This question was posed in one of the earlier threads on this blog. According to the following article, “Scott describes herself as atheist but does not discount the importance of spirituality.” Scott never asked the San Francisco Chronicle to retract this designation of atheism.

EUGENIE SCOTT
Berkeley scientist leads fight to stop teaching of creationism
Monica Lam, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, February 7, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/07/EB75914.DTL

One morning in September, Eugenie Scott of Berkeley got a long-distance phone call from an alarmed parent in Cobb County, Ga. The board of education there was considering allowing creationism to be taught side-by-side with evolution as an alternative, scientific theory on human origins. Read More ›

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5007508

[From a colleague:] “Here’s a more complete summary of the Pope’s Wednesday audience. Note the clear emphasis on knowledge of God through reason prior to revelation: “Even before discovering the God who reveals himself in the history of a people, there is a cosmic revelation, open to all, offered to the whole of humanity by the Creator.” That view is both biblical and an important theme in the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato as synthesized by Thomas Aquinas. The Pope’s point becomes even clearer when he lays aside the prepared text and speaks extemporaneously to the assembled pilgrims — including Cardinal Schönborn, who was present.” Read More ›

Discovery Institute Welcomes Pope’s Embrace of “Intelligent Project”

Seattle – Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman hailed an impromptu statement Wednesday by Pope Benedict XVI embracing the “intelligent project” that lies behind nature. “Fooled by atheism,” the Pope said, many people today “think, and try to demonstrate, that everything is without direction and order…”

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[From a colleague:] The way a scientific theory gets empirically established is not by showing that the evidence requires that precise theory. That is an impossible task–there are always infinitely many theories that fit the data. Rather, it gets established through showing that the evidence discredits the main alternative theories but does not discredit this theory. Read More ›

Evolution suffers Kansas setback The US state of Kansas has approved science standards for public schools that cast doubt on evolution. The Board of Education’s vote, expected for months, approved the new language criticising evolution by 6-4. Proponents of the change argue they are trying to expose students to legitimate scientific questions about evolution. The Kansas decision came as voters in Pennsylvania replaced all eight school board members who approved a similar policy in some of the state’s schools. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4419796.stm

Pennsylvania Voters Oust School Board That Backed Intelligent Design 11-09-2005 12:39 AM By MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press Writer DOVER, Pa. — Voters came down hard Tuesday on school board members who backed a statement on intelligent design being read in biology class, ousting eight Republicans and replacing them with Democrats who want the concept stripped from the science curriculum. http://phoenix.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D8DOQFOO3

Intelligent design’s place at the table: Intelligent design is the scientific pursuit of understanding patterns in nature, its proponents say. By Julia C. Keller . . . . That the complexity of nature argues for a designer is not a revolutionary idea, said Ronald Numbers, a historian of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Numbers added that for the general public, the concept of God’s design in nature is a no-brainer. “Ninety percent of Americans are theists. They’re able to draw on a huge reservoir in a popular belief of a designer God,” he said. . . . [http://www.stnews.org/guide-2140.htm]

Paul Nelson will be giving a seminar on ID at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (UAG) on Friday the 18th of this month:

This website was down for a while and is now back up: http://www.biola.edu/id.

The Epicurean trilemma (see Hume’s Dialogues) tries to reconcile: (1) God is good, (2) God is all-powerful, (3) Evil exists. Ian Bibby just sent me this Darwinian trilemma: Science cannot test the proposition that biological features are designed. Darwinism explains the appearance of design in biology not as actual design but as the product of natural selection and random variation. Darwinism is science.

As you read this riff on Kuhn, ask yourself why ID should or shouldn’t fit into this characterization of the scientific enterprise: http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/11/7/10/1.

The first mention of the Vise Strategy appeared on this blog here. I devised the Vise Strategy to aid the Thomas More Law Center in interrogating the ACLU’s expert witnesses in the Dover Trial. Since all witnesses in that trial have now been called (all that remains is for Judge Jones to render his verdict), I am making available the full-blown Vise Strategy here.

[As one of my colleagues has put it:] “The Grantsburg school board deserves congratulations. Finally, a local school district has adopted the kind of policy we’ve all been recommending for so long. This policy appears to be bullet-proof from a legal perspective. It will be interesting to see how the ACLU/NCSE/Americans United crowd will respond to this policy. It will also be interesting to see how –or if– the legacy media will cover this victory for quality science education.”

‘Teaching the controversy’ in Wisconsin
By Lawrence Hardy
http://www.asbj.com

It will be deer season soon in Northern Wisconsin.

Winter will come, the nights will grow long, and the ice-fishing shacks will appear like matchboxes on the frozen glacial lakes.

The forests that teem with wildlife — sandhill cranes and eagles, grouse and ospreys, thousands of ducks and geese — will seem quieter now that the brief summer is over.

But in the town of Grantsburg, five miles from the winding St. Croix River and the Minnesota border, the turmoil isn’t over, even though school officials say they very much want it to be.

“It’s done. I don’t have anything more to say,” says Cindy Jensen, a board member for the 1,000-student Grantsburg Schools. “Hopefully, the waters are calmer now.”

It’s been almost a year since the school board approved a curriculum that will require science teachers to ask students to think critically about evolution — to “teach the controversy,” as the board puts it.

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http://www.arn.org/mm/mm_movies.htm