Intelligent Design

The Dover Area School District trial about the teaching of ID starts today, and you can expect a lot of press coverage concerning it. Yesterday evening, the BBC interviewed me and Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation the Secularization of Church and State regarding Dover (it was a telephone debate). Boston was following the script of the Secular Coalition for America to a tee: ID is biblical creationism with biblical references omitted (so what do you do with Plato, Aristotle, and Antony Flew?); ID has no presence in the scientific community (so what do you do with the recent peer-reviewed publications?); yeah, but 99.9% of publications reject ID (but just moment ago you said it was 100%); etc. Dealing Read More ›

Sad to say, the imperialist reactionaries against ID (e.g., ACLU and NCSE) have gotten their message out in China better than we have. See the recent report in the People’s Daily Online: http://english.people.com.cn/200509/24/eng20050924_210621.html.

MSNBC has an article titled “Why Scientists Dismiss ‘Intelligent Design'” (go here). In it, Ken Miller argues against ID, and specifically against my claim that undirected natural causes cannot generate specified complexity in biological systems. His argument focuses on the evolution of nylonase: Read More ›

SYNOPSIS: The ocean is a perilous environment for a soft-bodied creature like a sea snail, so nature gives it an advanced nanostructured armor system that is stiff and strong yet lightweight. It’s called a shell. Now MIT scientists show that nature is indeed an expert nanoengineer. For the paper go here: http://www.physorg.com/news6647.html. Imagine a world in which there is no more funding for evolutionary biologists because all the interesting work on evolution is being done by (bio)engineers.

Check out this article on ID from Sydney, Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-trouble-with-darwin/2005/09/23/1126982233685.html. Here’s an excerpt: Last month, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, gave intelligent design ministerial imprimatur, telling the National Press Club he thought parents and schools ought to have the opportunity – if they wished – for students to be exposed to intelligent design and taught about it.

My book Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology is now out in Spanish: Diseño Inteligente: Un Puente entre la Ciencia y la Teología. My good friend and colleague from Colombia, Daniel Andrés Díaz Pachón, is the translator (occasionally he posts on this blog).

From http://www.stephenjgould.org:

The purpose of this website is to urgently organize opposition to the forces of creationism and intelligent design by providing sound scientific refutation to the argument that God is the only alternative to random evolution.

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Thanks to our indefatigable programmers at Darwinalia Inc., the new and improved version of Panda-Monium is now out: go here.

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.

I’ve already adverted to the 38 Nobelists who decided to go after ID to discredit it before the Kansas State Board of Education (go here; and here for their amazingly candid letter). The questions you should be asking yourself are these:

• Why did Elie Wiesel (or whoever put him up to it) put so much energy into getting these Nobel winners to sign that letter? Read More ›

Peter Ward imagines he is offering a devastating argument against teaching ID by asking us to consider the pedagogical value of teaching a flat earth (“Advocates of Intelligent Design Would Dumb Down Students”). Question: Is it possible to teach Darwin’s Origin of Species without considering ID as Darwin’s proper foil and counterpart? Answer: NO. Question: Is it possible to teach Newtonian mechanics without considering the flat earth as Newton’s proper foil and counterpart? Answer: YES. Read More ›

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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http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/15/205441.php

Left to Right: Ellie Crystal, Jon Stewart, Edward Larson, William Dembski