Education

Go to http://idea.berkeley.edu for the new website for UC Berkeley’s IDEA Club (IDEA = Intelligent Design & Evolution Awareness): For too long the students have been dogmatically told that ID is just pseudo-scientific religious dogma. This website will offer Berkeley students accurate information on what ID is and is not. When students realize that ID does have scientific content behind the unfortunate politics, they will realize that the critics of ID on this campus are just arguing against themselves based on strawmen arguments. Their characterization of ID as “creationism in a cheap tuxedo” will only work if the students don’t read the ID material for themselves. It seems that incredulously asserting that ID theorists are bad scientists also works well Read More ›

To Debate or Not to Debate Intelligent Design?
By Gerald Graff

When I heard that advocates of “Intelligent Design” were urging schools to “teach the controversy” between their view and Darwinian evolution, I was dismayed.

About 20 years ago, I coined the phrase “teach the controversy” when I argued that schools and colleges should respond to the then-emerging culture wars over education by bringing their disputes into academic courses themselves. . . . Read More ›

Last spring The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) hired me as an expert witness in the Dover area school district case regarding ID (Kitzmiller v. Dover). That case went to trial this week (26Sep05). Because the focus of that case and trial is a book titled Of Pandas and People and because I am the academic editor for the publisher of that book (i.e., The Foundation for Thought and Ethics [FTE]), when FTE tried to intervene in the case, TMLC decided to drop me as an expert witness, citing a conflict of interest. In any event, I did a lot of work on the case, including an expert witness report as well as a rebuttal of the opposing expert witness Read More ›

Authors of Proposed Changes to Kansas Science Standards
Dated March 29, 2005

September 27, 2005

To: Members of the Kansas State Board of Education

Re: Letter from THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY dated September 9, 2005, signed by Elie Wiesel and 37 other Nobel Laureates Read More ›

Exhibit 1: Letter by 6 Nobel laureates et al. to all 50 governors of the United States — go here.

Exhibit 2: DEFCON’S top 10 Places Where Science Education is Under Threat — go here.

As these exhibits indicate, the other side is pulling out all the stops. It makes you wonder whether they’ve got something to lose. Read More ›

From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. And just remember, those are our tax dollars with which he is going to indoctrinate our kids and oppose intelligent design. Here’s a novel thought: Let chancellor Hemenway and his colleagues come up with their own support that does not require the government establishing a secular religion based on evolution. Here is his letter: Read More ›

Bob Zelnick, well known news personality and chair of the BU journalism school, is organizing a debate on whether ID should be taught in conjunction with conventional evolutionary theory. The debate will feature Edward Sisson and me on the ID side and Eugenie Scott and James Trefil on the evolutionist side. The debate will take place at Boston University on Wednesday, November 2, 2005. Stay tuned for details. I’ve been informed that CSPAN is expected to cover the debate.

Have a look at http://www.ncseweb.org/meeting.asp. One of my colleagues describes reading this page as “watching a car wreck.” I’m just sorry we can’t get a percentage cut from all the speaking engagements they are getting as a result of attacking us. Life is so unfair. Several things things should impress you about this page. First, the number of talks to atheist organizations; second, the number of talks paid for by university biology departments; and third, Eugenie Scott’s willingness to travel. Accordingly, a friend of mine proposes the following motto for Scott: “I will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to prove that there is no controversy over Darwinism on Read More ›

Nobel Laureates urge rejection of intelligent design
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Lawrence Journal-World
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/sep/15/nobel_laureates_urge_rejection_intelligent_design/?breaking

TOPEKA — A group of 38 Nobel Laureates headed by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel have asked the Kansas State Board of Education to reject science standards that criticize evolution.

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Thanks to a loyal ID supporter, the fledgling corporation conceived on this blog earlier this week, namely, Darwinalia, has now entered the computer gaming industry. Darwinalia’s new game is titled “Panda-Monium.” To play it, go here. A more sophisticated commercial version will be available soon. [UPDATE: Paul Myers has just posted at The Panda’s Thumb a short note about Panda-Monium titled “I think we’re getting under someone’s skin” (go here). Presumably he means my skin. Get a life, Paul. No, I’m not upset with you and the members of your select little club. I’m laughing at you. And I will continue to laugh at you.]

ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND
Royal Society Alert 390
8 September, 2005

INTELLIGENT DESIGN?
Comment by Royal Society Education Manager, Peter Spratt, Peter.Spratt@rsnz.org
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In 1906 a devastating earthquake hit San Francisco. The mayor at that time was one E.E. Schmitz. Mayor Schmitz issued the following proclamation:

According to Hector Avalos: “It’s becoming increasingly clear to some of us that Iowa State University is being marketed as an intelligent design research center.” So, on the one hand, Eugenie Scott et al. tell ID theorists and researchers to get busy, do the work and get it through the peer-review process. But now we learn that the very idea of a ID research, much less an ID research center, is out-of-bounds. Heads I win, tails you lose. Read More ›

My friend and colleague John Mark Reynolds at Biola University has just published a piece in Touchstone titled “Séances & Science: The Lessons of the Spiritualist Challenge to Darwinism” (go here). The piece is meant as a warning to the ID movement not to repeat mistakes of the past. Read More ›

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