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Evolution

University of Iowa Petition to Unseat Intelligent Design

From: “Biosciences” [biosciences @mail.medicine.uiowa.edu]
To: [select U of Iowa faculty — ID proponents were bypassed]

Dear colleagues:

The issue of “Intelligent Design” has received a great deal of attention in recent months. Local interest in this issue spawned a recent panel discussion “Intelligent Design: in your classroom?” sponsored by the student group, U of I Freethinkers. The substantial attendance and lively discussion at this event indicates a strong interest by the University of Iowa community in this important topic. Read More ›

Recent forum on ID at University of Iowa

Here are two short articles from the Iowa State Daily. One was from just before the forum and the other just after. http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/2005/10/19/News/U.Of-I.Joins.Regent.Institutions.In.Intelligent.Design.Discussion-1106604.shtml http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/2005/10/21/News/Iowa-Continues.Intelligent.Design.Discussion-1106703.shtml

“Nature’s design and engineering is truly inspirational”

In another article (http://www.physorg.com/news8333.html), one reads: “It’s amazing that butterflies have evolved such sophisticated design features which can so exquisitely manipulate light and colour. Nature’s design and engineering is truly inspirational.”

Butterfly wings work like LEDs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4443854.stm

When scientists developed an efficient device for emitting light, they hadn’t realised butterflies have been using the same method for 30 million years. Read More ›

“Science Friction” in Australia

Science friction: God’s defenders target 3000 schools
By Linda Doherty and Deborah Smith

November 14, 2005

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/11/13/1131816809073.html

Up to 3000 schools have been targeted in a DVD blitz aimed at challenging Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in favour of an “intelligent designer”. Read More ›

Nothing Personal, We Just Don’t Like ID

UI faculty sign on against intelligent design in science
By William Dillon, Staff Writer

11/16/2005

http://www.zwire.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=15586126&BRD=2700&PAG=461&dept_id=554314&rfi=6

More than 150 faculty members at the University of Iowa have signed a statement denouncing the use of intelligent design in science. Read More ›

Stephen Jay Gould’s Contempt for the John Templeton Foundation

Yesterday Charles Harper issued a press release taking to task Daniel Golden for his piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that the John Templeton Foundation has been a patron or sponsor of Intelligent Design (for the press release, go here). In that press release, Harper ritualistically underscored just how much money and effort the John Templeton Foundation has spent on critiquing ID. In particular, he noted that Read More ›

Noam Chomsky — If your taste for iconoclasm extends only so far

The following conflation of intelligent design and global warming is unworthy of Chomsky the scholar (as opposed to Chomsky the activist). Chomsky uncritically takes as the definition of ID what he has read in the popular press. It might interest readers of this blog to know that I hold in my files a note (dated February 26, 1997) from Chomsky on MIT stationery commeting favorably on one of my early papers on information and ID (namely, “Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information” — which ultimately became chapters 3 and 4 of No Free Lunch). Chomsky in his private moments has in fact been a critic of evolutionary theory, a fact reflected in Daniel Dennett’s criticisms of Chomsky in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Evolution, ecology and `malignant design’

Noam Chomsky says the Bush administration’s hostility toward scientific inquiry puts the world at risk of global-warming disaster

NOAM CHOMSKY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Nov. 13, 2005

President George W. Bush favours teaching both evolution and “intelligent design” in schools, “so people can know what the debate is about.”

To proponents, intelligent design is the notion that the universe is too complex to have developed without a nudge from a higher power than evolution or natural selection. Read More ›

Statement from the John Templeton Foundation

Intelligent Design: Official statement on false and misleading information published in the Wall Street Journal today.*

By Charles L. Harper, Jr., Senior Vice President, John Templeton Foundation.

*[Monday November 14th, 2005. Article by Daniel Golden:
At Some Colleges, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold.]

Today the WSJ ran a front page story mentioning the John Templeton Foundation in a way suggesting that the Foundation has been a concerted patron and sponsor of the so-called Intelligent Design (“ID”) position (such as is associated with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and the writers Philip Johnson, William Dembski, Michael Behe and others). This is false information. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The John Templeton Foundation has provided tens of millions of dollars in support to research academics who are critical of the anti-evolution ID position. Any careful and factual analysis of actual events will find that the John Templeton Foundation has been in fact the chief sponsor of university courses, lectures and academic research which variously have argued against the anti-evolution “ID” position. It is scandalous for a distinguished paper to misinform the public in this way. Read More ›

Does ID Heckle Evolution?

Darwinian Struggle At Some Colleges, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold ‘Intelligent Design’ Doctrine Leaves Room for Creator; In Iowa, Science on Defense; A Professor Turns Heckler By DANIEL GOLDEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 14, 2005; Page A1 http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/SB113193754738896194-lMyQjAxMDE1MzExNDkxMzQ3Wj.html