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Intelligent Design

Cashing in on ID

It’s gratifying to see that ID is helping people make careers and bring home the bacon. Robert Pennock is happily ensconced at Michigan State University for criticizing ID. Barbara Forrest was promoted to full professor at South Eastern Louisiana State University for her work debunking ID. And most recently Niall Shanks moved from East Tennessee State University to an endowed chair at Wichita State University so that he can provide a counterblast to ID in Kansas (go here for the announcement of Shanks’s appointment — I understand that this appointment involved a hefty pay increase). Meanwhile, ID supporters are not just having a hard time getting academic jobs but even getting their PhDs (e.g., the case of Bryan Leonard).

Macroevolution: One Long Argument from Ignorance

The charge is often made that ID constitutes an argument from ignorance (a charge I’ve shown to be false here). But a case can be made that conventional evolutionary theory, insofar as it tries to explain macroevolutionary changes, itself constitutes an argument from ignorance. In Gary Jason’s book Critical Thinking (p. 133), he characterizes the argument from ignorance as follows: Read More ›

You naive, stupid Americans! — With love and best wishes, Eugenie Scott

On May 21st, I wrote an item on this blog titled “Sorry, kids, but you’re just too stupid” (go here), which described one rationale by Darwinists to exclude the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools, namely, kids are too stupid to understand the issues raised by evolutionary theory so that bringing up intelligent design will only confuse them further. I find this argument outrageous because (1) evolution, with regard to its basic mechanisms, is not rocket science — it is readily grasped; (2) kids rise to the occasion when they are challenged– the problem with so much of contemporary education is that it is dummied down and boring. Read More ›

ID and Neuroscience

My good friend and colleague Jeffrey Schwartz (along with Mario Beauregard and Henry Stapp) has just published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society that challenges the materialism endemic to so much of contemporary neuroscience. By contrast, it argues for the irreducibility of mind (and therefore intelligence) to material mechanisms. Read More ›

Hard left atheist/agnostic espousing ID

Although it may be morally offensive to consider that we may be some ET High School science project gone awry, it would explain a lot. . . . So count us among those who hold that the idea of “intelligent design” should be included in the scholastic curriculum — but without any prejudicial mention of who or what that intelligence might be. MORE

Discovery Institute Takes up the Case of Bryan Leonard

Discovery Institute Files Public Records Request in OSU Evolution Academic Freedom Case

SEATTLE – Discovery Institute has filed a public records request with the Ohio State University (OSU) seeking all documents related to Darwinist attacks on OSU doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. The request was submitted under the Ohio Public Records Act. Read More ›