Repeating Modernism’s Mistakes

Friday’s Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal had a great piece: “Under the Microscope: When science and politics become worlds in collision.” Among other things, this piece noted that “This was a banner week for American science.”

Did Edwards vs. Aguillard Spawn Intelligent Design? No

Harrisburg, PA — The plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial are arguing that intelligent design sprang up in the wake of the 1987 Supreme Court decision against creation science, and the National Center for Science Education’s Nick Matzke is repeating the talking point to reporters: “Intelligent design is just a new label for creationism,” Mr. Matzke noted. “It is just the latest legal strategy for creationism. It evolved in 1987 right after the Supreme Court ruled against creationism and said that that was unconstitutional.” The assertion is demonstrably false. The idea of intelligent design reaches back to Socrates and Plato, and the term “intelligent design” as an alternative to blind evolution was used as early as 1897. More recently, Read More ›

This “Dover” Trial Promises to be Interesting

CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt will be dispatched to Pennsylvania to cover the Dover intelligent design trial that starts on Monday in federal court in Harrisburg. He will attend the opening three days of the trial, but will continue to post reports throughout the trial until its conclusion, sometime in October.

What Nightline Didn’t Show Viewers: The Unedited Nightline Interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer

Last night’s Nightline segment on intelligent design fulfilled the promise of its inane preview article. Rather than cover the substance of the intellectual debate over design, all Nightline could do was act as the mouthpiece for ID-bashers like Barbara Forrest. Nightline asserted that the debate over intelligent design is about politics and PR, but that is only because Nightline didn’t want to cover anything else. Nightline’s producers clearly had a predetermined agenda going into their story, and they stuck to it. We audiotaped Nightline’s interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer at Discovery Institute’s office, and we’ve prepared a verbatim transcript, available here. If you want learn what Nightline refused to show its viewers, I encourage you to read it. I think Read More ›

Nightline polls Darwinists and finds (surprise!) there IS no scientific debate over Darwinism

Nightline ran a story on intellingent design last night, and if the inane preview article is any indication, the segment was the sort of lopsided hatchet-job one used to expect from the folks at “60 Minutes”—but not nearly as intelligent. Nightline’s main point appears to be that there really isn’t any scientific controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design. How do they know this? They checked with several Darwinists, who told them so! That’s right. According to Nightline, because Darwinists happen to believe there is no scientific controversy over evolution, there really must be no controversy. Hmm. Nightline could apply this logic to a lot of other issues besides intelligent design: