More student activism to unmask evolutionary pretensions: MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/evolutionquestions XANGA: http://www.xanga.com/evolutionquestions LIVEJOURNAL: http://evoquestions.livejournal.com BLOGSPOT: http://www.evolutionquestions.blogspot.com
As the debate over how to teach evolution continues, two new radio commercials promoting www.standupforscience.com and the online petition to “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas†will air this weekend across Kansas. One ad features molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, explaining that “it is imperative to understand both the evidence for and against a scientific theory… as a scientist, I am standing up for science education policies that require students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, as well as the scientific evidence that challenges it.†The second commercial features Kansas public school science teacher Jill Gonzalez Bravo who was also recently interviewed for the ID The Future Podcast about her support Read More ›
Check out this forthcoming book, in which I understand that our very own Sal Cordova is featured. Note especially Sam Harris’s blurb — with people like Harris expressing such foreboding, one has to wonder how close we are to seeing the Darwinian house of cards collapse under the weight of its self-delusion.ÂÂ
Book Description
There’s a new youth movement afoot in this country. It’s a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it’s taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it’s got passion, music, and anti-authority posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God. So what does it mean when today’s youth counterculture has a mindset more akin to Jerry Falwell’s than Abbie Hoffman’s?In RIGHTEOUS: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, Lauren Sandler, a dynamic young journalist, reports from this junction of Evangelicalism and youth culture, traveling across the country to investigate the alternative Christian explosion. Using the grassroots modus operandi of the 1960s, these religious kids – part of the “Disciple Generation†as Sandler calls it – turn an antiauthoritarian sneer toward liberalism, feminism, pacifism, and every other hallmark of that era’s counterculture. And they’re engaging their peers with startling success, fusing pop culture, politics, and religion as they preach from the pulpit of the skate park, bar, and rock concert. Secular, liberal, and practically the embodiment of everything Evangelicalism deems unholy, Sandler travels with skateboard missionaries, hangs out with the tattooed members of a postpunk Seattle megachurch that has evolved into a self-sufficient community, camps out with a rock’n’roll antiabortion group, and gets to know the rap preachers who are merging hip-hop’s love of money with old-fashioned bible-beating fundamentalism. Much more than a mere observer, she connects with these young people on an intimate level, and the candor with which they reveal themselves to her is truly astonishing.
Illuminating, often troubling, and unapologetically frank, RIGHTEOUS introduces a bold new voice into the ongoing debate over religion in American life. And it is the first in-depth front-line exploration of the country’s new moral majority – dressed up in punk-rock garb – and what its influence could mean for the future of America.
BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise:
“Lauren Sandler obliterates the naïve and complacent hope that keeps most secularists and religious moderates sleeping peacefully each night-the hope that, in 21st century America, the young know better than to adopt the lunatic religious certainties of a prior age. The young do not know better. In their schools, skate-parks, rock concerts, and in the ranks of our nation’s military, our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book.â€Â
â€â€Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation Read More ›
Faith Project Director The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for the post of Faith Project Director. The FPD’s duties will include: **developing materials pertaining to evolution and religion for print and web; **representing NCSE to the faith community, in print and in person; **serving as liaison between NCSE and professional theological societies and religious organizations; **speaking to the press about issues involving evolution education and challenges to it; **counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and others facing challenges to evolution education. Candidates should have either formal academic training in or extensive informal knowledge of theology, particularly as it relates to science. A record of involvement in or Read More ›
For your further amusement from a man who just doesn’t know when to stop. From: RJDownard@snip Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:39:30 EDT Subject: Uncommon Descent indeed! To: william.dembski@snip Dear Bill You take “all responsibility for any errors” in Coulter’s evolution chapters. Your words, not mine. Coulter has written what she has written. Either you are willing to defend each of her published assertions, or you may repudiate them. You have done neither. Thus the questions I asked remain. As amply evidenced by her prior works, Coulter can get confused entirely on her own. But it is also legitimate to wonder to what extent her published antievolution statements due to your proud tutoring? In my effort to resolve this point, Read More ›
[I took this off because it was consuming too much bandwidth. Here it is back again. –WmAD] Hooded winter jacket with large inside pocket to conceal identity and carry gun: $65.00 9mm Handgun purchased from Ray-Jay up the block: $150.00 Failure to master proper weapon retention during your planned armed robbery:
Here is the archive for the NCSE webpage going back to 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.natcenscied.org. Let me know if you find anything interesting.
In addition to the engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians who dissent from Darwin, anywhere from 33% to 60% of medical doctors dissent from Darwin (see Nearly Two-Thirds of Doctors Skeptical of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, HCD Research Poll, also check out PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS WHO DISSENT FROM DARWINISM).
Pro-ID sympathies are reflected by the fact a moderately pro-ID book received an endorsement by the Dean of Harvard’s medical school, Dr. Joseph Martin.
I was just over at Panda’s Thumb and saw that Tara Smith had put up a post informing her readers of a documentary about the Scopes trial to air on The History Channel tomorrow night. It also looks like they will say a little about intelligent design. Will they give ID a fair shake? Tune in to find out.
Scroll to about 30 lines up from the bottom for testimony of what Pianka told preached to his students in Biology 304 at UT Austin last semester. I don’t root for ebola, but maybe a ban on having more than one child. I agree . . . too many people ruining this planet. The student doesn’t root for ebola but it seems clear the student is implying that Professor Pianka does root for it. Though I agree that convervation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness. I found Pianka to be knowledgable, but spent Read More ›
Transcript of St. Edwards Speech MP3 of Seguin-Gazzette Question Stand by for a transcript of the Lamar speech (at the Texas Association of Scientists ceremony) which I’m given to understand makes the St. Edwards speech look rather tame. My take on the St. Edwards speech is it paints Pianka as an alarmist crackpot, and nothing else, confirming my first impression of him trying to be a poster boy for “Keep Austin Weird”. The guy rags on about microbes taking over and putting us in our place. Uh, like duh. Microbes have us for dinner in the end in any case. All Pianka is saying is that they should have us for lunch instead of dinner. The microbes appear to be Read More ›
Tom Magnuson at ARN “In the News” and Robert Crowther at Evolution News & Views have both reported on a new brochure published by Kansas Science Standards 2005. It’s clear and concise and should really help to dispell any misinformation that has been circulating about.
Keith Burgess-Jackson at AnalPhilosopher has this to say about militant anti-religious atheists and their treatment of ID as a pernicious threat to be kept out of public school classrooms at all costs:
Leftist Hostility to Religion
Michael Ruse, like me, is (1) a philosopher, (2) a Darwinist, (3) an atheist, and (4) a respecter of religion. Militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Brian Leiter, who hate religion and despise the religious, are vilifying him for it. See here and here. Leiter calls theists “theocrats,” as if, given the chance, they would impose their religious beliefs on everyone. In fact, it is Leiter and his ilk who would impose their leftist beliefs on everyone. (Read Leiter for a few days. You’ll see what a totalitarian he is.) I am far more concerned about the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Leiter acquiring power than I am about Christians (for example) acquiring power. Read More ›
South Dakota just passed a law making abortion a felony except in case of medical emergency. It’s now just a matter for the governor to sign it which everyone expects him to do. The law is designed to force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. The present Supreme Court is unlikely to hold up Roe v. Wade which is based on a made up out of whole cloth (mythical) constitutional guarantee of privacy. It will become again a matter for states to decide for themselves. This is as it should be. A bunch of politicians or judges in Washington have no business defining the moral standards that the good and free people of South Dakota or any other state must live with. Legislated moral values not explicitely enumerated in the constitution are simply something the federal government has no business dictating to the states.