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Education

Darwinians May Be Their Own Worst Enemy, Says Darwinist
May 6, 2005
Evolutionists have only themselves to blame for the rise of anti-Darwinian sentiment, says Michael Ruse in a new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Harvard, 2005).  Peter Dizikes reviewed this premise in The Boston Globe.  By portraying evolution in overtly atheist terms with religious fervor, certain individuals like Richard Dawkins are creating a backlash, says Ruse.  “This […]
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Education

World Press Eyes Kansas Evolution Battle
May 5, 2005
The “Un-Scopes” trial of the decade is underway in Kansas, and the world press is watching.  Unlike the 1925 Scopes trial, this time evolution is the leader and intelligent design is the contender: actually, not even that – the leaders of the ID movement are not asking for ID to be taught, but only for […]
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Dinosaurs

Toothy Dinosaur Goes Vegan
May 4, 2005
The news media all pounced on a dinosaur fossil discovery reported in Nature this week.1  Dinosaur finds are ever popular, and reporters especially like it when an artist’s rendition is available.  Some outlets reporting the discovery of Falcarius utahensis, a previously unknown species “in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty […]
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Education

Media, Journals Alarmed at Rise of Intelligent Design Movement
April 29, 2005
The number of articles in the news about the Intelligent Design (ID) Movement is rising, partly because of the upcoming hearings before the Kansas school board.  National Geographic news asked, “Does ‘Intelligent Design’ Threaten the Definition of Science?” in an April 27 article, but at least author John Roach got the definition of ID correct, […]
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Education

Evolutionists Plan Secret Weapon for Kansas Debate
April 21, 2005
Pro-evolution scientists have changed their mind and decided to join the hearings about the Kansas science standards, but haven’t released a list of witnesses.  Those in favor of the new standards, which call for critical thinking about evolution, have published a complete list.     On March 31, Geoff Brumfiel in Nature1 reported, “Biologists snub […]
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Politics and Ethics

Temple Mount Debris Yields Artifacts from Solomon’s Temple
April 17, 2005
Israelis were shocked and outraged when Palestinians undertook an illegal construction project in 1999 on the Temple Mount, and threw the debris into the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, but there was little they could do about it.  Though this “archaeological disaster” caused irreparable damage to the site, the holiest place for the Jews, some Israelis […]
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Education

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Academic Bill of Rights?
April 13, 2005
Why would Nature claim that academic freedom is a threat to academic freedom?  In the April 7 issue,1 Emma Marris titled her news item, “Professors bristle as states act to mould lecture content – Academics are fighting right-wing ‘bills of rights’.”  The academic freedom the professors want is their own freedom to control lecture content, […]
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Politics and Ethics

No Excuses: Nazi-Era German Scientists Had Bloody Hands
April 7, 2005
A six-year, $5 million (US$) project in Germany to investigate the extent of scientific involvement with the Nazi regime completed its final report last month, reports Nature,1 with “uncomfortable truths.”  It can no longer be claimed that (1) there were only a few rotten apples involved, (2) the work was pseudoscientific, low-quality work with meaningless […]
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Education

ID in the News
March 30, 2005
PBS aired a segment on the anti-Darwinism controversy in the schools Monday (see PBS transcript).  Ken Ham and Stephen Meyer presented arguments for criticizing Darwin, while Eugenie Scott and others defended exclusive evolutionary teaching.  The Discovery Institute blog Evolution News analyzed the 14:32 minute segment, complaining that 90 minutes of Meyer’s interview received only 30 […]
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Education

NAS President Calls on Scientists to Defend Darwinism
March 24, 2005
The man who described a cell as “a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines” (see 02/10/2003 entry) now wants his fellow scientists to oppose efforts to attribute this factory to design.  Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of […]
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Education

Echoes of Columbine: Belief in God Brings Bullet
March 21, 2005
Grief counselors have been dispatched to Red Lake High School in Minnesota, says Fox News, after a rampage by a neo-Nazi student left 10 dead and 14 wounded.  In a manner reminiscent of Columbine, according to MSNBC News, 17-year old killer Jeff Weise admired Hitler’s views on racial purity and was deep into goth culture […]
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Education

Agnosticism Loses: Arkansas Science Must Be Atheistic
March 18, 2005
Updated 05/08/2005:  “What I’m trying to do here is not to deal directly with the existence or non-existence of God, but restore to science the agnostic viewpoint that there could be or could not be rather than the dogmatism that actually currently exists… that absolutely precludes the existence of God.”  These were the words of […]
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Politics and Ethics

Will Darwinian Law Protect the Unfit?
March 15, 2005
For the soccer moms, sports fans and teen girls with cell phones glued to their ears who think Darwinism is just an egghead scientific thing, a press release from Vanderbilt University connects evolutionary ideas to legal policies that could affect individual finances, private property rights, political correctness, social conventions, use of resources and public safety. […]
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Politics and Ethics

Mad Science: Stanford to Create Rat with Human Brain
March 10, 2005
Those who thought stem cell research was about helping people afflicted with disease may become alarmed over Stanford’s latest experiment, reported by the UK News Telegraph: the creation of a lab rat with all human brain cells.  The article quotes Wesley Smith of Centre for Bioethics and Culture warning, “biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to […]
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Politics and Ethics

Did Haeckel’s Defunct Recapitulation Theory Influence the Supreme Court?
March 8, 2005
One of our readers uncovered an amicus brief from the American Psychological Association (q.v. on American Bar Association website) encouraging the Supreme Court to overturn capital punishment for minors (see 03/04/2005 entry).  One of the key arguments in the brief is that “Neuropsychological research demonstrates that the adolescent brain has not reached adult maturity.”  Zeroing […]
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