Free Republic

A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound. “Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute. West said the group will start an information campaign over the Internet immediately and possibly start a radio campaign. He declined to say how much the center would spend. The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly-contested State Board of...

The Fish That Shoots Down Evolution This unusual fish uses a specialized system to blast insects out of the air. How could this evolve slowly over time when there is no survival advantage without the whole system working perfectly? by Mario Seiglie In Asia, Africa and Australia lives a remarkable creature, the archerfish, that shoots down its prey from the air above it with a burst of water. It uses its tongue and the top of its mouth to form a groove similar to a gun barrel. Then, by compressing its gills, it squirts water up to six feet with...

I have been speaking to diverse small groups about science and religion in the context of the ongoing national debate about the teaching of evolution in our public schools. The response to my talks has been almost uniformly positive. It would be useful for other physicists to do as I have been doing. My audiences have been service clubs such as Rotary, high-school and college students of science and science journalism, a school-based community event, a League of Women Voters chapter, a Unitarian church, and a microscopy club. They have ranged from a dozen to some 60 or 70 people....

Thirty years ago, the young Richard Dawkins set out to explain some new ideas in evolutionary biology to a wider audience. But he ended up restating Darwinian theory in such a broad and forceful way that his book has influenced specialists as well.  "Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" is a collection of essays about Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene" and its impact. [snip] The biologists have copious praise for Dawkins's work of synthesis, while the writers remark on his graceful and vivid style. It is quite surprising for anyone to be commended from such opposite...

Ann Coulter states in her book on page 201 - Darwin’s theory of evolution says life on Earth began with single-celled life forms, which evolved into multicelled life forms, which over countless aeons evolved into higher life forms, including man, all as the result of the chance process of random mutation followed by natural selection, without guidance or assistance from any intelligent entity like God of the Department of Agriculture. Which is to say, evolution I the eminently plausible theory that the human eye, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Ronal Reagan (among other things) all came into existence purely...

When the New York State Assembly's legislative session ended on June 23, 2006, Assembly Bill 8036 died in committee. If enacted, the bill would have required that "all pupils in grades kindergarten through twelve in all public schools in the state ... receive instruction in all aspects of the controversy surrounding evolution and the origins of man." A later provision specified that such instruction would include information about "intelligent design and information effectively challenging the theory of evolution." The bill was never expected to succeed; its sponsor, Assemblyman Daniel L. Hooker (R-District 127), was reported as explaining that his intention...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The earliest known hominid fossil, which dates to about 7 million years ago, is actually some kind of ape, according to an international team of researchers led by the University of Michigan. The finding, they say, suggests scientists should rethink whether we actually descended from apes resembling chimpanzees, which are considered our closest relatives. U-M anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues examined images and the original paper published on the discovery of the Toumaï cranium (TM 266) or Sahelanthropus tchadensis, as well as a computer reconstruction of the skull. Two other colleagues were actually able to examine the skull,...

A majority of adults in the United States support the views of creationism, according to a poll by Gallup released by CNN and USA Today. 53 per cent of respondents say God created human beings in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.Conversely, 31 per cent of respondents believe human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life with God guiding this process, while 13 per cent think God had no part in the development of man.Charles Darwin’s "The Origin of Species" was first published in 1859. The book...

A new Gallup survey asks the question: Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings: Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life and God guided this process; human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life, but God had no part in this process, or God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it? And the poll results are: Evolved, God guided: 31% Evolved, God had no part: 12% God created exactly as Bible...

TAMPA - When the Pinellas County school district's science supervisor, Bob Orlopp, met with his science teachers before the school year began, he made sure they had one thing clear: Intelligent design is not science. Three days later, on Aug. 1, President Bush endorsed intelligent design -- the view that life is too complex to have happened by chance -- as a supplement to evolution that should be taught in school.

Why must intelligent design be stopped? Because this—God forbid—could be the moment when the theocratization of America makes a real advance. Will the Yankees win the pennant and the World Series? Don’t know, don’t really much care. It’s the same with religion: I just don’t get it. There may be a God or—I was raised Unitarian—an oversoul or divine oneness of creation, but I have no conviction one way or the other, nor any itch to shuck off my uncertainty in favor of either atheism or firm belief. I realize I’m a freak, entirely out of step with the mainstream....

In the Harrisburg federal courtroom, he sits in a pew behind the plaintiffs. At a different time in his life, he might have been on the opposite side of the courtroom, behind the people who want intelligent design in Dover Area High School science classes. That was back when he tithed money to creationists and believed Jews were going to hell. Now, he wears a tie depicting man evolving from his apelike ancestors. Dr. Burt Humburg shakes his head. An internal medicine resident at Penn State’s College of Medicine in Hershey, he talks about his personal evolution. And he talks...

A group of Nobel Prize winners should have done more homework before criticizing proposed science standards in Kansas, advocates of the guidelines said in a letter Thursday. Intelligent design advocates pushing new standards, which would expose students to more criticism of evolution, say the laureates' complaints are an attempt to suppress debate on the issue. The letter was signed by Bill Harris, a professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Greg Lassey, a former middle school science teacher, who helped draft the disputed language. "We all want good standards," the letter said. "However, demeaning rhetoric that does...

Professor focused on intelligent design as theology, not science, at Dover trial Friday. HARRISBURG — If there is a God, then he could have made the monkey and the human with similar genetic material. In the fifth day of Dover Area School District’s trial over intelligent design, John Haught, a Georgetown University theology professor, agreed that was true. So, the idea that “we came from some monkey or ape is conjecture at this point?” Dover’s lead attorney Richard Thompson asked Haught under cross-examination. Haught disagreed. In a First Amendment battle in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg, the Dover district...

It's amazing that these Darwinian Fundamentalists claim they're for science only to turn around and try to destroy any contrary theories or evidence. They're really getting desperate, the ID movement really has them rattled. **** September 30, 2005 It’s happening again: another scientist, another academic institution, another attempt to stifle freedom of thought. The “Darwinist inquisition,” as a Discovery Institute press release calls it, is as predictable as it is relentless. This time the setting is Iowa State University. One hundred twenty professors there have signed a statement denouncing the study of intelligent design and calling on all faculty members...

Oral arguments began this week on a lawsuit by 11 parents in Dover, Pa., seeking to reverse the local school board’s decision to teach “intelligent design” in the system’s biology classes. The school board argues that its decision is an issue of “academic freedom.” But the 11 parents reply that the “intelligent design” curriculum is a strategy by the Christian right to repackage “creationism” in order to smuggle it into the public schools in violation of the First Amendment requirement for separation of church and state. The trial in a Harrisburg, Pa., court is being called “Scopes II,” referring to...

Supporters of intelligent design argue the concept is not religious because the designer is never identified. But this morning, in the third day of testimony in a federal court case challenging the Dover school district’s inclusion of intelligent design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the designer is God. Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin...

A national survey of 1,472 physicians indicates more than half -- 63 percent -- believe the theory of evolution over that of intelligent design. The responses were analyzed according to religious affiliation. When asked whether they agree more with intelligent design or evolution, 88 percent of Jewish doctors and 60 percent of Roman Catholic physicians said they agree more with evolution, while 54 percent of Protestant doctors agreed more with intelligent design. When asked whether intelligent design has legitimacy as science, 83 percent of Jewish doctors and 51 percent of Catholic doctors said they believe intelligent design is simply "a...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be taught in public schools. Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea. "As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A former physics teacher testified that his rural school board ignored faculty protests before deciding to introduce the theory of "intelligent design" to high school students. "I saw a district in which teachers were not respected for their professional expertise," Bryan Rehm, a former teacher at Dover High School, said Tuesday. Rehm, who now teaches in another district, is a plaintiff in the nation's first trial over whether public schools can teach "intelligent design." Eight Dover families are trying to have the controversial theory removed from the curriculum, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church...