William Dembski

“By Design or by Chance?” wins two top honours

June 20, 2005, Toronto

At the Write! Canada convention awards night (June 17, 2004), By Design or by Chance?, an overview of the intelligent design controversy, won two Canadian Christian Writing Awards, one in the category of books on culture and the other in the category of personal growth/Bible study & theology. The culture award was shared with Dianne B. Stinton of Nairobi, Kenya, for Jesus of Africa. Read More ›

Gary Novak (mushroom physiologist) says he has evolved yeast into morel mushrooms in the lab, mocks ID, and joins the fray (go here). What Novak has actually shown, so one of my close ID biologist colleagues informs me, is that when he tries to grow wild morel mushrooms on artificial nutrient media in laboratory Petri dishes, they don’t develop beyond the single-cell stage — like yeast (a single-celled fungus). No evolution. Not even devolution. Just stunted growth. Say it isn’t so.

CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES SETTLES LIBEL CLAIM OVER EVOLUTION ARTICLE
Parent’s Claim Sparked by False Article by Leading Darwin Advocate

ROSEVILLE, CA — The California Academy of Sciences has settled with a California parent, Larry Caldwell, who raised a potential libel claim against the organization over its publication of a false and defamatory article authored by Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc. (NCSE) Scott’s article, entitled “In My Backyard: Creationists in California,” appeared in the Spring print and online editions of the Academy’s California Wild magazine. The article had also been accessible through a link on the NCSE’s website. Read More ›

Laurie Lebo of the York Daily Record interviewed me about being dropped as an expert witness in the Dover ID case (go here for the story). The Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm which had hired me as an expert witness, did not want the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, which publishes the ID textbook that is under dispute in the Dover case (Of Pandas and People) and for which I am the academic editor, to provide me with additional legal counsel when the ACLU was to depose me on June 13th. I was actually looking forward to being deposed and expect I would have gone along with the Thomas More Law Center, except that Thomas More was going to let Stephen Meyer have additional legal representation. This disparity (Meyer could have separate legal counsel but not me) put me in an impossible situation with my employer FTE — how was I to justfiy to FTE my refusal to let their attorney be present when Thomas More was permitting Discovery to provide additional legal counsel for Stephen Meyer? When I indicated that I would need to have FTE’s counsel at the deposition, the Thomas More Law Center fired me as an expert witness. For your convenience, I include the York Daily Record story here:

Kathleen Hunt’s Talk.Origins FAQ on transitional vertebrate fossils has been available for years. The URL for that FAQ is http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html. You might enjoy comparing it with Richard Milton’s response at http://www.alternativescience.com/talk-origins-transitions.htm.

Check out this book review by Christine Rosen from the June 13 issue of the Weekly Standard — go here. A few quotes to whet your interest: Read More ›

Del Ratzsch as an extended critical review of Niall Shanks’s anti-ID book God, the Devil, and Darwin. The review is at Ars Disputandi — go here.

Go here.

A few days ago, I posted an old cartoon by Wayne Stayskal (“The Literal Interpretation of Darwin” — go here). I updated the cartoon slightly by substituting the phrase “intelligent design” for “creation.” Stayskal drew the cartoon back in 1981 at the time of the Arkansas creation trial. Here’s another one of my favorite Stayskal cartoons:

Check out the following item: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20050608-9999-lz1c08intel.html. Have any of these respondents read any of the ID literature?

Here’s a blurb from the June issue of Advances, the AAAS monthly newsletter: Read More ›

Here’s an update from IDURC’s director: Read More ›