Tag Archives: Academic Freedom

News

Victory for academic freedom in Texas School Board hearings

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“Teach the Controversy” is now the law in Texas. This is a huge win, because the science standards in Texas will influence the science standards of other states, since Texas dominates the science textbook market.

Here’s a brief excerpt about the decision from Evolution News:

Today, the Texas Board of Education chose science over dogma and adopted science standards improving on the old “strengths and weaknesses” language by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence.” In addition, the Board—for the first time— specifically required high school students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations.

The new science standards mark a significant victory for scientists and educators in favor of teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution.

…The science standards approved today by the Texas State Board of Education include language requiring students to “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations…including examining all sides of scientific evidence… so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.” Equally important, the high school biology standards now require students to “analyze and evaluate” the scientific evidence for key parts of evolutionary theory, including common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations.

More here at the Evolution News blog:

UPDATE: Discovery Institute Fellow John West has a piece in the Washington Post.

Podcasts

New podcasts on academic freedom and intelligent design

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I found a couple of new podcasts on intelligent design on Post-Darwinist!

Here is the skinny:

Academic Freedom Update: Where Are We in 2009?

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC’s Casey Luskin gives listeners an update on what’s going on with academic freedom legislation around America. Academic freedom bills submitted in five states already this year, including Oklahoma, Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri and Alabama. Listen in to today’s podcast as Luskin explains how Darwinist opposition to the bills is showing why academic freedom legislation is necessary to protect teachers from a climate of intimidation.

Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC’s Robert Crowther highlights one of the foundational books of the theory of intelligent design. “No Free Lunch“, the sequel to mathematician and CSC senior fellow William Dembski’s Cambridge University Press book “The Design Inference”, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation.

Do you know what intelligent design is? The definitive statement of the what intelligent design is was first published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press. The name of that book is “The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities”.

Here’s a little bio of the author, William Dembski. And here are some of his earned degrees:

  • Ph.D. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1996
  • M.A. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1993
  • Ph.D. mathematics  University of Chicago 1988
  • M.S. statistics  University of Illinois at Chicago 1983

If you put together the IQs of all the journalists who have ever written against intelligent design, the total number is actually lower than the IQ of William Dembski’s pinky finger nail clipping. An introduction to intelligent design is here. A chapter explaining intelligent design from a book published by Michigan State University Press is here.

Or, you can just read this sentence: intelligent design is what happens when you select letters and form sequences that have function. Like writing blog posts or software code. That’s intelligent design, and that’s all it is. Surprise! I do it all day at work. I’m doing it right now while I write this post. And it’s in your DNA, too. Sequences of amino acids and proteins arranged to have biological function.

My Dad, who reads everything I tell him to read because he’s such a great Dad, just finished Dembski’s new book “Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language”. He assures me it is extremely easy to understand, even for you helpless squishyheads who dropped math in grade 10.

Here is a good debate on whether the biological information in the simplest organism requires an intelligent designer.

News

Split decision on Texas evolution standards favors academic freedom

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Over at the Discovery Institute’s Evolution News blog, they recently reported that the Texas State Board of Education reached a split decision on the state standards for teaching evolution.

Evolution News says this in their post:

Kudos to the New York Times for filing a story on the actions of the Texas State Board of Education that actually describes what happened last week. Unlike much of the rest of the newsmedia, the Times doesn’t tell only half of what happened or play up the hysterics. The story’s even-handed title is telling: “Split Outcome in Texas Battle on Teaching of Evolution.”

The NYT article they mentioned explains the compromise reached by the Texas State Board of Education.

First, the bad news:

…the board voted to drop a 20-year-old mandate that science teachers explore with their students the “strengths and weaknesses” of all theories.

But the board also passed some good amendments, among them this one:

…one that would compel science teachers to instruct students about aspects of the fossil record that do not neatly fit with the idea of species’ gradually changing over time, like the relatively sudden appearance of some species and the fact that others seem to remain unchanged for millions of years.

Let me explain why this is a big win for ID. One of my previous employers was a major academic publishing company. By major, I mean my alma mater’s campus library featured academic publication databases that I helped to code. In this company, it was well known that California and Texas were the two most important states, because their textbook standards set the guidelines for the other states.

The NYT article explains:

Whatever the 15-member board decides then will have consequences far beyond Texas, since the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the nation. The new standards will be in place for the next decade, starting in 2010, and will influence the writing of the next generation of biology texts, which the state will order this summer.

John G. West of the Discovery Institute evaluates the board’s decision as positive:

“They did something truly remarkable today,” John G. West of the Discovery Institute, a group that questions Darwinism, said in a statement. “They voted to require students to analyze and evaluate some of the most important and controversial aspects of modern evolutionary theory.”

I actually have podcasts for you of the testimonies of pro-ID scholars given to the Texas Board. If you want to learn how scientists argue for academic freedom on issues of origins, you should listen to these three 15-minute podcasts.

  1. My favorite ID scholar Stepen C. Meyer testified on the Cambrian explosion and the fossil record, (podcast, article). Meyer holds a Ph.D in the Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. I once saw him explain biological information using colorful lock-blocks, live. (He stole them from his children). I often draw it up for my co-workers on a white board, just like he does!
  2. Microbiologist Ralph Seelke testified about how his lab research that shows clear limits on how far bacteria can evolve, (podcast, article). Seelke holds a Ph.D in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. He is a Professor in the Department of Biology and Earth Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
  3. Biochemist Charles Garner testified on the chirality problem in chemical evolution, (podcast, article). He also discussed the importance of not glossing over the weaknesses of scientific theories. Garner holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of Colorado, Boulder. Garner is now a Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Baylor University.

For those looking for a definition of what intelligent design is, look here. I highly recommend the work of Canadian journalist Denyse O’Leary, who is probably the foremost expert on why there is an ID controversy. Her main blog on ID is called Post-Darwinist.

As a supporter of academic freedom, I sent a donation to the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture yesterday. The CSC is currently offering a free book with donations received before February 28th, 2009. For my annual donation, I chose Stephen C. Meyer’s forthcoming book “Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design“.

On another note, I am also excited about Jay Richards’ forthcoming book, “Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem“. Jay did a great lecture on basic economics for Christians and another great lecture on what Christians should think about global warming. Maybe his employer, the Acton Institute, will give me a free book if I send them a donation?

UPDATE: Casey Luskin just posted audio of Stephen C. Meyer responding to questions after is presentation at the hearing.