Though many have portrayed the hearings that led to the Kansas policy as a re-run of the Scopes trial, the reality is much different. Rather than prohibiting teachers from teaching about evolution (as Tennessee law did for John Scopes in 1925), Kansas is poised to adopt a policy that would enable students to learn more about the topic. Read More ›
Underlying Darwin's repudiation of creationist legitimacy lay an entirely different conception of science than had prevailed among earlier naturalists. Darwin's attacks on his creationist and idealist opponents in part expressed and in part established an emerging positivistic "episteme" in which the mere mention of unverifiable "acts of Divine will" or "the plan of creation" would increasingly serve to disqualify theories from consideration as science qua science. Read More ›
It is difficult to see what empirical content Lamoureux's teleological evolution has or how it differs in substance from standard Neo-Darwinism with its denial of any evidence of actual, as opposed to merely apparent, design. Read More ›
We can recognize the effects of rational agents and distinguish them from the effects of natural causes. Systems or sequences that are both “highly complex” and “specified” are always produced by intelligent agents rather than by chance and/or physical chemical laws. Read More ›
Establishing a rigid line of demarcation is especially difficult in the vexing world of origins research. So I appreciate Professor Ruse’s drawing our attention to what is perhaps a false dichotomy. Read More ›
When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When neither is on your side, question the motives of the opposition. Read More ›
When two groups of experts disagree about a controversial subject that intersects the public school curriculum students should learn about both perspectives. Read More ›
In Johnson, I encountered a man of supple and prodigious intellect who seemed in short order to have found the central pulse of the origins issue. Read More ›
On August 4th, 2004 an extensive review essay by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239). Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms. Read More ›