Tag: Michael Shermer
Resolved: If He Were Alive Today, Alfred Russel Wallace Would Be an Intelligent Design Advocate
No religious believer, evolutionary theory’s co-discoverer came to argue in terms remarkably similar to arguments made today by intelligent-design theorists. Or did he?
Michael Shermer’s Conflicted Message
Who wrote the following words: (A) Phillip Johnson, (B) Jonathan Wells, or (C) Michael Shermer? We should not, however, cover up, hide, suppress or, worst of all, use the state to quash someone else’s belief system. There are several good arguments for this: 1. They might be right and we would have just squashed a bit of truth. 2. They might be completely wrong, but in the process of examining their claims we discover the truth; we also discover how thinking can go wrong, and in the process improve our thinking skills. 3. In science, it is never possible to know the absolute truth about anything, and so we must always be on the alert for where our ideas need Read More ›
Does Donald Prothero Know Intelligent Design Arguments Better than Steve Meyer?
You can often tell who won a debate by the plausibility of an account. In that regard, Donald Prothero made many dubious claims about his debate yesterday with Michael Shermer against Steve Meyer and Richard Sternberg. Let’s hone in on a couple short comments. Prothero writes: “I know I caught [Meyer] off-guard, since I have degrees in both biology and geology, and know most of their arguments better than they do.” Prothero later felt it was appropriate to boast about his following question: “I asked Meyer if he needed the ‘Designer’ to make every glop of mud.” Of course anyone with a cursory knowledge of ID would be aware that ID fully allows for the action of natural processes, and Read More ›
Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists (Part 3)
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In Part 1 and Part 2 I discussed how Michael Shermer’s review of Expelled applies one-sided skepticism to anything that challenges Darwinism, withholding skepticism of claims made by pro-evolution sources. When claiming that Richard Sternberg faced no discrimination after sympathizing with Darwin-skeptics, but simply invented a “conspiracy,” Shermer failed to scrutinize the blatantly false and contradictory claims by Darwinists trying to cover up what really happened. In that case, Eugenie Scott made private concessions that Sternberg did not do anything mortally wrong in his handling of the publication of Stephen C. Meyer’s paper on intelligent design (ID), and spoke as Read More ›
Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists (Part 2)
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In part 1 I observed that the famous skeptic Michael Shermer’s attack upon the movie Expelled over at Scientific American adopts the following approach when denying the persecution experienced by intelligent design (ID) proponents: (1) Ignore all the facts showing there was persecution; (2) E-mail the persecutor and ask them if there was any anti-ID discrimination; (3) Withhold all skepticism from the statements of the persecutors, and then trumpet their response as evidence that there is no persecution against ID proponents, blaming the victim for losing their job and then claiming those who feel there is persecution are just promoting Read More ›