This course is focused primarily on the creation/evolution controversy with ID in the backdrop. It has been around for a while.
It is interesting that the course relies heavily on internet resources. This makes sense in that it can take a long time for textbooks to be published. I expect many ID courses in the future to rely heavily on the internet.
Bill Dembski mentions the importance of the internet in the advance of ID:
Darwinism’s Myth of Victory Past — from the introduction to Uncommon Dissent.
A scene in the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup illustrates this myth. Groucho Marx, president of Freedonia, presides over a meeting of the cabinet. The following exchange ensues between Groucho and one of Freedonia’s ministers:
Groucho: “And now, members of the Cabinet, we’ll take up old business.”
Minister: “I wish to discuss the Tariff!”
Groucho: “Sit down, that’s new business! No old business? Very well — then we’ll take up new business”
Minister: “Now about that Tariff…”
Groucho: “Too late — that’s old business already!”
This exchange epitomizes Darwinism’s handling of criticism. When a valid criticism of Darwinism is first proposed, it is dismissed without an adequate response, either on some technicality or with some irrelevancy or by simply being ignored. As time passes, people forget that Darwinists never adequately met the criticism. But Darwinism is still ruling the roost. Since the criticism failed to dislodge Darwinism, the criticism itself must have been discredited or refuted somewhere. Thereafter the criticism becomes known as “that discredited criticism that was refuted a long time ago.” And, after that, even to raise the criticism betrays an outdated conception of evolutionary theory. In this way, the criticism, though entirely valid, simply vanishes into oblivion. (At least that’s how things have been in the past. That’s now changing with the Internet and an emerging intellectual community that refuses to be cowed by Darwinist bullying.)
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Michael Behe’s challenge to Darwinian evolution provides a recent case study in the myth of victory past. Certain biochemical systems are molecular machines of great sophistication and intricacy whose parts are each indispensable to the system’s function. Such systems are, as Behe characterizes them in his 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box, irreducibly complex. The biological community has no detailed, testable proposals for how irreducibly complex systems might have arisen by Darwinian means but only a variety of wishful speculations, a fact admitted by biologists like James Shapiro and Franklin Harold, who have no “creationist” or “intelligent design” agenda. Nevertheless, it is routine among Darwinists to declare that Behe’s ideas have been decisively refuted and even to provide references to the biological literature in which Behe’s ideas are supposed to have been refuted.
Senior Seminar on Evolution and Creation Spring 2006 and 2007
Here is my personal tally of Universities that have ID in some of their classroom content:
Secular Institutions:
Cornell
Knox College
University of Memphis (John Angus Campbell)
University of Alabama
Cal State Fullerton
University of Minnesota (Chris Macosko)
Akron (Dan Ely)
Iowa State University (Ingerbritzen)
Leheigh (Michael Behe)
University of Toronto
George Mason University
James Madison University
NVCC (Caroline Crocker)
Religiously Affiliated Institutions:
Biola (Paul Nelson)
New St. Andrews (Gordon Wilson)
Loma Linda (Timothy Standish)
Bryan College (presumably Kurt Wise)
Liberty University (Tim Brophy)
Patrick Henry College
Wheaton
There are probably more…the above may not have course listings explicitly saying, “IDâ€Â, but I know the professors and the content being taught. That’s 20 reported universities. I would not be surprised to see more as Bruce Alberts and friends are encouraging discussion.
I expect the number of universities involved to continue rising.
If anyone else is aware of other universities, please feel free to post!
Salvador