Since 1999, Kansas has now swung four times on the question of science standards and whether evolutionary theory should be properly scrutinized or swallowed whole. Below is the latest. This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a new counterculture, with high school, college, and university students taking the lead, will overturn the Darwinian status quo.

Evolution Opponents Lose in Kansas Primary
By John Hanna
Associated Press
posted: 02 August 2006
09:56 am ET

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.   Read More ›

Here is an email I received from a troll just after I started posting Jim Downard’s asinine emails to me. Presumably the troll wanted me to post the email as is. I am posting it, but without incriminating a prominent anti-ID proponent, whose career I was supposed to place in jeopardy, but which would have backfired on me. Note that I emailed “Concerned Scientist” twice (never a reply):

Email 1 (7.12.06): “I’m not sure what to believe. In this age of computers and hard drives it makes no sense to me that you didn’t keep a back-up of your project. Absent that, you need to reconstruct it and show it to me before we can take a next step. –WmAD”

Email 2 (7.14.06): “Unless I hear back from you in short order with some solid evidence that the story you gave below is true (e.g., transcript with “F” for course from [snip–prominent anti-ID proponent], I’m going to conclude that you are a troll and will use your letter any way I see fit. –WmAD”

Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:32:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Concerned Scientist < concernedscientist23@yahoo.com>
Subject: Supression of an ID Experiment
To: [snip]@designinference.com

Dr. Dembski,

I recently graduated from the University of [snip],
with a major in computer science and a minor
in economics.  I originally planned to minor in
biology, and it is the disgraceful events that led me
to change this that I wish to share with you.  The
events I describe here took place between the early
fall of 2004 and fall of 2005, however I had feared
repercussions from the University if I had stepped
forward.  I have now graduated and been accepted into
a graduate program in another state, so I have come up
with the courage to speak. Read More ›

From the Lockheed Martin newsletter at http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/10051.pdf:    

More student activism to unmask evolutionary pretensions:  MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/evolutionquestions XANGA: http://www.xanga.com/evolutionquestions LIVEJOURNAL: http://evoquestions.livejournal.com BLOGSPOT: http://www.evolutionquestions.blogspot.com

With all the talk about Jerry Coyne lately, I just had to dig up this oldie but goodie from Phil Johnson.  I think we should feel sorry for Jerry Coyne. His own work has contributed to the destruction of Darwinism, and he seems to be suffering from a condition I call metaphysical panic, resulting from the shaking of a worldview he had always assumed to be unchallengeable. Persons suffering from metaphysical panic tend to lash out in impotent rage while making wildly illogical arguments. I encounter this sad condition regularly. MORE  

This article (http://www.the-scientist.com/article/daily/23793) presents the ongoing controversy over whether an evolutionist presented “adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct” . . .  in his grant proposal!

I’ve reported on this blog Coyne’s NewRepublic review of Coulter (go here) and Hotz’s LATimes review of Quammen, Brockman, an Shermer (go here). There’s an interesting contradiction between the two reviews. See if you can catch it. Compare Jerry Coyne’s insistence that  The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it’s wrong, but because she doesn’t like it–it doesn’t accord with how she thinks the world should be. That’s because she feels, along with many Americans, that “Darwin’s theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality.” What’s so sad–not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole–is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of Read More ›

[From a colleague in the UK:] The current issue of the British Ecological Society Bulletin has a special feature on Gaia. It appears that James Lovelock was made an Honorary Member of the B.E.S. in 2005, and the Gaia hypothesis is his “most significant contribution to ecology”. Apparently, the Gaia hypothesis posits that the earth’s ecosystem has improbable stability, and this is increasingly being accepted as a fact by ecologists. In particular it points to processes like these: animals secrete nitrogenous waste as urea rather than nitrogen to help other species use the waste product; phytoplankton in the oceans secrete dimethysulphide, a costly gas which is important for cloud formation; the balance of photosynthesis releasing oxygen and taking in carbon Read More ›

In the latest New Republic Online, the irrepressible Jerry Coyne keeps the insults against ID coming: . . . [O]ne has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book’s acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the “complex ideas” of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department’s website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the “giants” of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology Read More ›

I would argue that, indeed, they are. In a previous UD thread, Tom English made the following comment: I have seen a number of brilliant and highly educated people do abysmally stupid things when they stepped outside their domains of expertise. Computer scientists make abysmal biologists. Journalists make abysmal biologists. Philosophers make abysmal biologists. Theologians make abysmal biologists. Mathematicians make abysmal biologists. Physicists make abysmal biologists. I would argue the following: Darwinian theorists do foolish things when they step outside their domain of expertise. They are generally not competent mathematicians, computer scientists, chemists, philosophers, theologians, or physicists. Yet, they make sweeping claims of incontrovertible fact that impinge upon all these disciplines, and then expect immunity from challenges from those with Read More ›

John Rennie, the chief editor at SCIAM, continues to do his cause more harm than good. All his naysaying against ID has to give the dispassionate observer pause whether there might not be something to it after all. Here is his latest: http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=i_d_is_bad_science_on_its_own_terms&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1.

As the debate over how to teach evolution continues, two new radio commercials promoting www.standupforscience.com and the online petition to “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” will air this weekend across Kansas. One ad features molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, explaining that “it is imperative to understand both the evidence for and against a scientific theory — as a scientist, I am standing up for science education policies that require students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, as well as the scientific evidence that challenges it.” The second commercial features Kansas public school science teacher Jill Gonzalez Bravo who was also recently interviewed for the ID The Future Podcast about her Read More ›

Bill Dembski asked me to post my comments in a recent discussion elsewhere, regarding intelligent design (ID) as we currently understand it.

Phil Johnson, the lawyer who put ID on the map, is currently seeking more input from the arts community (he calls it Wedge II).

I agree that the ID debate will develop along more useful lines when more people from the arts participate.

Artsies (those who are not crazy) understand some aspects of intelligent original design better than most people.

An original design must be evaluated under actual, not hypothetical conditions.

Fundamental fact: All actual features of any given design exclude all other possible features.

Choices must be made. There is no perfect design, only optimum design.

Thus any rubberneck can point to a feature and say that it doesn’t do everything conceivable. But “everything conceivable” is never the goal of a design.

That is why, years ago, while researching the issues around ID, I quickly blew off the “God woun’t’a dun it dat way” approach of the churchgoing scientists who wring their hands over the menace of ID.

Coming as I do from an English language and literature background, I am familiar with the idea of creating a “world” out of whole cloth.

One always works within constraints. Even Shakespeare, the greatest of English-language dramatists, worked within constraints.

For example, Hamlet has defects as a play – but it is easy to stage.

King Lear is a more sublime play than Hamlet – but it is difficult to stage.

Julius Caesar is great for high school drama classes because of the large number of small parts and easily detachable scenes, plus an emotional range that is not too embarrassing or incomprehensible for teenage boys.

Now watch for some egghead to come along and say “A REAL dramatist wouldn’t have made those errors.”

Errors? What errors?

Read More ›

The sign of erudition these days is the ability to craft culturally sophisticated terms of abuse. I want to urge others on this thread to list their favorite erudite term(s) of abuse for ID. July 30, 2006 SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW Laws of nature A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin sparked a scientific revolution. Now that revolution has become a culture war. But does the concept of intelligent design have validity as an alternative to evolution? Three new books look beyond the rhetoric.   By Robert Lee Hotz The Reluctant Mr. Darwin An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution David Quammen Atlas Books/W.W. Norton: 304 pp., $22.95 Intelligent Thought Science Versus the Read More ›

Check out this forthcoming book, in which I understand that our very own Sal Cordova is featured. Note especially Sam Harris’s blurb — with people like Harris expressing such foreboding, one has to wonder how close we are to seeing the Darwinian house of cards collapse under the weight of its self-delusion. 

Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement (Hardcover)
by Lauren Sandler

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670037915/sr=8-1/qid=1152910212/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3624936-6342425?redirect=true&ie=UTF8

Book Description
There’s a new youth movement afoot in this country. It’s a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it’s taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it’s got passion, music, and anti-authority posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God. So what does it mean when today’s youth counterculture has a mindset more akin to Jerry Falwell’s than Abbie Hoffman’s?

In RIGHTEOUS: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, Lauren Sandler, a dynamic young journalist, reports from this junction of Evangelicalism and youth culture, traveling across the country to investigate the alternative Christian explosion. Using the grassroots modus operandi of the 1960s, these religious kids – part of the “Disciple Generation” as Sandler calls it – turn an antiauthoritarian sneer toward liberalism, feminism, pacifism, and every other hallmark of that era’s counterculture. And they’re engaging their peers with startling success, fusing pop culture, politics, and religion as they preach from the pulpit of the skate park, bar, and rock concert. Secular, liberal, and practically the embodiment of everything Evangelicalism deems unholy, Sandler travels with skateboard missionaries, hangs out with the tattooed members of a postpunk Seattle megachurch that has evolved into a self-sufficient community, camps out with a rock’n’roll antiabortion group, and gets to know the rap preachers who are merging hip-hop’s love of money with old-fashioned bible-beating fundamentalism. Much more than a mere observer, she connects with these young people on an intimate level, and the candor with which they reveal themselves to her is truly astonishing.

Illuminating, often troubling, and unapologetically frank, RIGHTEOUS introduces a bold new voice into the ongoing debate over religion in American life. And it is the first in-depth front-line exploration of the country’s new moral majority – dressed up in punk-rock garb – and what its influence could mean for the future of America.

BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise:

“Lauren Sandler obliterates the naïve and complacent hope that keeps most secularists and religious moderates sleeping peacefully each night-the hope that, in 21st century America, the young know better than to adopt the lunatic religious certainties of a prior age. The young do not know better. In their schools, skate-parks, rock concerts, and in the ranks of our nation’s military, our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book.”
— Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation Read More ›