Tag: Nation
Proliferation of Academic Freedom Bills Is Darwin Lobby’s Worst Nightmare
The recent front page New York Times article on academic freedom legislation offers a stark reminder that the intelligentsia is very worried about the prospect of teachers gaining academic freedom, as a bill presently in the Kentucky legislature would allow, “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” From 2008-2009, 12 academic freedom bills were submitted into state legislatures, including Florida, Alabama (2), South Carolina (2), Missouri (2), Michigan, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico. Now in 2010, there are 3 bills already, including bills in Kentucky, Missouri, and Mississippi. The Kentucky bill contains an excellent Read More ›
New York Times Front Page Highlights Movement for Academic Freedom on Evolution, Global Warming and Other Science Issues
The nationwide effort to protect the freedom of teachers to hold balanced classroom discussions of evolution, global warming, and other scientific issues is highlighted on the front page of today’s New York Times. The article, “Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets,” contains the usual errors and mischaracterizations one expects from the establishment media. But mischaracterizations or not, the article gets one thing right: It reveals how both the public and policymakers are increasingly dissatisfied with the scientific establishment’s attempt to misuse science to support various ideological agendas, whether it be Richard Dawkins’ scientific atheism or some global warming alarmists’ efforts to push us back to the Stone Age. People want genuine education about scientific topics, and that includes being able Read More ›
Will Tomorrow’s Academic Freedom Story in The New York Times Accurately Reflect Discovery’s Science Education Policy on Teaching Evolution?
UPDATE: A sentence in the original post has been corrected to read: I stopped her right there and explained that we do not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design — as is so often misreported — but rather that we think when evolution is taught teachers should present both the evidence the supports Darwinian evolution as well as some of the evidence that challenges it. http://www.academicfreedompetition.comTomorrow The New York Times will publish an article about academic freedom bills being considered in a few states. We’ve obviously had some involvement: in 2008 we created the Academic Freedom Petition, which has sample language that legislators could adapt for use in their own states. That led to a very good piece of Read More ›
A Malodorous Argument for Darwinian Evolution
University of California evolutionary biologist John Avise has penned a book, Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design, and gotten it published by a top academic publishing house, Oxford University Press. Avise, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, has for decades been a leading researcher in evolutionary and ecological genetics. He has written hundreds of research articles and over a dozen books. Clearly he has an impressive scientific mind. Which makes it all the more astonishing that his new book shows all the intellectual savvy of a typical late-night college dormroom bull session. As his subtitle announces, Avise is anxious to show that, despite the claims of certain renegade biochemists, the molecular features of the human Read More ›
Access Research Network Lists the Top 10 Darwin and Design Resources for 2009
Since the close of 2009, Access Research Network (ARN) has released its Top 10 Darwin and Design Science News Stories for 2009 and its Top 10 Media Stories for 2009 (covered recently on the ID the Future podcast — see part 1 and part 2). Now ARN has released its list of the top 10 ID resources for 2009. At the top of the list is Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. Meyer was not the only Discovery Institute fellow to make ARN’s top 10 resource list. Michael Flannery’s innovative book, Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution, and David Berlinski’s long-awaited The Deniable Darwin also made the list. But there were also Read More ›