Free Republic

A major three-part series in The New York Times, running August 21-23, 2005, was devoted to the ongoing evolution/creationism struggle in the political, the scientific, and the religious sphere. Accompanying the series in addition were a William Safire "On Language" column investigating the etymology of "intelligent design" and "neo-creo" and a marvelous editorial column by Verlyn Klinkenborg on deep time and evolution. (In a further acknowledgement of the importance of the issue, the Times's website now has a special section devoted to its evolution coverage.) Overall, despite a number of minor errors, the series succeeded in portraying "intelligent design" as...

Catching up on back news this past few days — I was out of the country for the first two weeks of August — I caught President Bush's endorsement of teaching Intelligent Design in public school science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," President Bush told a reporter August 2, "so people can understand what the debate is all about." This is Bush at his muddle-headed worst, conferring all the authority of the presidency on the teaching of pseudoscience in science classes. Why stop with Intelligent Design (the theory that life on earth has developed by a series...

Paleoanthropology: Start Over?   08/22/2005     The September issue of National Geographic, featuring the African continent, has arrived in homes.  On page 1, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote about the quest for early man, asking, “Are we looking for bones in all the right places?”  The bulk of the article describes the “messy” story of human origins.  It used to be clean-cut, he said, but no longer: Scientists are good at finding logical patterns and turning data into a coherent narrative.  But the study of human origins is tricky: The bones tell a complicated story.  The cast of...

Intelligent design - coming to a school near you   David Jensen says the evolutionists' perspective relies on unproven scientific facts and theories. Picture / Greg Bowker   27.08.05   By Chris Barton   Science teachers say it has no place in the classroom. Christian educators say children shouldn't be denied alternative views. Science teachers retaliate that it's not science, it's religion behind a mask and they don't want a bar of it. Christian educators argue they can teach it alongside traditional science, so what are science teachers so afraid of? Science teachers' blood begins to boil. "It's not...

Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Four experts with very different views weigh in on the underlying question. By COMPILED BY DAVID VAN BIEMA >FRANCIS COLLINS Director, National Human Genome Research Institute I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified. If God, who is all powerful...

My mother says she is a Darwinist. I’m not sure of all the things that could or should imply. I take it to mean the she does not believe that the Cosmos and all that it contains is the result of the will of a Supreme Being. Nature just exists and that is all there is to it. Asking what is the purpose of human existence is a nonsense question. It has no meaning. As we have no conscious origin, we have no conscious destination. Hence no purpose. This idea is quite troubling to many humans as we are quite...

Hi! I'm new here and this is my first post here so I'm starting "slow". My topic is "intellegent design" as it relates to evolution. A topic which has appeared in the news recently in the wake of the President's commented that it should be taught in public schools. I have posted on this topic in the Hannity boards and have found some of misunderstanding there (at least on the part of a number of forumites) as to what intelligent design is and what its scientific merits are. The short, short version is that intelligent design is not scientific (in...

We've seen the little symbols on the backs of cars: The "Jesus fish" and the "Darwin fish." The Jesus fish eating the Darwin fish. The Darwin fish eating the Jesus fish. It makes for entertainment while commuting, but this front of the culture wars won't be won or lost on the freeway. The creationists realized that they were not getting enough traction in their bumper- sticker campaign against the theory of evolution. So biblical literalists have come up with a new strategy: leave the word "God" out of the public argument, and come up with one that sounds more scientific....

Bob Davidson is a scientist — a doctor, and for 28 years a nephrology professor at the University of Washington medical school. He's also a devout Christian who believes we're here because of God. It was these twin devotions to science and religion that first attracted him to Seattle's Discovery Institute. That's the think tank that this summer has pushed "intelligent design" — a replacement theory for evolution — all the way to the lips of President Bush and into the national conversation. Davidson says he was seeking a place where people "believe in a Creator and also believe in...

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox.

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox. Such was the case a few columns ago when I broached the subject of Intelligent Design (ID) after President Bush indicated his receptiveness to ID theory being taught alongside evolution in the public schools. The hostile e-mailers pointed out what a consummate idiot and criminal trespasser I was for treading on their real estate. They demanded I stick to law and politics, not because I know much more...

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being? The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain. Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher...

Compared with fields like genetics and neuroscience and cosmology, botany comes up a bit short in the charisma department. But when scientists announced last week that they had figured out how plants grow, one had to take note, not only because of the cleverness required to crack a puzzle that dates to 1885, but because of what it says about controversy and certainty in science -- and about the evolution debate. In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about...

Quick: Define miosis and mitosis. Explain mitochondrion and chloroplast. Now briefly, what's RNA? The biology teachers assembled at the University of Colorado last week for a seminar on teaching evolution know most Americans are clueless about basic science. They find our ignorance exasperating. But it also explains a lot. With most people content with being scientifically illiterate, it's no wonder so many believe intelligent design is a scientific theory. It unequivocally is not. It's a religious belief, a political issue or an abomination destined to cripple Americans in global scientific achievement, depending on your point of view. But it is...

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox. Such was the case a few columns ago when I broached the subject of Intelligent Design (ID) after President Bush indicated his receptiveness to ID theory being taught alongside evolution in the public schools. The hostile e-mailers pointed out what a consummate idiot and criminal trespasser I was for treading on their real estate. They demanded I stick to law and politics, not because I know much more...

By SEATTLE - When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars. After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing...

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure of which every American can legitimately feel a sense of personal ownership. Considering this, I'd imagine widespread displeasure as more Americans become aware that senior scientists at the publicly funded Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have reportedly been creating a "hostile work environment" for one of their colleagues merely because he published a controversial idea in a biology journal. The controversial idea is Intelligent Design, the scientific critique of neo-Darwinism. The persecuted Smithsonian scientist is Richard von Sternberg, the holder of two PhDs in biology (one in theoretical biology, the other in...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution. Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design. "I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said. Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a...

On August 1, 2005, a group of reporters from Texas met with President Bush in the Roosevelt room for a roundtable interview. The President’s remarks suggest that he believes that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught so that “people are exposed to different schools of thought.” There have been so many articles since his remarks that it’s useful to read the relevant portion of published interview: “Q: I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think...

President Bush last week spoke three sentences in response to a Texas reporter's question on the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design." In doing so, he lit a match under a powder keg. "Christian" conservatives rejoiced. Scientists and liberals recoiled. "Intelligent design" suggests that creation is too complicated to have occurred through natural selection. Its advocates distance themselves from "creation science," but similarities abound. The clash of science, belief and culture is not new. When Copernicus replaced Ptolemy's Earth-centered universe with the solar system, he dedicated De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium to Pope Paul III and made clear that his motive...