Hijacking Intelligent Design in Utah

While it’s frustrating when critics of intelligent design mischaracterize what ID is about, it’s even worse when people billing themselves as friends of ID do the same thing. As the term “intelligent design” has increasingly entered the public discourse, the number of people misusing the term to advance their own agendas by calling it “design” has increased. Take the recent proposal by a Utah legislator for something he calls “divine design,” by which he clearly seems to mean creationism. According to a recent article in the Salt Lake City Tribune: Evolution has not been a big issue in Utah until now. On June 3, Sen. Chris Buttars of West Jordan said he would propose giving equal time to what he Read More ›

Darwinist Profs Take Aim At Grad Students

If you’re a graduate student who dares to question Darwinian evolution good luck on defending your dissertation. OSU graduate student, Bryan Leonard, is suffering a vicious attack from Darwinist who seem bent on keeping him from earning his doctoral degree, precisely because he does not adhere to a strictly Darwinian viewpoint. (see here for more details) Fortunately there are some who see these attacks for what they are — threats on academic freedom. Charles Mitchell at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has posted his insightful take on the situation: “First, to my knowledge at least, Leonard’s Ph.D. is not actually on evolution or intelligent design or anything else. It’s about pedagogy, period. Its concern is not scientific analysis Read More ›

PBS Tackles Evolution Debate Again, but Fumbles in the Endzone

This past weekend PBS program Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly aired a story about the Kansas board of education’s recent hearings on evolution. The producers tried to cover the whole debate and allowed many of the different points of view to be included. In that regard the program was better than most news stories on the issue.

New York Times Should Screen “Privileged Planet” for Its Staff

Rob Crowther blogged earlier about the New York Times article on the upcoming screening of “Privileged Planet” at the Smithsonian. The Times article is pretty fair and balanced, but it starts off with a big blooper in the headline and first sentence: Smithsonian to Screen a Movie That Makes a Case Against Evolution Fossils at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History have been used to prove the theory of evolution. Next month the museum will play host to a film intended to undercut evolution. In fact, Privileged Planet is not about biological evolution. It makes the case for intelligent design in the universe based on astronomy and cosmology. It doesn’t deal at all with the Darwinian account of Read More ›