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False Fear Epidemic over Critical Analysis of Evolution Spreads to Wisconsin
Breaking News: False Fear Syndrome has skipped right over Michigan and spread directly from Ohio to Wisconsin. The primary symptom is the spreading of false fears about teaching intelligent design in states that are merely encouraging the critical analysis of evolution. The Syndrome is typically accompanied by paranoia among educators, politicians, and the newsmedia.This epidemic broke out in full force in Kansas last November. More recently it appeared in Ohio and South Carolina. Sadly, today there is a confirmed case in Wisconsin. A press release from Wisconsin Representative Terese Berceau indicates she has introduced a bill into the Wisconsin State Legislature seeking to “to stem the growing tide of intelligent design and other specious science.” This is interesting because I’ve Read More ›
“Judge Jones said it, I believe it, that settles it” – The Missing Legal Basis in Kitzmiller
Notorious legal decisions often develop a common-man meaning. The public perception of the Kitzmiller decision is that Judge Jones supposedly settled the issue: intelligent design is not science. As a law student, I have been amazed that this most important of Kitzmiller holdings is unsupported by any legal reasoning. The news coverage of Kitzmiller has encouraged this misperception. CNN.com simplified the entire decision as being about defining science: “U.S. District Judge John Jones concluded in a 139-page decision that intelligent design is not science.” This is absurd to anyone who respects the law. Judges should only be deciding matters of law, not declaring as authoritative his opinion on matters of politics, or philosophy, or science.
A Rorschach Test for Our Times
Something called “intelligent design” is the “number one” discussed topic on the internet today (August 4, ’05), according to the web and blog watch group Technocrati.com. But what do people mean by the topic? Forget the old fashioned question — what do the scientists propounding ID mean by the term? This is the post-modern age. What do YOU want ID to mean? Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) invented the famous Rorschach test that long was used to see what different meanings people would project onto a series of abstract inkblots. I see a butterfly, you see a porter carrying water, the man down the hall sees a spy plane. Supposedly, it was a key to understanding personality. Intelligent design, I am afraid, Read More ›
“a parade of Ph.D.’s testified today about the flaws they find in Darwin’s theory of evolution,”
UPDATE, May 6: The New York Times has published this artilce under the new, and vastly improved and accurate headline: “In Kansas, Darwinism Goes on Trial Once More” Topeka, KS — Indeed, Jodi Wilgoren’s lead from her story in The New York Times sums up what the scene was today in Memorial Hall in Topeka, the first day of hearings on how evolution should be taught in Kansas public schools. In the first of three daylong hearings characterized here as the direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a parade of Ph.D.’s testified today about the flaws they find in Darwin’s theory of evolution, transforming a small auditorium into a forum on one of the most controversial questions in Read More ›
Debate at National Press Club Focused on Intelligent Design and Evolution
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Press Club was the setting today for a Discovery Institute sponsored and hosted debate about evolution and design. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, CSC director, championed the theory of intelligent design while Dr. William Provine, the Charles Alexander Professor of Biology at Cornell University, stood up for evolution. Of the forty or so people in attendance approximately half were journalists, and the rest of the crowd was comprised of a number of high school students, and various parties interested in the ongoing national debate over evolution. The best parts in my mind were the discussion beforehand between Meyer and Provine, and CSC senior fellow Dr. David Berlinski who attended, and our lunchtime discussion after the event Read More ›