Posted on 01/05/2005 8:26:58 AM PST by metacognative
------------------------------------------------------------------------ SEATTLE, JAN. 4 — The misreporting of the evolution issue is the focus for the new blog Evolution News & Views, www.evolutionnews.org, maintained by Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture (CSC).
“The legacy media seem to have rediscovered the evolution controversy with the recent lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Georgia,” says Rob Crowther, CSC director of communications. “The problem is that many reporters are sadly uninformed about the issue which has resulted in much of the news coverage being sloppy, inaccurate, and often overtly biased.
“There’s nobody else in the blogosphere right now holding the media accountable for how the debate over evolution is reported,” added Crowther. “We think that Evolution News & Views will do just that.”
According to the CSC, stereotypes and caricatures that would never be tolerated in stories about minorities are routinely offered up as “facts” in stories about scientists who are skeptical of Darwin’s theory.
“For too many reporters, the controversy over evolution is simply a rehash of the old movie, "Inherit the Wind,” said John West, associate director of the CSC. “They continue to simplify this as a battle between stick-figure fundamentalists on one side and the enlightened champions of science on the other, when in reality there are serious debates amongst scientists. This isn’t the old trope of religion vs. science; this is science vs. science.”
The CSC reports that many in the media seem determined to offer up their own rather than report objectively about this issue. Other reporters are simply careless and report half-truths and distortions without ever bothering to check them out.
“We’re going to use this blog inform, analyze, and expose how the news media cover --and fail to cover-- the scientific controversy over Darwinian evolution,” said Crowther. “We not only plan to offer critiques and corrections to major news stories, we will also offer behind-the-scenes glimpses at journalists and how they operate when they report on this issue.”
Additionally, Evolution News & Views will link to other articles, sites, and blogs of interest related to the ongoing debate over how to teach evolution, and the wider discussion of the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design.
The discovery institute isn't modern science. It's modern religion with about as much believability as Jim Jones.
FYI ping
Yeah, like the ridiculous "fact" of upward organization of atoms.
What religious aspects are you referring to...specifically?
"Anything that has to repeatedly refer to itself as "science" is most likely anything but science."
Well, as a bit of a thermodynamicist (mechanical enginer), there are some interesting things about intelligent design that can be discussed scientifically. However, the idea that "evolution doesn't happen" is simply ludicrous.
In their own words, the CSC "supports research by scientists and other scholars developing the scientific theory known as intelligent design"
Tell me when ID becomes a real scientific theory instead of an untested hypothesis and maybe I'll give these guys some credibility.
Don't know. But I have a hard time believing the people who have brought us the decades-long textbook hoaxes such as Haeckel's embryos and the peppered moths, among others. There seems to be an agenda at here that is more important than the truth.
In the movie, "Contact", Jodie Foster infers [scientifically] intelligence from a code. What do you infer from DNA?
No one argues evolution doesn't happen. It's the new species origination that is in real doubt.
As mathematician Dr. David Berlinski said 12/19/97 on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s Firing Line show on PBS:
"Darwin's theory of evolution [macro - not micro evolution] is the last of the great 19th century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudianism and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx, and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in that dark dungeon where disgarded gods gather."
I infer that these proteins by random chance over thousands of years finally connected in the right sequence at the same time in order to produce all the foundational information to guide the further production of a living cell. How does this happen despite the overwhelming probability (1 in a trillion trillion trillion, etc) against? I dunno. Its evolution, it doesn't need an answer. /sarcasm
Good point... LoL..
You had to use one of the worst movies ever made, didn't you? :)
From DNA I infer that certain combinations of nucleotides produce life that can survive on this planet, while others don't. But this still leaves ID as being merely an attack on the theory of evolution (that's fine with me, theories need to be challenged) rather than being a competing scientific theory of its own.
Smearing evolution theory by touting Haeckel or Piltdown is comparable to smearing good Christians by bringing up Jim Jones. Which is why I did it.
At least the "textbook hoaxes" didn't murder a few hundred people as fundamentalist preacher Jones did.
Next we can bring up Jim and Tammy Baker and fraud.
Looks like evolution is losing credibility.
It's about time the farce of evolution is exposed. Evolutionists are on the defensive now. It's always amusing to see them try to defend and explain the ludicrous - evolution! :)
Okay, the widespread misunderstanding of just what it is that the Theory of Evolution actually posits is making me think we just need to rename it.
The theory of Evolution doesn't have anything to do with how life began. It's just plain not part of the theory. The evolutionary hypothesis assumes that life exists. It describes how organisms develop and change, not how they are created.
Intelligent Design Theories (note that there are many, the concept of ID by itself is too broad to be considered a theory) can be interesting. Some of them are even somewhat scientific, in that they make some specific predictions (often very difficult to test, but predictions nonetheless), but, for the most part, they don't even conflict with evolutionary theory! They are mostly focused on the origin of life, usually focusing on an argument or "irreducable complexity" at some basic level. A select few ID theories actually do contradict evolution, but the typical test is the "absence of transitional species in the fossil record", which is next to impossible to show with our current knowledge.
Yeah, like environmentalist science...
and neo darwinian science!
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