Tag: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Banned Book Week and Intelligent Design Part 2: Attempts to Ban ID from Public Schools
Last week, in Part 1 of this 3-part series observing Banned Books Week, I recounted successful attempts to censor pro-intelligent design (ID) books from public school libraries, with high praise for such efforts from academia. But libraries, of course, aren’t the only location where Darwinists have tried to ban pro-ID materials. In 2005, Darwinists successfully banned both pro-ID books and pro-ID viewpoints from both the library and the classroom in Dover, Pennsylvania. While public support for ID has remained high even after the Dover trial, this incident sadly motivated other Darwinists around the U.S. to go out and recreate little Dovers within their own spheres of influence. For example, in the wake of the Dover incident, the president of the Read More ›
Rebuttals at OpposingViews.com: Will Intelligent Design’s Legal Critics (Americans United) Retract Their Demonstrably False Claims?
Michael Behe and I have posted our first couple objections to the opening statements posted by critics of intelligent design (ID) on OpposingViews.com. Before I discuss those, I want to provide the insightful comments of a friend who read the debates, and wrote me the following: Just a quick perusal of the discussion page for the “Does Intelligent Design Have Merit” shows how the opponents of ID cannot even address the question from a scientific (methodological) standpoint. Eight of 12 comments on the Yes side deal with the scientific merits of ID and only one of 11 comments on the No side actually deal with scientific critiques of ID. Why can’t the opponents of ID respond in a scientific and Read More ›
A Dialogue Concerning Intelligent Design
Somewhere a dialogue is presently taking place concerning intelligent design, and it may be going something like this: ID Proponent: DNA. Genetic code. Language. Commands. Information. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Cambrian Explosion. Pattern of Explosions. Cosmic Fine-Tuning. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Complexity of life. Irreducible complexity. Specified Complexity. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Human intelligence. Creative Genius. Love. Music. Art. Leonardo da Vinci. Beethoven. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Molecular Machines. Molecular motors. Cellular factories. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Science. Evidence. Data. Observations. Intelligent design. Darwinist: Wedge. ID Proponent: Atheism: Richard Dawkins. Daniel Dennett. Sam Harris. Eugenie Scott. Barbara Forrest. Stephen Jay Gould. E.O. Wilson. Michael Ruse. P.Z. Myers. Many others. Wedge? Irrelevant. Darwinist: Read More ›
Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 14: “What would Darwin do?” (from JudgingPBS.com)
[Editor’s Note: This is slide 14 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS presents a thoroughly pro-Darwin only account of the debate over evolution. In fact, there are many reasons why we should teach the controversy over Darwinian evolution: (1) Congress supports such a policy:“The Conferees recognize that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to Read More ›
Darwin’s Failed Predictions, Slide 13: “The abrupt appearance of biological forms” (from JudgingPBS.com)
[Editor’s Note: This is slide 13 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS has a slide stating that evolutionary paleontologists “continue to unearth key fossils that bridge those gaps Darwin bemoaned.” But evolutionary paleontologist David Raup wrote in 1979 that “we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded … ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.”1 PBS asserts that fossils discovered in the “past half century” have “filled in” gaps to explain the Cambrian explosion in evolutionary Read More ›