Recent Comments on Flock of Dodos at Telic Thoughts

Links with more Information: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) There is a thread at Telic Thoughts discussing the Flock of Dodos [FOD] film where I posted a comment last week. I posted the comment after a commenter named “Randy” asked a question about Discovery Institute’s responses to the film. I repost the comment below because it clearly explains my position regarding the film, and also provides various useful links for interested readers to visit for more information: An early commenter named “Randy” asked an interesting question. Having watched FOD a few times now, I understand that many people (including me) will enjoy its humor and its apparent Read More ›

Evolution and Dissent: CSC Senior Fellow DeWolf in the Boston Globe

This opinion piece by David K. DeWolf ran in the Boston Globe, yesterday. IT’S THE QUESTION that won’t go away. Twice during the Republican presidential debates and once at a forum for Democratic candidates, candidates were asked about evolution. For example, in the California debate all the candidates were asked to respond to the question of whether they believed in evolution. In the New Hampshire debate, follow-up questions were asked of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. At the Sojourners Forum debate, John Edwards was asked, “Do you believe in evolution or do you believe in creationism?”

Would Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Be Blacklisted at Iowa State?

Guillermo Gonzalez is the outstanding astronomer who was blacklisted from tenure at Iowa State University because of his support for intelligent design. As my colleagues here on ENV have pointed out, Dr. Gonzalez’ academic record is superb. Since his arrival in 2001, Dr. Gonzalez has been the most productive astronomer in his department, judged by the impact factor of his publications. It’s clear that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure for only one reason: he stated publicly that he believes there is evidence for design in the universe. As I observed in a previous post about Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest who is the father of the Big Bang theory, many of the most prominent astronomers in history have shared Dr. Read More ›

New Law Review Articles Discuss Teaching Evolution: Darwinist Law Professor Supports Censorship of ID Ideas

In a recent law review article in Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Stephen A. Newman, law professor at New York Law School, provides a wonderful example of how prevalent among some academics is the idea that it is acceptable and appropriate to censor intelligent design ideas. Newman writes: Consider the experience of two librarians who received copies of two intelligent design books, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe and Darwin on Trial by Philip [sic] Johnson, as donations to their high school collections. When the librarians refused to put the books on the school library shelves, they were accused of censorship. In fact, exercising their professional judgment, they concluded that these books had “little or no value to our Read More ›

Would Galileo Side With John Hauptman or Guillermo Gonzalez?

We’ve recently discussed Iowa State University physicist John Hauptman’s prejudice against ID-proponents which was printed in the Des Moines Register. In response to our article observing misrepresentations of Guillermo Gonzalez’s arguments, David Deming, geologist and geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, sent some enlightening comments that further respond to Hauptman’s op-ed against Guillermo Gonzalez. Part of Dr. Deming’s comments are reprinted below: It certainly must have been a profound embarrassment for the Iowa State president to issue a press release stating ID had nothing to do with the tenure decision on the same day that Hauptman published a confession that it was the essentially the only reason he voted against Gonzalez’s tenure. I saw your most recent Read More ›