Tag: David Hillis
Texas Hold ‘Em Part II: Calling David Hillis’ Bluffs About the Tree of Life in His January Texas State Board of Education Testimony
David Klinghoffer has recently posted some excellent (and entertaining) summaries of the highlights of Discovery Institute’s responses to the testimony of evolutionist experts David Hillis and Ronald Wetherington before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE) on January 21, 2009. (See also Ralph Seelke’s response to Hillis.) One part of the response to self-proclaimed tree of life “expert” David Hillis that should not be missed is Discovery’s response to his bluffs and misrepresentations regarding the congruence of molecular and morphological phylogenies within the tree of life. Specifically, Hillis told the board that there is “overwhelming agreement correspondence as you go from protein to protein, DNA sequence to DNA sequence” when reconstructing evolutionary history using biological molecules. But anyone accurately testifying Read More ›
Strengths and Weaknesses in David Hillis’s Arguments about the Cambrian Explosion
Tonight in Texas, pro-Darwin expert David Hillis testified that the Cambrian explosion took many tens of millions of years, also stating that there are no credible scientific weaknesses in neo-Darwinian evolution. His evolutonary theory of the Cambrian Explosion has a grave weakness. One of the 100+ mainstream scientific papers discussing weaknesses in evolution that Stephen Meyer presented to the Texas State Board of Education today absolutely refuted Hillis’s argument: “Until 530 million years ago, multicellular animals consisted primarily of simple, soft-bodied forms, most of which have been identified from the fossil record as cnidarians and sponges. Then, within less then 10 million years, almost all of the advanced phyla appeared, including echinoderms, chordates, annelids, brachiopods, molluscs and a host of Read More ›
Darwinist David Hillis Recommends Imposing Dogmatism in Expert Review of Texas Science Standards (Part 1)
In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin famously wrote, ”A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” One might think that modern proponents of Darwin’s ideas would endorse his approach to scientific thinking within evolution education, but it’s not so. The Texas State Board of Education recently received reviews of the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) from six science reviewers. Three of those reviewers–who are scientific skeptics of Darwinian evolution–support TEKS that would give students a strong grounding in critical thinking skills by asking them to “analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence Read More ›