating Banned Books Week, and it is fitting to note that Baylor University is also observing Banned Book Week. Baylor’s Banned Books Week events page states, “What do authors Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck and J.K. Rowling have in common? They have all written books that were challenged and banned by libraries in the United States.” Although his work in question here is not a book, Dr. Robert Marks also has something in common with those authors: someone has banned his ideas. As we have recounted extensively here Read More ›
ALT + CTRL + SCOPES = New York Times Bias
CSC senior fellow Jay Richards used to joke that reporters covering evolution simply sit down at their keyboards and type ALT + CTRL + SCOPES, and out pops a complete story that simply reiterates the false storyline that the primary challenge to evolution is a religious one, just as was the case during the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in the early days of the 20th century. I laughed when he told me, because I was familiar with how often that bogus storyline was repeated by reporters, and the idea of a computer macro being used to deploy it was funny. It’s not so funny now, though. It looks like the New York Times might indeed have some sort of macro Read More ›
Looks Like It’s Debates All the Way Down
This is one busy week for debates. Who says there’s no debate among scientists over Darwinian evolution?
Credibility Gap: Baylor Denies Robert Marks’ Situation Has Anything to do with ID
The Waco Tribune reported that “Baylor vice president for marketing and communications John Barry … denied that the matter has been drawn out because the content is related to intelligent design.” Does Baylor University actually expect us to believe that this has nothing to do with ID? William Dembski reports that the initial e-mail sent from Baylor administrator, Dean Kelley, to Dr. Marks explicitly stated that people were complaining about Robert Marks’s website precisely because it dealt with ID! Here’s what Dean Kelley wrote: “I have received several concerned messages this week about an interview and web site dealing with evolutionary computing associated ID. Please disconnect this web site immediately and Cheryl will arrange a time for us to meet Read More ›
Who Is Anti-Science?
There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality. One can be grateful that there are so many cases where science does proceed along the ideal path, but there is no excuse for trying to fool the public into thinking that great Read More ›