Reporter Celeste Biever of New Scientist was caught apparently telling lies in an attempt to infiltrate the Cornell IDEA club according to club president Hannah Maxson. In the IDEA club’s letter of protest to Biever’s employer, Maxson wrote:
it appears that your reporter acted unethically and lied to us about her identity and falsely claimed she was a Cornell student in an unnecessary ruse to obtain information from us
It is my personal opinion that rising biology enrollments parallel ID’s popularity. I personally believe interest in ID encourages study of biology and conversely developments in biology have continued to fuel interest in ID. However, it would be pre-mature at this time to assert this as a quantitative argument. I can only offer it as a personal and qualitative opinion, but considering the modern ID movement’s beginning was in 1984, I will let the reader simply consider the numbers I provide below and draw their own conclusions.
Nevertheless, I think people like Brian Alters (see Brian Alters Drivel) can not rigorously demonstrate the opposite claim, namely, that interest in ID somehow diminishes interest in science, particularly biology. I would actually argue Darwinist behavior is tarnishing biology and making the field have the appearance of being disreputable and unattractive. It would be better for the world of science to drop its promotion of Darwinism.
Something to consider statistically from the National Academy of Sciences of the USA:
National Academy of Sciences Press
Overall, the number of freshman biology majors increased from about 50,000 in the early 1980s to over 73,000 in 2000.2 In terms of actual bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences, there was a decrease from about 47,000 in 1980 to 37,000 in 1989 and then a relatively sharp rise to over 67,000 in 1998. This was followed by a slight decline to about 65,000 in 2000.
For those in the Washington, DC area, the Discovery Institute announced the following on their public website: Author Lecture with Jonathan Wells You are invited to meet Jonathan Wells for a special reception, discussion and booksigning at Discovery Institute’s Washington DC office, located at 1015 Fifteenth Street, NW Suite 900, on Wednesday, October 11th from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and copies of the book will be available for purchase at a discounted rate. There is no cost to attend. To register, contact Logan Gage at lgage@discovery.org or call (202) 558-7085. I’m planning on being there. Hope I get to meet some of you all.
Since many IDEA members read this weblog and this could be a point of confusion for other readers, I wanted to clarify something. Thomas D. English is a part of the IDEA Center Advisory Board. Thomas M. English is the Tom English that frequents Uncommon Descent.
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Quantum computers are a reality and they indirectly speak to the issue of intelligent design and the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics.
the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science….the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis
Richard Dawkins
Whoa!
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ID is quietly advancing in the mother state of one-fourth of the American Presidents. I do not know if the advance of ID in Virginia means anything to Richard Dawkins, but 4 of his 17 scheduled stops in his God Delusion world-wide book tour will be in the Virginia/DC area! Coincidence?
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Lauren Sandler’s new provocative book Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement is out in a bookstore near you (released September 7, 2006). I will comment some more on it since an entire chapter was devoted to Intelligent Design (entitled “Evolutionary Wars”) and quite a bit of that chapter was written about me. Her book will sell to the pro-Darwin crowd who think people like me are part of “a great national ill”. First of all let me say, I think Sandler is deeply sincere about what she writes and that she feels very threatened by the advance of Evangelical Christianity. She views me as someone who is wrong for society and I was portrayed that way in her book Read More ›
I’ve been meaning to post this to give the Uncommon Descent community a chance to respond to an essay by Jack Krebs. Jack Krebs is president of a militant pro-Darwin organization in Kansas, and he writes in ID Moving On in Fighting the Culture War:
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Here is the latest: Around the US, and around the world, intelligent design is in the college classroom. 100+ universities and colleges listed as including intelligent design in their class plans. Universities are investigating intelligent design analytically and synthetically. Biology, physics, philosophy of science, philosophy, politics, and religion classes are evaluating the research and publications of ID theorists and scientists. Below is our confirmed list of classes, some of which are reoffered, some not. Classes listed here are not necessarily strictly about intelligent design, but they do have discussion, assignments, and/or a unit on intelligent design. (more)ÂÂ
In response to Bill’s earlier thread Who said evolution wasn’t progressive, to say nothing of warm and fuzzy?, Rob Crowther posted a followup here: Beasts in the Forest.
Crowther points out Discovery Institute CSC Fellow Wesley Smith has a quote appearing on Starbuck’s coffee cups.
Read More ›….if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.
Jerry Coyne
This quote appeared in this article : Jerry Coyne Attacks Evolution-Skeptic With Namecalling in Nature by Casey Luskin. Luskin was writing in response to Jerry Coyne’s article in Nature Selling Darwin.
Coyne is also quoted as saying:
After lecturing this spring to the Alaska Bar Association on the debate over intelligent design and evolution, I was approached at the podium by a young lawyer. The tight-lipped smile, close-cropped hair and maniacal gleam in his eyes told me that he was probably a creationist out for blood. I was not wrong.
Incidentally, a creationist lawyer does not necessarily look like that. As proof of my assertion, here is a picture of a creationist lawyer and molecular biologist, Dr. Kelly Hollowell, PhD, JD:
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Is there another Guillermo Gonzalez in the making? Not quite, but there are some distressing signals coming out of UVa. This time the controversy surrounds the IDEA chapter and its faculty adviser, Bryce Paschal.
[For those who may not be aware, UVa is Paul Gross’s school. Gross was co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse with Barbara Forrest. ]
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This is the next installment in the series on John Davison’s An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis for Organic Change. In addition to being a professor of biology since 1954, John is one of the few elites with a published pro-ID peer-reviewed paper (see: Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis).
Dr. Davison’s work is relevant to the ideas of pro-ID evolutionists who explore the concept of front-loaded evolution as well as modern scientific creationists. I never thought that I (a creationist) would be so enthusiastic about a work promoting an evolutionary hypothesis. Dr. Davison’s work is gaining appreciation across the spectrum of views within ID’s big tent.
This installment will be part of Dr. Davison’s cogent refutation of the concluding remarks in Darwin’s Origin of Species.
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Edward Blyth (1810-1873)
Of course today, for biologists, Darwin is second only to God, and for many he may rank still higher.
— Michael White, 2002