Tag: New York Times
Human Origins Update: Harvard Scientist and New York Times Reporter Get the “Plug Evolution Memo”…Sort of
What a difference a month, and a couple likely internal memos, can make. Last month I discussed the fact that newly reported Homo erectus fossils predated fossils of “Homo” habilis, meaning that habilis could not possibly have been an evolutionary link between the Australopithecine apes and our genus Homo. When the press covered that story, Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman was quoted in the New York Times stating that those fossils “show ‘just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.’” It’s a fascinating admission, and I wrote at the time, “Daniel Lieberma[n] apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making Read More ›
Kirk Answers Brooks on the Status of Darwinism in Western Culture
Has Darwin successfully replaced Marx and Freud, and, of course, the Bible, as a narrative for Western civilization? David Brooks, House Conservative at the New York Times and often a writer of real insight, apparently thinks so. (He is another example of conservatives, like George Will and Charles Krauthammer, who do not want to be bothered to actually read the works of serious Darwin critics, let alone talk with them.) Richard Kirk replies effectively to Brooks in the new American Spectator.
What Exactly Does Genetic Similarity Demonstrate?
Francix X. Clines, an excellent writer for The City Life and Editorial Observer sections of The New York Times, today (April 23, 2007) repeats what may be the most common mistake in trying to sell Darwinism to the public. In “Evolution, on Broadway and Off,” Clines writes of the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibition on evolution: The DNA exhibit shows how the chimpanzee’s DNA has been conclusively shown to be 98.8 percent the same as the visitor’s DNA. Hey, that’s no show stopper for the monkey-song chorus — it still allows a one in 100 chance they’re right. In other words, you are silly for not believing in Darwinism because you have very similar genes which make the proteins Read More ›
New York Times is Too Busy to Interview its Quotees
Today New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson totally misrepresented what I said in his article “Anti-Darwin Bill Fails in Utah.” I said that to the extent that the bill supported critical analysis it was a loss, but we really didn’t care about this bill because it amounted to a meaningless disclaimer, and we’ve never thought disclaimers were a good idea. I totally made it clear that Discovery was NOT keen on this bill. Honestly, I don’t think this reporter was even listening to a word I said. I never called it purely a “local Utah matter”. What the heck does that mean? A “local Utah matter?” I never said anything like that. He asked if I thought this vote would Read More ›
New York Times Story About God and Science
The New York Times has another front page story about the origins debate, “Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science.” The reporter, Cornelia Dean, does a good job of interviewing both theists and atheists, but she leaves out of the picture scientists like Michael Behe, who has made it clear that his religious background left him perfectly open to the possibility that God had front-loaded design into the fine-tuned laws of nature at the instant of the Big Bang, allowing it to evolve from there all the way to our living earth. Behe and other Darwin-doubters, like quantum chemist Henry F. Schaefer III and evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe, reject the Darwinian story simply because Read More ›