Got Berlinski?

Can’t get enough David Berlinski? If you’ve been going through withdrawl since Dr. Berlinski returned to Paris after his American book tour for The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, then have we got an interview for you: Read Christopher A. Ferrara’s interview “Jewish Intellectuals Challenge Tyranny of Darwinism.”

Council of Europe’s Intolerance of Darwin-Dissenters Shared by some Ohio State University Faculty

I recently discussed how the Council of Europe’s “Committee on Culture, Science and Education” proposed “banning” intelligent design (ID) from science classrooms on the grounds that teaching ID may represent a “threat to human rights.” Sadly, that mindset does not exist in Europe alone. In 2005, three Ohio State University (OSU) faculty wrote a letter claiming that a doctoral thesis project by an OSU graduate student, Bryan Leonard, engaged in “unethical human subject experimentation” simply because Leonard taught students about scientific problems with Neo-Darwinism. (See “Professors Defend Ohio Grad Student Under Attack by Darwinists” for details.) Jonathan Wells dicusses this case: Although Leonard had gone through normal procedures and received proper approval to conduct research, OSU professors Brian McEnnis, Steve Read More ›

To Chicago Sun-Times: Thanks for Pinker’s Change of Heart

Dear Chicago Sun-Times Editor: Thank you for running Steven Pinker’s “In defense of dangerous ideas” (July 15) which recognized the need for the scientific community to embrace its scientific taboos–such as whether the state of the environment has actually improved in the last 50 years or whether men and women may have different innate aptitudes. Would that Pinker truly supported academic freedom for all scientists. While he is even willing to ask if men have an innate tendency to rape, apparently asking if nature exhibits deliberate design is beyond the pale.

University of Missouri Doctor Lectures on Design

It looks like CSC contributor Michael Egnor is not the only professor of medicine to stick his neck out for intelligent design and face severe personal attack. Dr. John Marshall of The University of Missouri–Columbia lectured this week on his own campus with the title “Intelligent Design: Is It Science or Religion?”

I stand corrected on David Brooks

Recently I shared my reading of David Brooks’ recent colum “The Age of Darwin.” The whole thing read like parody to me. I thought for sure that Brooks could not seriously write that, while we are generally post-modern people who are skeptical of metanarratives, we have and should abandon this view because Darwinism is the true metanarrative of life. I thought he was just pointing out the contradiction in academia between postmodern and Darwinian thought. With thanks to one ENV reader named Oleg, I stand corrected. I had forgotten that Mr. Brooks shared his views on Darwinism in The New Republic in 2005: