In the News

Just a reminder...Discovery Institute has put together a Web site

judgingPBS.com

which is a response to PBS-NOVA's online materials for their "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" documentary.

Don Jordan, of the Palm Beach Post, reports that the state Board of Education will decide in February whether to approve an overhaul of state science standards that would make it a major topic in classrooms for the first time.

The proposed changes, which would require that students recognize that fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species, have ignited a fierce debate among education officials and advocacy groups.

Opponents argue that evolution is merely a theory and that other explanations for the origins of life, such as intelligent design, also should be taught out of fairness.

Board member Kathryn Hensley supported the teaching of evolution, adding that "anything that is faith-based or religious-based just doesn't belong in the classroom."

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Any gaps in knowledge must be bridged by faith (belief), including gaps in knowledge regarding the theory of evolution. Since evolutionary biologists admit they don't yet understand the mechanisms that generate and change information (the HOW) of evolution, they too have to exercise faith. Therefore, their theory should not be included in the classroom.

The Bay of Fundie blog, no friend of ARN, opined on our recent "Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories of 2007".

It is not surprising that when someone has little to say concerning the substance of the debate, he resorts to ad hominem attacks and vitriolic speech.

For instance, ARN and IDers are crackpots, morons, "smart guys", retards, incapable of understanding biology, Clowndi_ks, fundies, disinformationists, etc.

He asserts there is no debate, which is often the first line of "defense" of proponents of the "Modern Synthesis", a.k.a. Neo-Darwinism (and Global Warming).

IDers are liars, like Joseph Goebbels (a Nazi), who once may have said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." As was said in the blog, sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

As is typical of Neo-Darwinists, they separate the origin of species from the origin of life. Neo-Darwinism does not deal with the origin of life, and we are well aware of that fact. But, in the materialist's worldview, the origin of life is actually more problematic than the origin of species. That's why Francis Crick pushed back OOL by proposing directed panspermia. He rightly concluded that a chemical origin of life on Earth was impossible. He posited that OOL must have happened somewhere else in the universe, and was brought here. Neo-Darwinists choose to say, "In the beginning was a great mystery, then evolution."

One of the citations in the blog to indicate how out-of-touch IDers are with Neo-Darwinism is from 1993. In that post, Moran states, "Biologists no longer question whether evolution has occurred or is occurring. That part of Darwin's book is now considered to be so overwhelmingly demonstrated that is is often referred to as the FACT of evolution. However, the MECHANISM of evolution is still debated." So, my question is, "If we don't know HOW materialistic evolution happened, how do we know THAT it happened?" The debate (which he says doesn't even exist among REAL scientists) is about the HOW (mechanisms). What they accuse us of (God of the Gaps), is exactly what they are doing (Science of the Gaps), when saying they don't know HOW it happened. But, according to them, it had to have happened, because it fits their worldview.

Believers in the extranatural either believe that the universe was front-loaded with information, or a designer injected information into systems at various times. If REAL scientists can infer design in SETI, criminology, etc., why not in biological science? Well, that would upset the apple cart, because they cannot allow a "divine foot in the door". So they attempt to nail the door shut by saying there is no legitimate debate.

I prefer clarity of thinking over agreement. This is what we should all strive for this coming year, including Neo-Darwinists.

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For sound, thoughtful commentary on creation-evolution hot topics go to Creation-Evolution Headlines. The particular link below looks at how Bambi became Moby Dick, really! The purpose-driven language used by Darwinists goes against everything that Evolution is about: a purposeless, mindless, undirected process. They cannot help but use design-language to describe the materialistic process.

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Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories of 2007

Colorado Springs, CO - December 27, 2007

Access Research Network has just released its second annual Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories and its Top 10 Darwin and Design Resources list for the year ending in 2007.

The origins debate continued to capture the attention of a world-wide audience in 2007, as evidenced by some of the key news stories designated as among the more important according to Access Research Network (ARN), a leading science and technology watch-dog group based in Colorado Springs, CO.

"Part of our mission at ARN is to help educate the public about issues relating to Darwin and Design. Not only are there a lot of moving parts to this issue, but it also suffers heavily from significant mis-information. One of the things we do is monitor science news and other reports related to this topic, and provide access to resources designed to help others better understand the full scope of this issue. Overall in 2007 I'd say we've observed a growing consternation running through many scientific disciplines over issues that were once thought to be resolved long ago" says Kevin Wirth, ARN Director of Media Relations. "For example, the so-called 'simple cell' continues to demonstrate far more complexity and information content than anyone ever imagined. This continues to sustain the argument for Design theorists, but places a growing burden on Darwinists who maintain that this is merely evidence of 'apparent design.' But we're seeing a growing number of scientists who simply aren't buying the 'apparent design' explanation."

"The news reports we've cited in our Top 10 News Stories this year reflect many of those concerns" added Wirth. "One of the things we've noticed is that the probability surrounding the notion that life arose spontaneously and evolved over eons is straining the limits of credulity among observers who are not heavily invested in Darwinian speculations. I think it's important that we listen carefully to the voices of those who are truly independent and critical observers of this issue."

In addition to the increasing level of complexity being discovered in small biological systems, the level of biological complexity being discovered in early life history provided another challenge for Darwin's molecule-to-man theory in 2007. Well-preserved jellyfish fossil finds in Utah confirm that the modern form of the jellyfish existed nearly 200 million years earlier than previously thought. This leaves an insufficient amount of time for complex life to have developed only via the Darwinian principles of random mutations and natural selection. Evidence like this caused some scientist this past year to suggest that Darwin's "Tree-of-Life" model should be discarded and replaced with a "Biological Big Bang" model.

Dennis Wagner, ARN Executive Director, noted that "We have a whole generation of people who have been raised according to Darwinian fairytales, like 'human and chimpanzee genetics only differ by 1%' and 'the human body is full of leftover evolutionary vestiges like the appendix and junk DNA.' However, scientists demonstrated that these Darwinian stories do not belong in our science textbooks with some of the new discoveries made in 2007. These are Darwinian 'arguments from ignorance' that continue to be discarded as scientists uncover the incredible design and purpose of biological systems"

Wagner also noted that several new books in the ARN 2007 Top 10 Darwin and Design Resource list such as Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution and Mike Gene's The Design Matrix are causing a healthy shift in the debate from 'Darwin versus Design' to 'Darwin and Design.': "The debate has been highly polarized for generations because you have one group claiming everything can be explained by Darwin and another group claiming everything can be explained by design. These new books are revealing that scientific evidence is now indicating life bears the hallmarks of both. The information content present in living systems can only be explained by design, while biological systems also appear to have been designed to adapt to their environment through variation and natural selection. Trying to decipher from the evidence exactly what evolution can and cannot do, rather than resorting to imaginative Darwinian stories to explain all of life by naturalistic processes is a great step forward in the debate."

While scientific evidence continued to mount in favor of intelligent design in 2007, so did the political and academic persecution against those who challenge Darwinism. Wagner observed that "our modern western culture is so ingrained in the naturalistic Darwinian creation story that those who challenge the story, even with scientific evidence in hand, are treated as outsiders and outcasts. Even though scientists should be free to follow the evidence wherever it leads, the 2007 stories about Guillermo Gonzales being denied tenure at Iowa State and Robert Marks having his lab and website shutdown at Baylor University prove that we are not as free as we would like to think. Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, scheduled for release in early 2008, will document these stories and many others, and serve as a real eye-opener to the average citizen."

Wirth concluded, "As we monitor scientific discoveries and reports in the news, I think we're beginning to see a growing trend overall that the sufficiency of Darwinian explanations to describe how life evolved is turning out to be substantially inadequate in a growing number of fields, particularly in the areas of genetics and molecular biology. I think it's becoming clear that Darwinism is on the verge of one of the greatest challenges it has faced in many decades. And, based on what we're seeing, I suspect the debate about origins will heat up again significantly in 2008."

In a CrossWalk.com blog, Regis Nicoll opines on Antony Flew's conversion to an Aristotelian God - a Being who is "self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient." At the same time, Flew remains adamant about his rejection of an interventionist Deity, the afterlife and revealed religion, although he is open to the latter. While Flew rejects the interventionist God of the Judeo-Christian worldview, he has also rejected Darwinism. And his rejection of Darwinism is not a result of seniality.

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Discovery Institute has launched a new Web site, JudgingPBS.com, responding to the online materials for PBS/NOVA's Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.

JudgingPBS.com features 14 slides of "Darwin's Failed Predictions," recounting the failures of Darwinism left unmentioned by PBS/NOVA. The first slide is in the article, but stay tuned for all 14 slides to be posted on Evolution News & Views.

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Denyse O'Leary announces the blog HERE.

In the Dallas Morning News...the resignation of the state's science curriculum director last month has signaled the beginning of what is shaping up to be a contentious and politically charged revision of the science curriculum, set to begin in earnest in January.

At stake is the way teachers present evolution, the biological theory that humans and other species evolved from lower forms of life.

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ScienceDaily reports that surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off. As reported online this week in Genome Research, Hopkins researchers have now found that this latter portion, which is known as regulatory DNA and contributes to inherited diseases like Parkinson's or mental disorders, may be more abundant than we realize.

Imagine that...

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A letter to the editor in the Indianapolis Star shows that the self-deluding mantra of the Darwinists is alive and well from academia through the general public.

The assertion that 19th century ideas are closer to reality than 15th century ideas is not necessarily so. Besides, most of the great advances in science occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. With the great advance in biological nano-science in the past half-century, ID theory is becoming more obvious every year. The opposition to ID seems to be more emotional (visceral) than rational, as seen by the tone and language of this letter. The upcoming documentary "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed" will show this emotional persecution of IDers to the general public in a very clear way. Contrary to the comment that ID is dead because of the Dover decision, it is alive and well and growing.

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Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed

Simon Caldwell, in the Daily Mail, reports that Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

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Many of the same dynanmics in the ID debate are at play in the climate change debate. Pope Benedict XVI seems to be quite rational concerning both matters.

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Laura Heinauer, in the Waco Tribune, reports that more than 100 biology faculty members from universities across Texas signed a letter sent Monday to state Education Commissioner Robert Scott saying Texas Education Agency employees should not have to remain neutral on evolution.

The letter, which included eight signatures from Baylor University professors, is in response to the departure of science curriculum director Chris Comer. Comer says she was forced to resign days after forwarding an e-mail her superiors said made the agency appear biased against the idea that life is a result of intelligent design.

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AP Texas News reports that biology professors from across Texas stressed the importance of educating students about evolution in a letter to the state education commissioner and said Texas Education Agency employees shouldn't be required to stay neutral on the subject.

More than 100 faculty members from the universities of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Texas State, North Texas, Houston, Rice and Baylor signed the letter. It was sent Monday to Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott.

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Beth Daily, of the Boston Globe, reports that a former researcher claimed he was fired from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution because he didn't believe in evolution.

Nathaniel Abraham filed a lawsuit earlier this week in US District Court in Boston saying that the Cape Cod research center dismissed him in 2004 because of his Christian belief that the Bible presents a true account of human creation.

Abraham, who is seeking $500,000 in compensation for a violation of his civil rights, says in the suit that he lost his job as a postdoctoral researcher in a biology lab shortly after he told his superior that he did not accept evolution as scientific fact.

From what I have heard, there is some bad information in the Globe piece. It seems Abraham was willing to work on the evolution projects. He had no problem stating that "evolution was a theory" or "according to evolution..." he objected only to using evolution (in the common ancestry sense) as an established fact. This was not acceptable to his supervisor who required that he believe in evolution.

This may be a very important case, because his firing may have been religious discrimination.

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I attended a private screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed with Ben Stein. The documentary film will be released during the first part of 2008.

This is definitely a film that Darwinists will not want you to see.

The film's Web site, which includes a Super Trailer (seven minutes long on the PLAYGROUND page) can be seen by clicking HERE.

When you do not have a good argument against your opponent's view, just throw in a few ad hominem attacks. Name-calling usually does the trick for most. That's what Adam Rutherford, reviewer for Science Magazine does.

Evolution News & Views picks up on Rutherford's remarks.

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A school district has done an about face on teaching alternative theories on origins.

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ENV does a summary on the Guillermo Gonzalez. Public document requests under Iowa's Open Records Act obtained correspondence of key faculty members within ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy. Various e-mails reveal that Dr. Gonzalez's department was far more concerned about the "embarrassment" that intelligent design (ID) caused the department's reputation rather than protecting his academic freedom - despite the fact that ISU's faculty handbook claims that "[a]cademic freedom is the foundation of the university."

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