Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Kansas IV — Care to weigh in?

The Kansas State Board of Education will hear from scientists and scholars next week about how best to present evolution in the classroom. If you are not testifying to the board, there is still a significant role for you to play in the wider debate. Namely, write supportive letters to the editor to appear during the hearings next week, and the week following, in regional and national newspapers.

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ID in 28Apr05 Issue of Nature

Scientists know that natural selection can explain the awe-inspiring complexities of organisms, and should be prepared to explain how. But attacking or dismissing intelligent design is likely to aggravate the rift between science and faith that causes students to become interested in intelligent design in the first place. Read More ›

Kansas III — Kansas State School Board Hearings

From a colleague:

A 3-member Committee of The Kansas State School Board will conduct hearings in Topeka next week, and possibly the week after, to evaluate proposed changes to the state science standards. Thursday through Saturday next week, May 5-7, the Committee will hear testimony from scientists, philosophers and educators who think the standards should incorporate language about the problems with Darwinian evolution — a group knownofficially as “the Minority.” Witnesses will include William Harris, Jonathan Wells, Charles Thaxton, Giuseppe Sermonti, Ralph Seelke, Russell Carlson, Bruce Simat, Bryan Leonard, Daniel Ely, Edward Peltzer, Jill Gonzalez-Bravo, John Sanford, Robert DiSilvestro, Roger DeHart, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Angus Menuge, James Barham, John Millam, Mustafa Akyol, Nancy Bryson, and John Calvert.

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Kingsolvers Diverge Over Natural Selection

One of my favorite over-the-top quotes about the power of natural selection comes from novelist Barbara Kingsolver. According to her, natural selection is “the greatest, simplest, most elegant logical construct ever to dawn across our curiosity about the workings of natural life. It is inarguable, and it explains everything.” (Small Wonder, 2002). Another Kingsolver, however, is not so sanguine about the power of natural selection. According to J. G. Kingsolver et al. in a meta-analytic statistical study titled “The Strength of Phenotypic Selection in Natural Populations,” published in the March 2001 issue of The American Naturalist, “important issues about selection remain unresolved,” which ends up being a euphemistic way of saying that natural selection was found to have virtually no Read More ›

The need for “creation science”?!

Although the phrase ‘creation science’ carries disreputable connotations because of its frequent use by some religious fundamentalists, we truly need some ‘creation science’ (in the other sense of that phrase) as a major component of evolutionary theory. Read More ›

“Scientists” vs. ID

What follows is a story from Science on the controversy in Kansas over the teaching of evolution. Notice how the story is framed in terms of “Science” versus “Intelligent Design.” One thing it might interest you to know is that the meeting in question took place at a church (it was held at the Plymouth Congregational Church — Diane Carroll writes about it here in the Kansas City Star). I’m presently an expert witness in an ID case where one of the charges made by the opposing expert witnesses is that ID is religion-based because its proponents have been seen to speak about ID in churches. The other side is just as happy to press their cause in churches. By the way, check out the staff directory of the National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE): http://www.ncseweb.org/ourstaff.asp. The first photo you’ll see is of Josephine Bergson in a white clerical collar. In the caption we are told that “audiences appreciate her ability to demonstrate the compatibility of neo-Darwinism and Christianity.” The point to appreciate is that this debate is anything but religion-neutral for the other side.

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Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life

Hubert Yockey attended the 1996 Mere Creation conference at Biola University. At that conference he and I discussed his role in the ID movement. He described himself as an outsider who could do more good for ID by maintaining his intellectual independence and directing his energies at refuting the evolutionary reductionists than by explicitly making common cause with us. He has a new book with Cambridge University Press scheduled for release this summer that will need to be on the reading list of everyone with an interest in ID: Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life. Of especial interest will be chapter 12, titled “Does Evolution Need an Intelligent Designer?” Although I expect Yockey will be critical of ID in this chapter, I expect his objections will be answerable and help move our program forward.

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Emergence of Biological Complexity — Cambridge Templeton Consortium

Yesterday’s Nature has, on page 24 of the advertisement section, an announcement requesting grant proposals for the John Templeton Foundation’s “Purpose in the living world” research programme, titled “The Emergence of Biological Complexity” (for more go here and here). Purpose? Biological complexity? Evidence of fine-tuning in biological complexity? All in one breath? This may not be full-fledged ID, but it certainly isn’t “the literal interpretation of Darwin.”

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Why Joe Schmoe Doesn’t Buy Evolution

"You know, you are going to have to get past those reservations if you want to pursue a career in this field. It just isn’t possible to succeed in Marine Science if you do not accept the theory of evolution." Read More ›