Here’s what happened at the recent public discussion on Darwinism and intelligent design at Southern Methodist University.
Excerpt:
The evening started with a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma:The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record for a standing room only crowd in the theater of the Hughes Trigg Student Center, and was rounded out by four presentations and a question and answer period with the speakers.
CSC’s Stephen Meyer moderated the discussion after the film which included four serious challenges to Darwinian evolution. The first speaker was evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, who presented the challenge of population genetics to Darwin’s Theory. He was followed by Biologic Institute’s Doug Axe, who spoke on the challenge of finding functional proteins, and CSC Fellow Paul Nelson, who explained why evolving animal body plans by random mutation and natural selection is probably impossible. CSC biologist Jonathan Wells concluded the short presentations by explaining the challenge of ontogenetic information. The evening closed with a robust 40 minutes of questions from the audience.
Is that crazy? Four scholars with Ph.Ds from Yale, Berkeley, Harvard, Cambridge, etc. – 6 Ph.Ds in all for FOUR speakers spoke. The four scholars presented information then had 40 minutes of unscripted public discussion with the audience.
Excerpt:
What do hox genes, gene duplication, evo-devo and ontogenetic information all have in common? They were among the subjects raised–in some detail–by audience members during the Q&A portion of 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution event at SMU last night.
Wow. Public, unscripted discussion of biological science between two opposing points of view.
I’ll bet that open discussion of controversial theories happens all the time in public schools, right?
Excerpt:
I was treated to a –sadly– all too typical story in the aftermath of the great 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution conference the other night at SMU. An SMU staffer told me about what happened to a student that wanted to let his friends know about the event.
Earlier this week the student asked his science professor if at the end of class he could make a quick announcement and the prof said no problem. At the end of the class the student stood up and very quickly announced the name of the event and that students could come and hear about some of the flaws in Darwin’s theory. At that point the professor put his hand on the student’s shoulder and said, in front of the whole class: “Hold on, if I’d known you were going to announce that I wouldn’t have let you stand up. There are NO flaws in Darwin’s theory!” The teacher continued to pontificate about how there simply are no flaws in Darwin’s theory and that any such claims are all myths.
Then yesterday I read the Nature blog about the new ID Centre that has just launched in the UK. There was a link to this story about the British Humanist Association which is lobbying for the government to grant what amounts to special status to Darwinian evolution in British schools. The ink has barely dried from the announcement and already British Darwinists are feverishly trying to stamp out any dissent.
Essentially, they want to put their hand on every British school student and tell them not to question Darwin’s theory.
Yeah, those secular humanists are as open-minded about dissent as Mao Zedong. He was a secular humanist, too.
Related posts
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- Stephen Meyer debate against Michael Shermer on Lee Strobel’s TV show
- Cowardly Richard Dawkins explains why he won’t debate William Lane Craig
- How good are the arguments in the new book by Richard Dawkins?
- Richard Dawkins cites fraudulent research, runs from public debate
- Richard Dawkins thinks that aliens may have caused the origin of life
- Answering Richard Dawkins’ question: “Who made God?”
- Richard Dawkins cites German professor as authority on historical Jesus
- Analyzing Christopher Hitchens’ case against God
WINTERY KNIGHT 