Science & Culture Archives

Now we have scientists predicting a new age of cooling, pointing out that Arctic ice is growing, not shrinking, and it all has to do with ocean currents, not man-made activity. Human caused global warming increasingly is seen as an over-statement, at the least. Without open debate, who knows?

Scientific hype is found in medicine, too, with repeated dire warnings about epidemics that don't quite happen. Swine flu, of course, is the latest in a long train. One could mention the BSE (Mad Cow) hysteria, and, before that Alar, silicone breast implants...on and on. Businesses and whole industries have been destroyed in some cases before reality reasserts itself.

Resorts to claims that "the science is settled" and there is (as The New York Times considers conclusive) a "scientific consensus" are shown repeatedly to fail the tests of time, close scrutiny and experience. They remind one of the old Marxist trope, "As everyone knows...." The one thing these movements lack is a humility and a willingness to test their hypothesis in an atmosphere where other sides are allowed to provide countervailing evidence, interpretations and theories. Real science, I say again, has to provide for debate.

Another case of poor science doing the work of ideology (scientism) is the willingness of the media and cultural organs to defend hard-core Darwinian explanations for everything from bad backs to altruism. The evidence doesn't seem to matter once the "consensus" is adduced. The "consensus" deems that scientific books and reports that challenge Darwin--let alone support intelligent design--may not be read, let alone reviewed.

Behind all the "consensus" controls lie groups of individuals that benefit greatly by hyped priorities--research institutions, especially, including cash-pressed universities in search of federal money. Include trial attorneys who benefit from public fright. Add in, then, the para-political elements in society that want government sanction to run the lives of other people; this includes a large part of the environmental movement, plus the cultural totalitarians who seek government power to implement their social and spending policies. Also include the bureaucracies of government that seek constantly to expand their writ...and staffing levels. Economist Thomas Sowell has termed the alliance "coercive utopians."

To stand up to these trends and strategems is "pro-science", not "anti-science", despite what the consensus mongers contend. If "science" is essentially a propaganda and social scheme looking for complaint, vendable professionals to support it, then over time it will lose its hold on public respect. And that is just what is happening.

Here's the key test (once more): do they allow and even encourage debate and the expression of contrary views? If not, "science" is corrupted.

Fox News ends the year with a list of under-reported stories of 2009. It is notable how many are related to science or, generally, to the politicization of supposed "experts".

Nearly a half century ago, as he left eight years in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a "military-industrial complex" that promoted particular new weapons systems and concomitant budgetary and foreign commitments. Ike, the former five star general and Columbia University president, warned that selfish professional ambitions and interests can create a deceptive perception of national interest. The term "military-industrial complex" has become famous.

However, less noticed, Ike’s farewell address also warned of development of a grants-corrupted "scientific-technological elite."

In his new book, The Deniable Darwin (Discovery Institute Press, 2009), published just before the ClimateGate scandal broke, mathematician David Berlinski explained that scientists should not be trusted to check themselves--no more than anyone else on the planet, and maybe less so, since grant money is involved. Now he writes on his blog, "I Told You So."

From The Deniable Darwin:

My own view, repeated in virtually all of my essays, is that the sense of skepticism engendered by the sciences would be far more appropriately directed toward the sciences than toward anything else. It is not a view that has engendered wide-spread approval. The sciences require no criticism, many scientists say, because the sciences comprise a uniquely self-critical institution, with questionable theories and theoreticians passing constantly before stern appellate review. Judgment is unrelenting. And impartial. Individual scientists may make mistakes, but like the Communist Party under Lenin, science is infallible because its judgments are collective. Critics are not only unwelcome, they are unneeded. The biologist Paul Gross has made himself the master of this attitude and invokes it on every conceivable occasion.

If the scientific critic finds himself needed wherever he goes, like a hanging judge he finds himself unwelcome wherever he appears, all the more reason, it seems to me, that he really should get around as much as possible.

Stephen Meyer has already made year-end lists with Signature in the Cell, an Amazon bestselling science book and one of Times Literary Supplement's books of the year for 2009, but the latest news go far beyond that: Stephen Meyer has been named World Magazine's "Daniel of the Year" for 2009:

This fall Meyer came out with a full account of what science has learned in recent decades: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Harper One, 2009) shows that the cell is incredibly complex and the code that directs its functions wonderfully designed. His argument undercuts macroevolution, the theory that one kind of animal over time evolves into a very different kind. Meyer thus garners media scorn for raining on this year's huge celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin 200 years ago and the publication of On the Origin of Species 150 years ago.

The cover story is what should become the essential profile of Meyer, following what World's Marvin Olasky describes as "the four-stage pattern that is common among intellectual Daniels: Questioning, discernment, courage, and perseverance."

Meyer says, "You ask how someone gets the moxie to take something like this on. Part of the answer is that I didn't know any better when I was young. I was just so seized with this idea and these questions: 'Was it possible to develop a scientific case? Were we looking at evidence that could revive and resuscitate the classical argument from design, which had been understood from the time of Hume and certainly the time of Darwin to be defunct?' If that was the case, that's a major scientific revolution."

Courage becomes a determinant once we count the cost and see that it's great. Meyer's first inkling came when "talking about my ideas to people at Cambridge High Table settings, and getting that sudden social pall." But the cost was and is more than conversational ease: San Francisco State University in 1992 expelled a professor, Dean Kenyon, who espoused ID, and other job losses have come since. Meyer and other ID proponents saw "that this would be very controversial. One of the things that emboldened all of us who were in the early days of this movement was meeting each other. In 1993 we had a little private conference [with] 10 or 12 very sharp, mostly younger scientists going through top-of-the-world programs in their respective fields who were all skeptical. I think the congealing of this group gave everyone the sense that this was going to be an exciting adventure: Let's rumble."

The article, as the title indicates, is a profile in courage worth reading, particularly this bit:

Many who enter the courage stage at first think that the war in which they find themselves will end in a few years. There comes a time in many lives, though, when a hard realization sinks in: It will not be over in my lifetime. That's when some give in while others proceed to the perseverance stage. That's where Meyer is: Signature in the Cell ends with a long list of testable predictions concerning the direction of science over the next several decades. Meyer predicts that further study will reveal the importance of "junk DNA" and the reasons for what seem to be "poorly designed" structures: They will reveal either a hidden functional logic or evidence of decay from originally good designs.

Text courtesy of CNS, who published the article online this morning.

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
--T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The level of maturity of the New Atheism movement was on florid display at the national convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation this past weekend in Seattle. A high point apparently was a "non-prayer breakfast," where six hundred attendees were reminded of the oppressive civic funcions where people often are asked to bow their heads for a moment of silence. Instead, the atheists were encouraged to exhibit a moment of "bedlam", shouting, clinking glasses and who knows what? How liberating!

A top draw attraction at the convention was Ron Reagan, a middle-aged "unabashed atheist" who is best known for....well, for being a son of President Ronald Reagan, who was a favorite target of people like the conventioneers. President Reagan often ended his speeches with the benediction, "May God bless America." Ron derives whatever significance he enjoys from repudiating his father's worldview. It's not much of a gig, is it? And it also is not much of a threat.

The other good news for non-atheists is that the chief philanthropy of the New Atheism--its most heartfelt project, in fact--seems to be....bus signs. Richard Dawkins is using profits from his books for the signs. Lesser-known, latter-day Clarence Darrows and H. L. Menckens likewise are using their savings to invest in bus cards that sally forth in cities from London to Seattle. The seasonal placards now up in Seattle announce that, "Yes, Virginia, there is no God."

In America we are a century and a half away from the "Know-Nothing Party", a secret political society that fulminated against the Catholic Church and Irish immigrants. (Asked about its composition, members would say, "I know nothing;" hence, the moniker.) Formed in public as The American Party, the party's hateful, nativist politics took a long time to expunge from our shores. But we now have an Englishman, Richard Dawkins--one of society's "Brites" according to his fellow-Darwinist, Daniel Dennett--in a screed against the Catholic Church that proclaims the same frothing bigotry exemplified by the Know-Nothings. This and Dawkins' various other attacks should remind us that the hoary religious hatreds of old (including those of the angry atheist) were a European legacy. Catholics and other Christians need to realize that Dawkins and Company aim to revive them.

Rome is possibly "the greatest force for evil in the world," Dawkins announces, "a disgusting institution" that is "dragging its flowing skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp." That kind of language is like a blast of stale air from the 1850s.

You cannot expect his fellow Darwinists to repudiate Dawkins for the simple reason that a number (e.g., P.Z. Myers) share his prejudices and his paranoia. Darwinism never was mainly about science; it is about metaphysics. It is a worldview that has no space for the sacred, no regard for the exceptionality of human life. Darwinists, who operate few if any hospitals or homeless shelters, cannot recognize the humanity of those who do.

Dawkins is not an oddity. He is the world's leading Darwinian spokesman. He is hailed at universities, museums and foundations. Publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times--that simply will not run an article by scientists presenting the evidence against Darwinism--can't showcase him enough.

Other than such Know Nothings, what other modern bigots are regarded as so fashionable?

The Vatican's expanded opening to Anglicans this week has provoked many published analyses of what the policy might mean to the future of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church in the United States. The significance actually is far wider. Notably, on cultural issues it may strengthen the relatively conservative Roman Catholic Church and weaken the relatively liberal Anglican/Episcopal Church. That, really, is the source of so much media interest.

For breakaway Episcopal parishes and dioceses in the U.S., the Vatican offer may not mean much at first. Many are in property disputes with their former Episcopal co-religionists, and are losing in the courts. But they also are well along in forming new Anglican churches. Perhaps 100,000 Episcopalians have decamped so far to the new Anglican branches, while additional defectors already have converted to Catholicism, various evangelical churches, or Orthodoxy, or are just sleeping-in on Sundays now. The headquarters of PECUSA, The Episcopal Church of the United States, is declining to report on the latest membership changes.

Regardless, the tectonic plates of Christianity are moving, and not just because of this latest Vatican announcement. The ecumenical cause is gaining force again after decades of stasis. A long, powerful dialogue on theology that yielded a book and follow-up essays called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" has influenced laypeople for almost a generation. Leading were such Catholics as George Weigel and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, and such evangelicals as Charles Colson and J.I. Packer. The latest development in the dialogue is an essay on perhaps the most difficult issue for Protestants, the place of the Virgin Mary.

A similar dialogue has gone on quietly for four decades among theologians in the two largest Western liturgical churches (those whose sacred services center on the Eucharist)--the 1.130 billion Catholics and the 75 million Anglicans. The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, an enterprise called ARCIC, also has produced one agreement after another, so much so that one has to ask, Couldn't a lot of these misunderstandings have been ironed out 500 years ago and spared Western Civilization a load of pain?

Regardless, while theological problems are dissipating, ecclesiological differences--over the meanings of priesthood and the operations of Church hierarchy-- have become more evident. After years of frustration, the Vatican plainly has given up on most discussions with Canterbury on ecclesiological matters; and, hence, the opening to dissident Anglicans. Representatives of the latter have been descending on Rome for five or six years now, pleading for succor. This week they have it.

Creation of "Anglican Rite" services and even whole Anglican Rite Catholic parishes now anticipate retention of the beautiful Anglican Book of Common Prayer--the only literary product of a committee to rival Shakespeare--as the liturgical basis for an additionally acceptable orthodox Catholic mass. One may well see Anglican Rite services in the calendar of regular masses at certain cathedrals and other large Catholic churches, as well as separate, predominately Anglican Rite chapels and churches and seminaries that--like the Eastern Rite Catholic churches--express a culture, but also recognize the primacy of the See of St. Peter.

In England, one idea that eventually may find resonance is shared use by Catholics (including Anglican Rite Catholics) and official Anglicans of the great, under-used and under-funded medieval cathedrals, such as Salisbury, Lincoln and Wells. They were built in the era of Christian unity, after all.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox and other Orthodox branches (330 million) also are in discussion with Rome, while a respected Anglican seminary, Nashotah House in Wisconsin, has been in talks with the Orthodox Church (Antioch) recently. What will come out of all this? For the old liturgical churches of Christendom, divided since the 11th century, full reconciliation on some basis is likely; rather sooner than later, it now seems. One thousand years late, old wrongs will be righted, injuries healed.

The circle widens in ways still unforeseen to the orthodox in "mainline' denominations of Protestantism (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) and to the strong, growing number of nondenominational evangelicals. There is no knowing the particularities of revised association, of course. What matters is that orthodox Christians are finding their commonality. C. S. Lewis already has called his Office.

Rather than damaging relations between Christians and Jews, the serious discussions on matters of faith among Christians likewise may be improving understanding, mutual respect and appreciation between Christianity and what John Paul II called "our older brothers in faith."

Reconciliation, at least for those of orthodox faith, will provide an assist for a culture groping for firmer ground.

NPR has run a story about an atheist schism. It runs roughly between the nice, old fashioned folk who don't believe in God and demand the right to their position, and the new "edgy" atheists who demand that you give up your belief in God. The former are getting fed up with the latter. The latter are annoyed by the former.

This is refreshingly un-P.C., since it displays the coterminous relationship of Darwinism and atheism. (Mainly, Darwinism is atheism in a lab coat.) The growing tactical fight within the Darwinian camp has gone under-reported for some time, perhaps because it makes the culture war even more complex--and harder to cover. The old idea was that there were "creationists" (anyone who disputes the Darwinian account) and "science". It's was a nice, cozy conception for the Ruling Class. But then came intelligent design, positing a scientific case against Darwinism and making a scientific case for design (viz, Signature in the Cell, by Stephen C. Meyer). ID had to be conflated with "creationism" to keep the story simple. And then there came the structuralists--materialists who nonetheless doubt Darwin--and they, tremulous rebels as they are, were mainly ignored.

But then, like an old South Park episode we seem to remember, the atheist/Darwinists started attacking one another. In Seattle recently, Richard Dawkins couldn't resist a swipe at Chris Hitchens. And Flock of Dodos producer Randy Olson, in The New Scientist, tussled with Dawkins himself. The NPR story by Barbara Bradley Hagerty marks a fresh mainstream awareness of such developments.

I am willing to hold the coats for both sides in this brawl.

Richard Dawkins, oleaginous Oxford intellect, was in Seattle this week and I decided to beard him when he appeared on the Michael Medved show to promote his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. The source of my irritation was an assertion by Dawkins early in the interview that his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers only applied to creationists, not to intelligent design proponents. I am not a creationist, but I found that statement bigoted.

It should be annoying to anyone that Dawkins would try to fasten creationists with the Holocaust denier label. Creationists may be wrong on the age of the Earth, but they can't deserve Dawkins' moral opprobrium. Pressed by Medved about the Holocaust reference, Dawkins issued so many qualifiers (the creationists' failing, he warbles, is not moral--no, of course not--only "historical") that the reference loses all meaning-- except as a propaganda tactic. The stink of unjustified anti-Semitism remains even after Dawkins' rationalizations. This is like a McCarthyite calling a liberal a "communist sympathizer." Just an historical reference, mind you. No reason for anyone to take umbrage.

In any event, asked by me as a caller why he would not debate Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell,, on the scientific arguments against Darwinian evolution and for ID, Dawkins referred to ID as "creationist". He had just said that he was not tarring ID with the same brush as creationism, and then he used the same crude brush to do just that.

Dawkins' new book actually is notable in that he makes no mention of ID authors or their arguments. He instead battles a straw man: creationists who think the world is a few thousand years old. He knows that they are not his real problem, but he attacks them anyhow. Watch Richard shred the Book of Genesis as a science document! How daring!

Heaven (or whatever) forbid that he should address ID for real. A few years back he managed to review a book of Michael Behe (The Edge of Evolution) for the New York Times without making any serious reference to its arguments. Instead he wallowed in ad hominem aspersions. Plainly, he doesn't even bother reading the case presented by the likes of Behe, let alone the new book by Meyer. (I hate to disillusion the reader, but not all book reviewers actually read the books they are assigned to review.) In the Behe case, Dawkins offered smears in place of refutation.

Dawkins is accustomed now to uncritical notice because (I contend) his metaphysical position confirms the disposition of his reviewers. As an intellectual he is not curious. I guess he feels he doesn't need to be. He doesn't debate opponents (Meyer, Behe, Berlinski) because he really doesn't have any idea what they think. He can make up a crank position for them and assign them to it, secure from contradiction by a supine press.

But even his own current reviews, once the ritual praise is over, hint that the man has become lazy.

Dr. John DeVincenzo, a distinguished California businessman, orchardist and community leader, died this week, a loss to leadership on many levels. He is remembered in the San Luis Obispo Tribune also as “a dedicated family man - energetic, funny, full of life and always pushing the limits on traditional thinking.”

Dr. DeVincenzo professionally was an orthodontist who was generous with his skills and resources. Throughout the past decade he was an enthusiastic supporter of Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture.

We note with final gratitude that the family has named Discovery Institute as one of John’s favorite charities. Those who wish to help further our work in his memory can do so by utilizing this online link or by sending checks marked the “DeVincenzo Fund” to the attention of Kelley Unger at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

"Charles Darwin!" jokes Mathias Brucker, an Austrian friend (adopting the tone of the secular Left), "Why, he was the most important person since Jesus Christ--except, of course, that Jesus wasn't real."

That pretty much sums up the attempted hagiography of the anti-religious crowd in recent years. So a film about the personal life of Darwin, supposedly the greatest man of all time--the one whose birthday, February 12, is to supplant Abraham Lincoln, the current occupant, in American schools--should be a sure-fire seller. Candles will be lit before the movie posters in homes of skeptics around the world.

But the new flick Creation does not seem likely to add to the campaign for sainthood. Like Darwin's concept of life's origins, it just never seems to get started. Even Roger Ebert is rather discouraged.

What to do? Well, the earnest star, Paul Bettany, wants you to know that, contra Ebert, this really is about deicide, after all. The movie, he says, "happens to be about Darwin, who is in the process of killing God."

If that publicity doesn't pack the theaters, what will?

The New Scientist may sound like a scholarly science publication, but in covering news it often revels in uninformed and unprofessional attacks on critics of Darwinian evolution. So it is somewhat of a surprise to see the publication produce a not-so-veiled pan of The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins' new book. If the evident disappointment expressed by science filmmaker Randy Olson is at all valid, Dawkins' resemblance to the creator of the original "Greatest Show on Earth," 19th Century circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, is confirmed.

Dawkins doesn't address his real adversaries. He simply ignores Stephen Meyer, whose Signature in the Cell is now leading the science book parade in several Amazon categories. He just dubs opponents creationist reactionaries and assumes that his haughty air will delight his claque and daunt everyone else. He has plenty of ringmaster bluster left, but nothing much to say.

Reviewer Olson, a relentless Darwinist himself, has to complain of Dawkins, "Implying that your audience is stupid does not qualify as a great new angle."

Dawkins not only refuses to debate the likes of Stephen Meyer, he doesn't even take note of answers to his classic arguments. For example, watch this clip, "Climbing Mt. Improbable," from the soon-to-be-released film, Darwin's Dilemma. It's a fine take-down of Dawkins' case for the nearly unlimited power of natural selection.

P.T. Barnum's famously asserted, "There's a sucker born every minute." C. R. Dawkins must be hoping that the suckers still will buy his books.

Don’t miss Steve Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell—introduced by yours truly—on these Labor Day Weekend C-Span showings:

Saturday, September 5th at 7pm (ET)
Sunday, September 6th at 7am (ET)
Monday, September 7th at 12pm (ET)
Tuesday, September 8th at 12am (ET)

Do your homework for the show by reading the new American Spectator and its insightful review of Signature in the Cell, "Blown Away," by Dan Peterson. Meyer's book, says Brown, is a "defining work in the discussion of life's origins and the question of whether life is a product of unthinking matter or of an intelligent mind."

HarperOne, the publisher, is pleased to report that the book is now in its Third Printing and selling briskly. Order one briskly, and see for yourself.

How many intellectuals and media conveyers will defend free speech and the importance of an unfettered debate of ideas? Fewer and fewer. We are witnessing in America a kind of academic French Revolution, where leading opinion is fratricidal, enraged, fanatical--and then overthrown to make room for a newer fanaticism.

People are not getting their heads chopped off physically, of course, but careers are being sliced off and reputations ruined. Fear is in the air.

There are manifold efforts to chase down, stigmatize and eradicate intellectual dissent, almost all of them in universities and media outlets. There is no recourse for the honest scholar or commentator except to stand up to the bullies, pay the price and then live in peace with his conscience, whatever his resulting--usually diminished--station might be.

But I am most familiar, of course, with the tawdry campaign of Darwinists to misrepresent and punish those scientists and science writers who dissent from Darwinism, or merely are known to associate with dissenters. Think I am exaggerating? Forget the film Expelled and what it revealed. Forget that the man in the film who simply defended the rights of dissenters, Ben Stein, himself has been punished. Just look at what the Darwinists are doing to one another when someone dares to talk to dissenters. The recent Evolution News articles about the fuss at Bloggingheads has a number of excellent pieces on this affair. David Klinghoffer in his article employs the apt metaphor of "ritual contamination."

I use the French Revolution metaphor above. But one also might mention McCarthyism--not the reality alone, but also the hysteria around it. A Christian, citing Dante, among others, could mention human nature and the temptation to pride and its brothers, envy and spite.

But let us also invoke the metaphor of evolution. Would the Darwinists like to explain how natural selection works to cause otherwise mature people in universities and media to ostracize--excommunicate--colleagues who dare to dissent from someone's concept of orthodoxy? Is there a gene for persecution that causes them to hector not merely dissenters but those who are guilty merely of taking the views of dissenters seriously?

Or maybe we should just invoke a television metaphor about childishness: "I have my fingers in my ears! La, la, la, la! I can't HEAR you!"

"Creation, matter structured in an intelligent manner by God, is entrusted to man's responsibility, who is able to interpret and refashion it actively, without regarding himself as the absolute owner." --Pope Benedict XVI

The Catholic Church, like other Christian bodies, has a host of folk who support theistic evolution and oppose intelligent design. But the Pope doesn't seem to be one of them. In another remark that probably will get little attention, the Holy Father--in the midst of comments about the environment--described "matter structured in an intelligent matter by God."

Theistic evolution is the curious theological concept that Darwin's theory is right in all its particulars, but somehow God was behind it. God made the process and the process did the work. That is how an inherently "unguided" process was--well--guided.

The theistic evolutionists oppose the idea that intelligent design can be identified specifically in nature itself. (They exempt cosmology, where they acknowledge design.) So they probably don't like the pope talking of creation as "intelligent".

Ben Stein probably thought he could do his work on the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and not himself endure the kind of personal attacks that, in the film, he defended Darwin critics against. In fact, what he found was that Darwinism is at the root of the worldview of the materialist Left and even the materialist Right. You can't say or do anything to offend them. You can't even advocate academic freedom.

The people who demanded free speech in the 60s and shouted down figures of authority are now the tenured faculty and newsroom editors of the Establishment. And now they are disallowing any criticism at all.

So, unlikely as it seems, Ben Stein became a martyr. Richard Dawkins intervened at the University of Vermont last spring to deny Stein a gig as Commencement Speaker. Now Ben has been disingenously trashed by The New York Times. Typically, when firing Stein as a business columnist the Times couldn't give the actual reason--which is ideological--and instead had to insinuate that he had a "conflict of interest." That is a joke as well as an insult.

Actually, I think Ben may come to enjoy the role of martyr. Like many of us, he never really suffered much discrimination in his life and may find it an interesting experience. As middle age creeps into Medicare Age, he may even find the sting of the lash will stimulate his muse--his comic muse, I hope. It is notable that his American Spectator column on the firing has generated hundreds of comments, almost all favorable, the others sublimely ignorant and smug.

Think of the new material you've been handed, Ben. Maybe the Intelligent Designer is priming you for a book!

Sam Harris has a piece in The New York Times suggesting that Francis Collins' Christian views render him unsuited to serve as head of the National Institutes of Health. That is so, says Harris, even though Collins is a devoted Darwinist. Clearly Harris would like a sign that says "Only Atheists Need Apply" to hang over the NIH.

Only a couple of days ago Nicholas Wade wrote a blog for the The Times about Thomas Bouchard, Minnesota psychologist, who contends that science is damaged by conformism, just as economics and other fields are:

Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers

By Nicholas Wade

What’s wrong with consensuses is not the establishment of a majority view, which is necessary and legitimate, but the silencing of skeptics. “We still have whole domains we can’t talk about,” Dr. Bouchard said, referring to the psychology of differences between races and sexes.

Dr. Collins at the signing of President Obama's Executive Order on stem cells. Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

The President's nomination of former Human Genome Project head Francis Collins to lead the National Institutes of Health must have seemed like a felicitous decision at the White House. Collins lately has been a popular speaker on science and religion around the country, assuring Christians that there is no problems linking faith in God and faith in Darwinian evolution.

But when the confirmation hearings take place I would not be surprised to hear some sharp questions about Dr. Collins' less known views on subjects that have not come out on his pulpit tours. He is, for example, a strong supporter of President Obama's program on embryonic stem cell research. The head of NIH doesn't have a lot to say about evolution, but he does have a lot to say about research matters in science on key social issues. Stem cells is only one of them.

Conservatives also may want to know Dr. Collins' views on the President's decision to let the Council on Bioethics lapse.

At the same time, Collins is anything but popular on the Darwinian left because, while he affirms Darwin's theory completely, he also works God into the picture, and that especially bothers scientists and pundits in New Atheist circles. It was also known to irritate staff at NIH when he was last there. So you are going to hear some interesting grumbles.

Steve Meyer is the leader of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute--the organization that puts the most noted critics of Darwinism and proponents of intelligent design onto the field of intellectual competition. He also exemplifies the movement in his own writing, speeches and debates. Publication (by Harper/One) this week of Signature in the Cell assembles the most searching and advanced argument for ID yet. It seems likely to become a classic treatise, a scientific Mt. Probable that Darwinists like Richard Dawkins will not be able to scale by steps small or large. (See http://www.signatureinthecell.com/.)

I met Steve almost 15 years ago when he was a popular young professor at Whitworth College in Spokane, not long removed from private sector work in geology in Texas and his doctoral research in the philosophy of science at Cambridge University. He already had emerged as a leader, however. From that time on, Steve's energy and resourceful insights helped re-shape the mission of Discovery Institute and extend the debate over intelligent design world-wide.

During these years he has written many distinguished articles and papers, including the peer-reviewed paper on the Cambrian explosion for The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington that got the journal's editor, Richard Sternberg, into such celebrated trouble at the Smithsonian, as the film Expelled explained. (It's a great story told well in the new book.) All the while, Steve has been a mentor and editor for the other fellows and staff of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute and has given sacrificially of his talent to help others achieve their goals.

Now he has distilled his own research and reflection into one big, pathfinding book. Signature in the Cell could have been a couple of books, actually, since it is packed with so many provocative ideas. But Steve was advised early on by his Discovery friend and colleague George Gilder to "put everything you have into one book," and that's what he has done. Along the way, he also describes his own, often surprising personal journey. There are a number of rollicking inside accounts here not seen anywhere before.

I had the challenge of serving as one of Steve's readers when Signature in the Cell was still in manuscript form this past winter. I relished the learning opportunity. What a relief and thrill for all of us to have it finished and published now. You'll see, it was worth waiting for.

I have to congratulate Steve here, and urge everyone I know who cares about the big ideas that rock our times to read Signature in the Cell. Expect a torrent of contrived Darwinian media alarm, of course, and consider the source. They once accused us of operating mainly as a public relations office, but the opposite is true. Dr. Meyer's scholarship is as sophisticated as his style is accessible. The Darwinists meanwhile are treading very stale water these days and pretending they are swimming in a fresh, sylvan pool.

So, as usual, do your own reading and thinking, and tell your friends. To my own way of thinking, Steve Meyer, with this book, should be recognized as one of the foremost intellectual entrepreneurs of our age.

The latest hype from scientific materialists--following "Ida" ("Sweet as apple-cidah," as Eddie Cantor sang it)--is that we now understand, yet again, how life arranged itself from a few chemical elements. George Gilder comments from The Gilder Report today:

Friday Blogger Bonus / The Issue Has Never Been Chemistry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gilder Telecosm Forum Member: “Scientists may have figured out the
chemistry that sparked the beginning of life on Earth. Until now,
scientists couldn’t figure out the chemical reactions that created the
earliest RNA molecules.”
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/2009/05/13/how-rna-got-started-scientists-examine-the-origins-of-life.html

George Gilder, Gilder Telecosm Forum: The issue has never been chemistry,
but information. The chemistry of the carrier doesn't matter as long as it
is robust and reproducible. You need a low entropy (predictable) carrier
to bear complex high entropy information. Computers, for example, can be
made of matchsticks, beach sand or Lego blocks, among other things, but
these substances cannot make or program a computer. You need a recipe to
produce a pudding, but a pudding cannot write a recipe. The low entropy
carrier does not generate the information that creates it. It takes a mind
to produce information.

Jack Kevorkian is in jail where he belongs, a man who repeatedly killed off people in the supposed interest of assisted suicide. That Al Pacino is planning to play this man--sympathetically--in an HBO film is a sign that human degradation has become a Hollywood staple. (Please note that First Things is now hosting our colleague Wesley J. Smith's blog on bioethics, "Second Hand Smoke.")

Senior Fellows David Berlinski and Bruce Gordon spoke last week at the ninth annual “Physics and the God of Abraham” conference, held at Gonzaga University in Spokane. The event was organized by Fr. Robert Spitzer, President of Gonzaga, physicist and adjunct fellow of Discovery Institute. This year’s theme, “Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions,” was taken from the subtitle of Berlinski’s latest book, The Devil’s Delusion (Crown Forum, 2008).

The conference was organized by the Faith and Reason Institute at Gonzaga, an organization dedicated to an integrationist understanding of faith and reason through a philosophical investigation into both the nature and results of scientific research, and through critical discussion and reflection on topics in philosophical theology. To this end, “Physics and the God of Abraham” focuses on the relationship between Judeo-Christian faith and the physical sciences, often dealing with the Judeo-Christian roots of modern science, the role that believers in the God of Abraham have played in scientific discovery, and the interpretation of modern physical theory in relation to philosophico-theological concerns.

In his lecture, “Naturalism’s Last Stand: Taking the Measure of the Multiverse,” Dr. Gordon explored the implausibilities and limitations of the speculative constructs offered by quantum cosmology, chaotic eternal inflation and the string-theoretic landscape to explain cosmological origins and fine-tuning. He argued that transcendent intelligent causation provides the only causally sufficient and metaphysically tenable explanation for what is known of the universe. Fr. Spitzer’s talk, “New Proofs for the Existence of God,” focused on evidence of creation and supernatural design in contemporary big bang cosmology, arguing for the inevitability of an initial singularity that requires a transcendent cause best described in the language of Thomistic apophatic theology. The final talk – entitled “Who’s Counting?” – was given by David Berlinski. Dr. Berlinski ventured beyond physical cosmology to the eternal verities of mathematics, examining the historical development of arithmetical conceptions from Euclid to Dedekind, and noting the independence of mathematical truth from physical reality; he thus ended his reflections with the provocative question, if 3+4=7 regardless of whether the universe exists, then who’s counting?

Further information about the conference may be found at:
http://www.gonzagafaithreason.org/physics-and-the-god-of-abraham.asp.

Professor Mansfield explains the Athenians and Machiavelli and the American Founders in wise ways that make you wish that he typified Harvard rather than stood against it so often. He also is droll as a philosopher having fun with a mere biologist.

The New York Times got the preview story wrong, and the Washington Post editorial writer probably was too rushed to question the charges of "creationism" coming from the National Center for Science Education, the Darwin-only lobby. So this week's important decisions by the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) on how to teach evolution were predicated in the media by the big question of whether teachers should provide both "strengths and weaknesses" of Darwin's theory. Those words might sound benign, readers were told, but they really are "code words" (take the press' word for it) for creationism and religion.

To the media left, any questioning of Darwin is reserved for denizens of Dogpatch.

So, what did the TSBE do? Well, it turns out that they are fairly adroit politicians. They did remove language providing for "strengths and weaknesses" and then added new language--quite a lot of it--providing that students will learn, for example, to "analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations…including examining all sides of scientific evidence… so as to encourage critical thinking by the student." Perfect! A policy distinction without a difference! In fact, the new standards are just fine, an improvement, in fact. Now teachers can tell the kids about the scientific evidence in a variety of fields that seems to contradict the Darwinian account as well as the supposed evidence in support.

Once again the NCSE was too-smart-by-half. It ran blogs making fun of religion, while organizing public speakers who gave fulsome testimony to their Christian faith and how compatible it is with "evolution" (meaning Darwinian evolution). To the purists like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers it probably makes them look like toadies.

In the end, the rhetoric meant to evoke fundamentalist cranks was mixed with pious statements doing the very kind of religious posturing the Darwinists project onto their foes, and reminding me of the church scenes from Blazing Saddles. It all backfired.

By demonizing specific words--and making the elimination of them the test of "science"--the NCSE and its state distributor, the Orwellian-named Texas Freedom Network, simply allowed the Board to do the obvious word shuffle. Okay, no "strengths and weakness, " but instead, we'll pass similar ideas in different words, and everyone will be happy. Except, of course, the NCSE and the TFN.

Don't expect the media to figure this out from the NCSE Talking Points memo, but the insiders get the picture. Dawkins must be enjoying a caustic chuckle at the expense of the NCSE.

Is Notre Dame for or against "dialogue," "conversation" and "debate" among different viewpoints? Yes, those are the standards on which university officials are defending the coming address by President Obama--a president whose decisions on behalf of abortion and embryonic stem cell research have been opposed by the Catholic Church.

But only two weeks ago Notre Dame was official co-sponsor in Rome of an international conference on Darwinian theory that specifically, publicly and energetically forbade participation by scientists who criticize Darwinian theory and support intelligent design. No "dialogue", "conversation", let alone "debate", for them!

So what is the lesson? Simply put, Notre Dame University supports openness to viewpoints that are supported by the Left and opposes openness to viewpoints supported from the Right. You can trash Catholic teachings on life issues at Notre Dame, but you cannot receive a hearing for scientific viewpoints that challenge scientific materialism.

I am for the free marketplace of ideas. But I also favor consistency, and Notre Dame flunks the test.

"Do you know who funded it?" asked the email from the AP reporter. She and a number of other people read my post from three days ago about the Darwin conference being held in Rome.

I took a deep breath and replied to the AP email, "Yes, I know who funded it." It was the Templeton Foundation.

I took a deep breath because Templeton is a powerful and well-connected. You don't want to cross Charles Harper of Templeton if you can help it. But in public and private Harper has attacked intelligent design and Discovery Institute. He is not just interested in discussion, but in molding the discussion in certain ways. To that end, Templeton funds go to many groups and individual writers who, perhaps coincidentally, could have an interest in how the Darwin versus design issue is discussed.

Here is today's AP story. Among other things, in my email last night to Nicole Winfield of the AP, I pointed out the following:

• The Pontifical Council on Culture has little money of its own for science programs. The staff explained this to me and so, too, did others in the Vatican. How much money Templeton is providing has not yet been reported anywhere.
  
• What you have in Rome right now is largely a Templeton-directed conference. There are many fine speakers. But not only were funds put up by the Templeton Foundation, but leading organizers and speakers and their organizations separately are recipients of Templeton grants. There's nothing wrong with that, but perhaps it does help explain the animus toward Darwin critics and ID supporters.

• At a June, 2007 meeting in the science office of the Council on Culture, Fr. Tomasz Tramfe acknowledged to me that there was a problem with inviting scientists who openly doubt Darwin and support intelligent design. When I asked further, he somewhat reluctantly advised me that the prohibition on scientists who support intelligent design came from the foundation that provided the funds, and he then acknowledged that that was the Templeton Foundation.
  
• As one official elsewhere quipped to me at the time, when it comes to conferences like these in Rome, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." Holding such a conference at the Vatican, however, doesn't commit the pope or the Church to the organizers' views.
  
• Templeton has done this sort of thing before, so I wasn't completely shocked. Still I was disappointed. The late Sir John Templeton accomplished much good and his foundation has been a positive force on other subjects, such as economics. My Discovery Institute colleague, George Gilder, was a speaker at a dinner honoring Sir John a few years ago. A couple of Discovery scientists once did get grants from Templeton Foundation.
  
• Therefore, I thought maybe we could talk to them about this conference. Last year I called another Templeton official I know slightly, who checked and told me that it was not the foundation's decision to exclude scientists who support intelligent design. But when I again talked (by phone) with Fr. Tramfe, he confirmed that, indeed, it was Templeton.
  
• I had even provided Fr. Tramfe with a list of scientists — many of them who happen to be orthodox Catholics — who would have been appropriate to invite. I understand that some of those scientists, such as Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, are being criticized at this conference, and, of course, they are unable to defend themselves.
  
• It is Templeton and its "advisors" (such as Francisco Ayala) who have the position that ID is not science and not theology.
  
• Ironically, Templeton itself is steeped in its own religious views and perspectives. I don't think the Catholic Church would embrace some of those views.
  
• It is surely another irony this week that some of those present who hold official advisory posts with Templeton and seem to be trying to pressure the Catholic Church — such as Dr. Ayala — are elsewhere prominently at odds with Catholic positions on social issues.
  
• This week's conference in Rome apparently is doing a good job of explaining how the Templeton Foundation, its grantees and chosen allies regard science. Some of the speeches undoubtedly are sturdy and sound. However, as I have been assured elsewhere, this conference should not be confused with the position of the Pope or of the Church as a whole, where evolution and design remain in serious and fruitful dialogue.

Many liberal writers deny that Darwin's theory--and Darwin's writings in Descent of Man--contributed to the racist thinking of later generations and even the race-theories of the Nazis. Tony Campolo, the noted liberal Christian who once advised President Bill Clinton, does not make that mistake.

Regrettably, however, Campolo apparently is unaware of the gaping holes in modern Darwinian theory as science. He might be more optimistic if he could see that the future of the scientific debate is bright. Both faith and science oblige us to see the exceptionalism of human beings.

The late "Travis", seen here in happier times.

Are you aware that some of the main cheerleaders for the birthday of Charles Darwin--such as Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer--are also the spokesmen for a plan to give great apes "human rights"?

It is grotesque mistake. Chimpanzees are not people, nor are gorillas. It is a romantic delusion borne of Hollywood fantasy and misleading "animal rights" propaganda that they are. The results can be catastrophe for all involved.

Imagine turning such tragedies into legal battles where the apes were considered to have rights comparable to those of people. But that is where scientific materialists would take us. The object is to erase the line between humans and animals.

This fine blog post by physicist Frank Tipler of Tulane is nominally about global warming, but it really is about the credentialism that makes a mockery of sound judgment in many scientific fields.

I am warming to a theme: Money and ideological power increasingly threaten to warp scientific research, sometimes to the exclusion of integrity and responsibility. The argument from authority is being overdone.

Here is the tip-off. As you notice scientists demand conformity based mainly on their say-so, become alert.

When members of the scientific establishment want to pursue a controversial scientific enterprise--let's say, crossing the human-animal species line through lab attempts at creating chimeras, such as ape-men--the argument is made that science must rule and moral objections are antiquated, unreasonable and repressive.

Darwinism, similarly, is not just true, we're told, but a thorough-going explanation for practically everything, because men with doctorates declare it.

But when big money and ideological power collude to resist scientific consensus--for example, in the cause of asserting animal rights versus human medical advances, or in the advocacy for "adjusting" a U.S. Census with sampling and computer models (as I have described recently)--then all of a sudden the response of "scientific community" is rather quiescent. Make way for money and power.

For another example, how many public billions (in bankrupt California alone) are being squandered on the barren fetish of embryonic stem cell research, while almost all the noted medical advances are coming from other forms of stem cells? Few scientists want to talk about this in polite company for fear of losing friends or funding.

I am fearful that federal and foundation grants are corrupting the priorities and integrity of science. It is a little-examined ethical scandal.

Dear Steve,

Your magazine's lively online service, Forbes.com, has been attacked by biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne for allowing several scientists who support intelligent design to dissent from an other-wise fawning parade of Darwinists who appeared in your spaces to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/12/evolution-creation-proof-opinions-darwin_0212_jerry_coyne.html

Coyne compares your carrying articles critical of Darwinian theory to support for Holocaust denial, among other extremities. He says you have "debased journalism as well as science."

Oh, my.

Actually, it is instructive to have Coyne exhibit in public the spirit of angry censorship that now pervades Darwinian science. Behind the scenes Coyne and his colleagues have intimidated a number of other media from publishing or interviewing scientific contrarians. It has become a trend.

There even was a legal effort by several Darwinists to block the showing of the 2008 Ben Stein film, Expelled. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. Recently, a telephone call from Richard Dawkins helped inveigle the president of the University of Vermont to dispense with Ben Stein as one of this year's commencement speakers. Stein's crime was to defend the academic freedom of intelligent design scientists in his film.

The academic left's assault on free speech and academic freedom is often accompanied by adhominem attack, as in Coyne's repeated false characterization of Dr. Michael Egnor of SUNY (Stonybrook)--one of your recent writers--as a "creationist". Egnor further is a mere medical doctor, in Coyne's telling, not a "genuine scientist" like Coyne.

In reality, Dr. Egnor is, indeed, a well-known neurosurgeon, but he also is a distinguished neuroscientist. He not only teaches, but he also has conducted pathfinding research with an intelligent design perspective. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford, Harvard, and UCLA, among other leading institutions, and his discoveries about the manner in which blood flows into the brain after head injuries have influenced surgical practice.

Who is Jerry Coyne to question the bona fides of such a man?

Forbes proudly calls itself "The Capitalist Tool," and you personally have dedicated yourself first and foremost to the advancement of freedom in many arenas, especially economics.

You don't need to be reminded, therefore, that there have been places and times where the arguments for capitalism and against socialism have been banished--by definition!--from economics classes, exactly as Darwinists want to forbid the weaknesses of Darwinian theory from being heard in America's high schools and to prevent scientists who support intelligent design from being employed at universities--or read on the pages of your publication.

There is an arrogant, almost totalitarian mentality among certain scientists and Coyne is a prime example. There is a coercive ideology behind their calculations that challenges all friends of liberty.

With best regards,

Bruce Chapman

It is the theme of Ben Stein's 2008 motion picture documentary, Expelled, that the science establishment is fast racing past smugness to persecution. The central issue is the institutional mistreatment of scientists who question Darwinian theory and posit the scientific case for intelligent design. Once dissidents are uncovered at universities and the Smithsonian, Stein reported, they are hounded out of their academic positions like suspected Communists in the early 1950s.

Stein had the goods on the Darwinists and they didn't like it. Two plaintiffs went to court to try to stop distribution of Expelled. They failed, and they must have been especially upset when over a million theater-goers paid to see the documentary (now briskly selling in the DVD market).

It now turns out that a further course of academic authoritarianism is being attempted by the Darwinian Left. It seems you cannot even defend the scientists who question Darwin, as Stein did, without being given the jack-boot yourself. Today the University of Vermont, lap of luxurious free speech on any other subject, demonstrated the point by pressuring Ben Stein to withdraw as a commencement speaker. It is not to be tolerated that someone would accuse Darwinians of intolerance! (AP and Chronicles of Higher Education stories here.)

Author, economist, actor, raconteur, Stein speaks on many stages on many subjects, always with droll humor. He writes regularly for The American Spectator and occasionally (on economics) for The New York Times. He is one of the nation's leading exponents of our men and women in the military--the "real stars" of our time, as he rightly says. It doesn't matter. The Darwinian Inquisitors have him sighted in their search engines and when his commencement speech was announced they came after the University of Vermont by their hundreds.

The academic farm of Dairyland was easily cowed. Stein found the reaction of UVM "pathetic", which it was, but one hopes he also realizes that he has been vindicated. The collapse of liberal education standards at the University of Vermont demonstrates his point in Expelled completely.

The flighty Dr. Dan Fogel, UVM's president, for example, should feature in some future Stein satire on double-talk. After dumping on Stein, Fogel chirped, "This is not, to my mind, an issue about academic freedom or the openness of the campus to all points of view," a statement of bureaucratese that is best translated as, "This is an issue about academic freedom and it is an issue of openness of the campus to all points of view."

Meanwhile, though the AP picked up the Vermont story, it is usually the case that the major media ignore this kind of event, or refuse to see the issues and don't even report the facts accurately. Sometimes, however, conservative media rise to defend campus conscientious objectors on such questions as global warming, embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia. Let's hope they decide that this is one of those times.

Scroll down to the December 10 item of Evolution News (Rob Crowther) and enjoy the lovely whimsy.

The economy not only is terrible, but no one really seems on top of the problem. The terrorists proceed as if the United States hadn't just had an election (didn't anyone tell them to knock it off?). The weather outside is frightful (let it snow, let it snow, etc.), but it all is global warming, anyhow, warm or cold. In short, we should all be in a bad mood.

But in churches all across the world this is the third Sunday in Advent, and Christians are joyful--in the very teeth of adversity.

Can you understand why?

The December First Things, edited by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Joseph Bottum, carries a very satisfying article by Anthony Flew rebuking Richard Dawkins as a "secularist bigot". That is about right, and it is time that this view was expressed by someone who knows the man personally.

Flew is the famous atheist philosopher who announced in 2004 that he had been persuaded by intelligent design arguments to abandon the faith of no-faith and accept a deistic God. It was an honest affirmation by an honest intellectual. For his pains Richard Dawkins, his one-time ally, pilloried Flew in The God Delusion, implying that the old man (85) was senile.

Flew's witty reposte is not yet available online (you should subscribe to First Things anyhow), but I will note especially his takedown of The God Delusion as so lacking in useful content that it shows Dawkins "to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: a secularist bigot."

"Helpfully," he adds, "my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary defines a bigot as an 'obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view.'"

On a more academic plane, Flew finds Dawkins guilty of an unforgivable failure in anyone seeking truth in a subject, a "scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine that he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."

That is, Dawkins, unlike, say, Michael Behe, does not play fair with his opponents. He is a propagandist.

The same may be true, sadly, of some otherwise fine people in an obscure office down a Vatican corridor that is so long it isn't even part of St. Peter's Square. I am talking about the Pontifical Council of Culture that is holding a conference on evolutionary theory next March. Commenting gently but firmly--also in the new First Things--Fr. Neuhaus follows the press comments of a Council spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Marc Leclerc, who explained that an express decision not to invite proponents of "creationism and intelligent design" (which he ties together) is because sponsors "wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific."

Fr. Neuhaus analyzes the reasons and excuses proffered and concludes that the real aim seems to be to "secure for the Catholic Church a clean bill of health from....(those) who condemn any deviatiion from scientistic ideology as anti-intellectualism."

The Vatican has still not really dealt adequately with the issue of Darwinian evolution, but on evolution broadly Pope Benedict XVI continues to make more sense than anyone else in the hierarchy. His greeting last Friday to the Pontifical Academies of Science conference that is now concluding in Rome is well worth reading.

The conference as a whole appears to have been something of a dud, perhaps because it is a closed affair and--more to the point--it has been used to showcase a viewpoint spectrum that ranges only from ardent materialism (Stephen Hawking) to various forms of theistic evolutionism/Deism. Intelligent design was slated for an attack by one participant (Maxine Singer of the United States), but the abstract of that attack betrayed another straw man argument of the kind that Darwinists typically construct in order to avoid real debate. No scientist who supports ID was invited to attend or speak.

That is not the fault of the Holy Father, however. The Academies of Science is a small, mostly self-perpetuating advisory group that does not require members to be religious, let alone Christian, let alone Catholic. It obviously does not command much attention in the Vatican, or, it seems, even the media.

Nonetheless, the Holy Father's welcoming remarks to the conference deserve attention. I particularly liked the image of evolution as a "scroll"--a book--to be read. That sounds like ID to me.

Here are some added thoughts from a friendly, but anonymous, critic:

1. There is a clear affirmation by the Pope of the doctrine of creation: the universe is contingent and had a beginning, it is not something that is self-sufficient and eternally existent. We cannot understand the universe, he says, exclusively on the "horizontal” level of “mutation and transformation,” but rather we must acknowledge the vertical or “transcendent origin of participated being.”...“In order to develop or evolve, the world must first be, and thus have come from nothing into being.” This is a clear affirmation of the orthodox doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

2. By stating that “the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously,” the Pope is clearly foreclosing on any deistic interpretation of science. God is involved in Creation for, if He were not, it would not and could not continue to exist. In speaking of Aquinas’ views here of the Creator as “the cause of every being and all becoming,” the Pope is clearly saying that God is the First Cause of the universe and that the universe is under His intelligent direction – God is the primary cause of everything that happens, while causes operating on the level of the “horizontal origin of the unfolding of events, which is history,” are only secondary causes. Furthermore, in stating that “the notion of creation must transcend the horizontal origin of the unfolding of events,” there is the suggestion of an Augustinian and Thomistic conception of eternity in which God transcends time entirely and views the universe as a whole from Creation to Consummation as one creative act.

3. The etymological discussion of “evolve” as meaning “to unroll a scroll” as in reading a book is highly unusual and intriguing. The clear reference is to God as the author of nature in the same way that He is the author of Scripture. The book of nature is then read “according to the different approaches of the sciences, while all the time presupposing the foundational presence of the author who has wished to reveal himself therein.” As a consequence, the world, rather than being chaotic, “resembles an ordered book.” It is cosmos, not chaos. What is more, this book is legible, since it is written in the language of mathematics.

This is similar to how Galileo framed the question. The “legibility” of matter is found in the mathematics that describes it and reveals “the visible inner logic of the cosmos.” Naturalism has no explanation for why nature should be intelligible on the basis of mathematics, indeed, for why it possesses any order at all. That the book of nature is written by its Author in the language of mathematics, which is readable by man, is therefore an instance of God’s revealing Himself in nature. It is furthermore the only reason that nature is intelligible, for when we study it in such a way, we are seeking to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Here the Holy Father is using another interesting expression, one that is usually credited to the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) (“I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature," wrote Kepler, "it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God”)

4. Although a bit unclear in his meaning, the Pope states that “there always remains a broad range of intelligible events, and the process is rational in that it reveals an order of evident correspondences and undeniable finalities.” The correspondences in the natural world are clear enough: In the inorganic realm there is a relationship between microstructure and macrostructure, and in the organic realm there is a correspondence between structure and function. “Undeniable finalities” should probably be understood in the Thomistic-Aristotelian context of final causes, that is, purposes. The reason that microstructure has the mathematical description it does is found in the macrostructures it thereby makes possible; the reason that biological structures have the form that they do resides in the functions that they are intended to perform. In the spiritual realm, there is a correspondence and purpose revealed between knowledge of the truth and freedom. I can only interpret this in light of John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This is an oblique reference to Christ as the Light of the World who releases us from darkness and bondage into knowledge of who God is.

5. Finally, Pope Benedict reaffirms John Paul II’s reflections on the origin of the human soul and the Magisterium of the Church in stating that “every spiritual soul is created immediately by God” and is not “’produced’ by the parents.” This is an affirmation of (theological) creationism over traducianism as an explanation of the origin of the soul. The Pope furthermore affirms the immortality of the immaterial soul. Both of these affirmations make it clear that there is a distinction to be made between human beings and the rest of the biological world – there is a spiritual break in continuity between humanity and others of God’s creatures. As the Pope says, “[t]his points to the distinctiveness of anthropology, and invites exploration of it by modern thought.” Humanity has a unique place in the cosmos.

In short, the Pope seems not only open to intelligent design, but he affirms it in the sense that nothing takes place in the universe apart from God’s sustaining life and authors it--that order being revealed in our study of nature through the language of mathematics. The Pope is rejecting the neo-Darwinian view that humanity is the end result of blind processes that did not have him in view.

Richard Dawkins' replacement plans on steering his predecessor's position away from attacking God and replacing it with a more general approach to science and public understanding. Sounds like an improvement.

The New York Times unwittingly serves the cause of science and education with its tendentious front page article today.

Start with the Mickey Mouse analogy. Mickey's change in appearance over the decades doesn't provide an example of "evolution," folks. Mickey was intelligently designed. (Walt Disney drew him.) This is an elementary mistake in logic by the teacher that the reporter--and The New York Times--not only bought, but used to highlight their story.

Then there is the ridiculous peppered moth case that is supposed to show students how evolution takes place. (Light moths that dwell on dark trees' trunks are more likely to be seen and therefore eaten, etc.) But even if the peppered moth experiments had been valid they only would show micro-evolution, not macro-evolution (new species). Hardly anyone disputes micro-evolution. Talking about it is mainly a way to confuse people about the real issues and impute to critics as criticism they don't advance. But, in any case, the peppered moth experiment results themselves were not valid. They were discredited years ago (the moths were pinned to the trees, and, furthermore, the peppered moths live in tree canopies, not on the trunks). The scientific literature has been clear on this for years. Yet, as we all fear about the schools, they continue to cite evidence that even scientists who are Darwinists no longer cite.

The students in Florida were skeptical about the teacher's "facts". Good for them. They were right, and their teacher, who may be a fine fellow in other respects, abused their trust with his heavy ideological hand. Thanks, New York Times, for showing how it is done.

The Chronicle of Higher Education shows courage in publishing a non-P.C. article by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars that describes the real, as opposed to the putative, obstacles to increasing the number of American-born and educated scientists. Anti-intellectualism is a big part of it.

There is a problem, however, that Peter Woods overlooks, either because it doesn't occur to him or because he doesn't wish to spur the science establishment to even more outrage by mentioning it. That problem is the contemporary hostility that many committed Christian young people, and perhaps other religious youth, encounter in the sciences these days. Even those who have not experienced it become alert to it and, in turn, may be discouraged.

Darwinists can deny that this is the case, but a serious study, I submit, would show that it is so. Asked in private, when their words can't be twisted and asked in a neutral manner, many religious students report a classroom environment that demeans religious belief and demeans religious people. If it is known that they do not accept Darwinian accounts of the rise and development of life, or even the development of universe before life arose on Earth, students know that they could be graded down in some classes (a certain University of Minnesota biology class comes to mind, but it is unusual only in the professor's lack of subtlety). If they decide to seek an advanced degree the opposition will be stronger and they normally dare not express their convictions. If they somehow get a doctorate, they cannot expect a teaching position, or recommendations, once any serious dissent from Darwinism is detected. And if they secure a job they will not get tenure if word leaks out (see Expelled). Even after they have tenure they can still be maligned and harassed and even effectively demoted.

Does anyone at CHE or the National Association of Scholars wish to contest either that many religious students are aware of this situation or that it can be a disincentive for a career in science? Or that in many cases their apprehensions are well-justified? Articles can be written that pooh-pooh what I have just written. But many youth know otherwise. Anecdotal evidence perhaps, but I have talked to a number of them.

How many students might we be talking about? Probably a minority.

But possibly a big minority. It's part of the group that loves science at first, and then is turned off.

Lost in some cases to contemporary dogmatism and bigotry. A country that really cared to raise up a larger community of scientists would address it.

The University of Minnesota has now made clear that it is within the orbit of academic freedom at that institution to engage in active religious bigotry--in the case of P.Z. Myers, desecrating the Eucharist from a Catholic Church--while it is not within the reach of academic freedom to teach any criticisms of Darwinian evolution or the scientific case of intelligent design. This comes from the Catholic League:

UNIV. OF MINN. REFUSES TO PENALIZE MYERS

The Chancellor of the University of Minnesota, Morris (UMN) released a statement today regarding the intentional desecration of the Eucharist by Professor Paul Z. Myers. “I believe that behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible,” said Jacqueline Johnson. Importantly, she added that the school’s Code of Conduct prohibits such behavior. However, she also stressed that academic freedom allows faculty members “to speak or write as a public citizen without institutional discipline or restraint….” Nowhere did she say Myers would be disciplined.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“This is classic: Johnson admits that Myers has violated the UMN’s Code of Conduct and then proceeds to tell us why he is being allowed to do so with impunity—it’s a matter of academic freedom.

“Academic freedom is not the issue: academic malpractice is. For example, Section 10.21 (b) of UMN’s Tenure Code explicitly says that a tenured faculty member can be terminated or suspended for ‘unprofessional conduct which severely impairs a faculty member’s fitness in a professional capacity.’

“In 2001, this part of the Tenure Code was invoked against a professor at UMN because he had images of child porn on his computer. It should now be invoked against Myers, and that is why we will appeal to UMN’s Board of Regents to do just that. It strains credulity to maintain that Christian students can expect fair treatment by a faculty member who has publicly shown nothing but contempt for their religion.

“It is a sure bet that UMN would not tolerate a white professor who worked a comedy club on weekends trashing blacks. Indeed, it would say that such behavior disqualifies his ability to be objective. In many respects Myers is worse, and that is why sanctions are warranted.”

Contact Myers at myersp@morris.umn.edu

Contact President Robert Bruininks at bruin001@umn.edu

Susan A. Fani Director of Communications Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights catalyst@catholicleague.org New York, NY 10123 212-371-3191 212-371-3394 (fax) http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1467
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Michael Medved, now a Discovery senior fellow, has noted often that outsiders imagine that Hollywood's god is money; but it's not, it's the approval of one's peers. A fine piece by pajamas media shows how this is playing out now. Note that Expelled did uncommonly well for a political documentary, but not only was it not reviewed much when it came out, but even its financial records are ignored now.

There are several good news stories on today's development in the federal court case in which Yoko Ono seeks to prevent further distribution of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the Ben Stein film. And then there is this one from ars technica:

Notice the way the writer feels obliged to abuse free speech—by misrepresenting intelligent design—even as he defends it.

We still do have free speech protections in America, but we also have the right to tie up opponents in tactical lawsuits, which is just what Yoko Ono did at a crucial point in the screening of Expelled. Nonetheless, Expelled has become one of the most-viewed theater-released documentaries ever.

We are not quite at the point where there should be a film about the way Expelled itself was attacked, but there is a story there.

The spirit of authoritarian censorship is all over the cultural left these days. These were the same people who opposed authority back in the 60s, weren't they—people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono? "Imagine"!

Michael Gerson cannot bring himself to point out the theme of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that has been in theaters for three weeks now, but he still hits the mark with his column on the bogus "War on Science" issue that certain liberals have tried to float. He cites a useful paper by Yuval Levin of Ethics and Public Policy Center. Both are former Bush White House officials.

David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (reviewed brilliantly by George Gilder in the new National Review) is just arriving in book stores, while in Paris an entirely different, and also invaluable, book, Origines (Origins), has been published this week in French by Saint-Simon.

Those who know Berlinski's exquisite scientific inquiries into the origins of life, mind and matter will recognize the themes. As the dust jacket states (translated here into English):

Here are three great mysteries: the existence of the human mind; the existence of living creatures; and the existence of matter.
Why are they there?
Many scientists claim that while we cannot answer these questions in detail, we can answer them in a general way.
Can we indeed?
In this profoundly provocative book, David Berlinski, the best-selling author of La vie revee des maths and Une breve histoire des mathematiques (A Brief History of Mathematics), examines these questions, and argues that it is far from certain that we have answered them at all.
Origins will appeal to readers who believe that these great questions have been settled, and to readers who believe that they have not.

(And just to test your French:

Voici trois grands mystères: l'existence de l'esprit humain, l'existence de
les créatures vivantes, et l'existence de la matière.
Pourquoi sont-ils?
Nombreux sont les scientifiques qui prétendent que, si nous ne pouvons pas répondre à ces questions en détail, nous
vous pouvez y répondre d'une manière générale.
Peut-on en effet?
Dans ce livre provocateur profondément, David Berlinski, l’auteur de
La vie revee des maths et Une brève histoire des mathematiques, examine ces
questions et fait valoir qu'il est loin d'être certain que nous avons répondu à tous.
Origines fera appel aux lecteurs qui croient que ces grandes questions ont été
réglé, et aux lecteurs qui croient qu'ils n'ont pas.)

David is back in Paris after his U.S. tour and the opening of the Ben Stein film, Expelled, in which his role is prominent. He will return to these shores in a few weeks, speaking, among other places, at the annual Gilder/Forbes Telecosm conference, held this year at Lake George, New York from May 27 to 29.

A haiku dedicated to Yoko:

Yoko Ono mad
"Imagines" bad infringement
Stein movie Expelled?

Editorial comment: How can Left-wing Darwinists be so dense as to think that the way to deal with a film about their efforts to shut down dissenting scientists is to try to shut down the film, too? They are just proving the film's point! (See this release from the Expelled producers, received today.)

This is the footnoted version of the article that ran in Thursday's Seattle Times.

Richard Dawkins and the evolution lobby do not see eye to eye on strategy. But it seems that the National Center for Science Education and “Expelled Exposed”, the NCSE’s website assailing the film Expelled, don’t want you to know that. The situation is evident in the film that opens Friday, for all to see. The interviews with Dawkins are dispositive.

First we meet Eugenie Scott of NCSE, sounding so invincibly cheery that one suspects she must moonlight for the Oakland, CA Chamber of Commerce. She relishes telling about all the nice religious people she has lined up around the country to support Darwinian theory.

But then, here comes Dawkins, backed by a parade of voluble atheist scientists who far outrank Scott. They are the famous experts, she is a lobbyist with a political approach that is too-smart-by-half. They don’t want any more confusion raised in people’s minds about whether religion is compatible with an accurate understanding of evolution.

It is not a question of who is more of an atheist. The NCSE is stuffed with atheists. The difference is over whether to lead with atheism, or hide it while you charge that the other side—the ID supporters—are the ones with a religious agenda. Indeed, Eugenie Scott makes this religious case against ID “creationism” in one speech after another, including, without irony, speeches to one atheist conclave after another.

But the evangelizing atheism that Dawkins and other top Darwinian scientists present to the Expelled audience—even including personal witness accounts of how they variously came to faithlessness upon hearing the Gospel of Darwin--is a political embarrassment for the NCSE. It probably is not a topic in the film the NCSE would like to discuss. It also is not a subject its close allies in the media and higher education want aired.

In turn, the NCSE’s coy reticence about the end-game plainly annoys the world’s most famous Darwinist. Dr. Dawkins rejects the pretense that real Darwinism is neutral on religion. Oh, you can believe that if you want, just as you can believe in “fairies at the bottom of the garden.” But, believing that Darwin and religion are compatible doesn’t make them compatible. Interviewed for Expelled, Dawkins makes clear that neo-Darwinism, properly understood, virtually compels atheism and leaves no room for religion, and, further, that this truth is being fudged by people in the “science lobby, evolution lobby” (the NCSE).

“There's a kind of science defense lobby or an evolution defense lobby, in particular,” he tells the camera. “They are mostly atheists, but they are wanting to --desperately wanting -- to be friendly to mainstream, sensible religious people. And the way you do that is to tell them that there's no incompatibility between science and religion.”

This plainly rankles.

“If they called me as a witness, and a lawyer said, 'Dr. Dawkins, has your belief in evolution, has your study of evolution turned you toward (atheism)?' I would have to say yes. And that is the worst possible thing I could say for winning you that court case. So people like me are bad news for...the science lobby, the evolution lobby.”

He adds, “By the way, I'm being a helluva lot more frank and honest in this interview than many people in this field would be.”

Dawkins wants an end put to pussy footing. The NCSE, however, wants to pussy foot as long as possible. That way they can enlist nominally religious people and people who wrongly think they can be both Darwinists (holding that there there is no guidance in nature) and theists (holding that there is guidance in nature, however disguised). If there are ministers and scientists who want to “believe” in Darwinism and also in a God who actually plays some active role in the world, or in the Easter Bunny, for that matter, the NCSE wants them on board. In fact, they must be pushed forward so they can gull the public and, one might add, the media and the courts.

Trouble is, here is Richard Dawkins in Expelled--exposing the NCSE.

Apparently, relations are strained between Oxford and Oakland and have been for some time. Now that story is real, unlike the straw men the NCSE’s website is trying to construct.

Schools are in recess this time of year, so busloads of girls using "like" as a verbal crutch and wise cracking, baggy pants boys are wending their way through the cherry blossoms of America's capital. In these security-conscious times, when it is harder than ever to get a tour of the White House or Capitol, parents and chaperones are quick to steer the young to the Mall.

A traditional favorite is the National Museum of Natural History, where for several years now Darwinian fairytales have been presented in an exhibit on mammals. Young human offspring at the museum are encouraged to have a family reunion with their "relatives", including chimps, dogs, and mice. Here are strange just-so stories proposed as fact, telling the gullible, for example, how the giraffe evolved its neck. Presto-change-o. At the core of the exhibit is a tiny rodent whom the naïve teens are supposed to venerate as their direct ancestor. It cost a lot of money to bamboozle the folks this way. And you taxpayers paid for it.

Yes, this is the same Natural History museum where an affiliated scientist
bragged in one of the emails the House of Representatives found a couple of years ago that her own son uses "under dog" instead of "under God" when saying the
Pledge of Allegiance.

For the more discerning visitors, a trip to Mt. Vernon is recommended. Thank goodness for old-fashioned philanthropy and a non-ironic perspective. George Washington's home boasts a lavish new visitors' center and education program that puts government museums to shame. The heroic history of the Revolution is evoked in a stirring orientation film written by Lionel Chetwynd.

Mt. Vernon is not hesitant to hail our true ancestor-in-patriotism as the hero he was, the flesh-and-blood Father of his Country. It's a lot easier for a kid to look up to George than down to a rodent.

With evident personal satisfaction, David Berlinski sashayed (or did he
"chasse"?) around Washington this week in promotion of The Devil's Delusion, heralded by an article in Harper's ("The Evidence of Things Not Seen") and another in Commentary ("God of the Gaps"). C-Span covered his Discovery Institute talk at our DC offices and will air it Saturday night (11:00 Eastern, 8:00 PDT) and again Sunday.

He's good, this man. If there were "best supporting role" awards for documentary films, Berlinski would win for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

He will be in Los Angeles this weekend, Seattle for a week, then Dallas,
Minnesota, San Francisco, back to DC, and, I don't know where else. New York, I think. There are some excellent reviews pending, I am told--it is not considered LC (literarily correct) to say what you know on this topic.

The Darwinian Establishment that Berlinski eviserates so surgically surely
will try to slice him back. Maybe they can get the NYT to assign the review to Dawkins, as happened to Mike Behe's latest. There's nothing like a studious, objective reader.

WHO cares? The Devil's Delusion is climbing at Amazon and will surely
eclipse the other attacks on the "Atheists' scientific pretensions" that gained attention in recent months. For anyone who is really objective, The Devil's Delusion will eclipse the atheists themselves.

A crowd of 350 invited guests attended a pre-screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed tonight in Seattle's Pacific Place. I can see now why the eminent Richard Dawkins, who crashed a screening in Minneapolis last week, remains so upset about Ben Stein's movie. He must not have realized until he sat in the theater last week and heard people laughing at him on the screen that he had made himself look foolish. On his website he calls the audience "sycophantic."

Among other things, he writes that before he was interviewed he didn't know who actor/economist/columnist Ben Stein was or that his droll monotone had comedic appeal to those strange Americans. He's so "boring," Dawkins writes. (Ferris Bueller thought the very same, Richard.)

Of Stein's laconic inquiry as to whether he saw any way intelligent design could occur in the universe, Dawkins complains that "I was charitable enough to think he (Stein) was an honestly stupid man seeking enlightenment from a scientist."

How typically "charitable" of Dawkins that he had such a generous thought. And then to have his charity betrayed when the cheeky Yankee actually used Dawkins' extensive reply in the film!

In Seattle, the sycophantic audience chuckled, then guffawed as Stein slowly winkled out of Dawkins the answer that intelligent space aliens might have "seeded" the Earth with its first life molecule. (Actually, does anyone wonder why those "highly evolved" aliens would stop with creating a mere molecule? After coming so far, why not linger and go all the way, create, oh, I don't know, fishes and amphibians and human beings while they were at it?)

So now he deplores the film's "cheap laughs at expense of scientists who are making honest attempts to explain difficult points." He means himself. He's a victim, see. So is his buddy, P. Z. Myers, who started attacking the film weeks ago on his blog, and was not let into the Minneapolis shindig.

Yet in his blog Dawkins complains that Expelled's tale of persecuted scientists seems "whiny" to him.

I suspect that Dawkins may have been upset, furthermore, to see captured on film the hard swipe he takes at Eugenie Scott and the accommodationist strategy of the National Center for Science Education. It is a telling moment, and give credit to Dawkins for his candor about the atheism baked into Darwinism and the deceitful nature of the NCSE's claims of compatibility between Darwinism and religion. He does a commendable job of pulling the veil aside.

Less candor is apparent as Dawkins returns to his charge (made in The New York Times) that the film unfairly shows Darwinism's influence on Nazi race policies. "The alleged association of Darwinism with Nazism is harped on for what seemed like hours, and it is quite simply an outrage," he scolds. Having seen that statement before last night's screening, I tried as best I could in the dark to clock the time in the film devoted to the Nazis. It was roughly 10 minutes. That included Ben Stein's chilling interview with the head of the museum at the former sanatorium at Hadamar, near Dachau, where the director readily acknowledged--even insisted on--the Darwinian provenance of the Nazi treatment of the handicapped "patients" there. And it included clips from Nazi propaganda films that eerily advocate the line of "natural selection" in human beings. How can you argue with that? The film is careful to qualify the case of Darwinism's influence on Nazi policies. But evidence of influence is abundant. (Much more could have been used if the film really had spent "hours" on the subject.)

As I have noted before, the Expelled producers are nervous about what they see as potential efforts by screening interlopers to record the film and expose it in ways that would damage its commercial value. In Seattle, even some of the "sycophants" were chuckling as a boilerplate copyright protection warning was read aloud. But I don't think any in the audience would have characterized the person who read it the way Dawkins characterizes the one who read it in Minneapolis--as a "Gauleiter."

A "Gauleiter"? A Nazi district leader?

Funny word choice for a man who is unhappy that Expelled raises the question of Darwinian theory's influence on the Nazis.

Dawkins on his website is at pains to protest that he himself does not promote a Darwinian society. Good for him. But he might be more persuasive if he were willing to concede that a Darwinian society not only would have the potential to become a fascist state--which he does--but also that once in history Darwinist views contributed to creating just such a state.

After last night's screening, a good part of the crowd in Seattle stayed around as long as the theater management would allow to talk with three of the Darwin critics and ID scientists who were interviewed in the movie. I wish Richard Dawkins had snuck into that event so they could have invited him to join them.

I just received the new Harper's . The issue's first essay under "Reading" is "The Evidence of Things Not Seen," by David Berlinski, the noted mathematician whose writings have won many awards and whose new book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, comes out next month. David's essay is the perfect punctuation to the end of the American Atheists convention held in Minneapolis over Easter Weekend (when else would atheists meet, Christmas?).

Suffice that Berlinski's article--derived from the book--is a joy. There is at least one other leading intellectual journal with a piece from the book coming out.

And then there is Berlinski's major role in the new Ben Stein film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The film comes out on April 18. Also, George Gilder has persuaded Dr. Berlinski to address the opening of the Telecosm Conference at Lake George in May andthere will be Devil's Delusion book parties in Washington, D.C. and Seattle (see our DI homepage for schedules). And speeches elsewhere.

I can summarize the Berlinski review of real scientific knowledge (as opposed to fanciful guesswork and speculation) on the origin of the universe, the origin of matter and the origin of life: No One Knows.

How many of his fellow scientists will admit as much?

Gilder says Berlinski's new work is the "best book of the decade."

Well, that leaves two years for Dawkins, et al to mount a reply.

The New York Times story on Richard Dawkins' gatecrashing a special screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in Minneapolis Thursday night contains the usual boilerplate bias of reporter Cornelia Dean. (Expelled is a "creationist" film, you see, and ID is an "ideological cousin of creationism", etc.).

(Read the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/science/21expelledw.html?em&ex=1206417600&en=46c17af663bbda1d&ei=5087%0A)

Nonetheless, Dean's report contains two nuggets. One is that Dawkins had flown to Minneapolis to accompany P. Z. Myers to a convention of atheists. That underscores the real mission of these gents, as I have said before. When they accuse ID supporters of injecting religion into science they really are just projecting.

Second, and more important, Dawkins says that the film's references to the linkage of Darwinist thought and the Nazi's race policies is a "major outrage." Great. Let him debate that with scholars who, unlike the one-time zoologist, now turned polemicist, actually have studied the matter.

No one in the film, and certainly not Richard Weikart, historian and author of From Darwin to Hitler, sees one-to-one causality. But Darwinist thought did influence the Nazis. Probably more than anywhere, the ideas of racial superiority and eugenics were fervently advocated in Germany for decades, among others, by the noted Darwin enthusiast Ernst Haeckel. As a result, race theory and eugenics were not a hard sell to the German volk, including educated people, when the Nazis took charge.

Lovely stuff. Maybe Dawkins should make a tour of it.

In Expelled, Ben Stein does.

Like many films in pre-release, Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is being selectively screened around the country to develop a buzz.

Press will be invited to screen the final version in three weeks, I’m told, while the official opening in theaters is April 18. Surprisingly, even the private screenings are causing excitement. Audiences love it.

In January I saw an early version that was screened in Fort Lauderdale and I will be at a Seattle screening soon. The Darwinists who are portrayed in the film -- giving answers to questions submitted in advance! -- are worried about what the public will think of their views when produced incontrovertibly in their own words. What they say is damning, all right, but it’s not much different than what they write in books and say in speeches and other appearances.

There is a growing fear by the producers that Darwinists may be trying get into the showings to make bootleg copies (for the Web?), possibly in hopes of damaging the commercial value. Others may be crashing because they want to trash it before it even gets reviewed by the media. P.Z. Myers, who was not let into a showing last night in Minnesota, probably falls in the latter category.

Amazingly, the best selling Oxford scientist/author Richard Dawkins also crashed a showing of Expelled in Minnesota last night and he not only was let in, but introduced at the end of the showing.

Dawkins apparently acknowledged that he had not been invited and did not have a ticket. A sophomoric side to his ideological campaign is thus revealed.

Dawkins, understandably is nervous about this film, among other reasons because Ben Stein has him on camera acknowledging that life on Earth may, indeed, have been intelligently designed, but that it had to have been accomplished by space aliens! This is hilarious, of course, because Dawkins is death on intelligent design. But it turns out that that view applies only if it includes the possibility that the designer might be God.

Myers, of course, relished being expelled from Expelled, but objective observers know that Myers is the most vociferous advocate of expelling Darwin critics from academia. Not from movie pre-screenings where he wasn’t invited, mind you, but from their jobs. Too bad the film doesn’t show (and I wish it had), his promotion of advice to attack teachers and professors who dare question Darwin’s theory. The whole point of Myers is that he is a take-no-prisoners, crusading atheist scientist who has made it his purpose in life to harass people who disagree with him. Dawkins turns out to be his buddy and mutual admirer.

Frankly, I wish the producers would have a special pre-release screening for the Darwinists who are interviewed in the film -- and invite some of the rest of us who have seen their depredations up close. We’d be glad to debate right there.

Among other things, I’d like to read some of the Darwinists’ statements and charges back to them and ask them to defend themselves. One of the most preposterous is that the well-funded’ Discovery Institute is funding this film! ( 1-They seem to have far more money available to them than we do, and 2-We are saving our pennies for the upcoming Broadway musical comedy, Darwin’s Folly.)

I have to say something else, personally. I have been sandbagged by one TV and documentary crew after another. So have Discovery-affiliated scientists. The interviewers all say they just want to understand the issue. Going in, they are quite clear about definitions, for example, and only start using Darwinist definitions of our positions when they report. They never provide questions in advance and even if they say they will stick to science questions and public policy, almost all sneak in questions about personal religious beliefs. Then, of all the footage, guess what gets on TV or in the documentary?

So it really is pathetic of Dawkins, et al to complain that when they were interviewed for Expelled they didn’t know that the film was inherently unfriendly. These are interviewees who received pre-agreed questions, signed release forms after the interviews were conducted, and actually got paid for their time.

I am getting more excited about Expelled myself and can’t wait to see the finished version. I suspect I’ll wish that the film was twice as long and had twice as much from Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, et al. From what I already have seen, they really expose themselves as the anti-intellectual, bullying poseurs they are -- small men who above all are afraid of a fair contest.

"Theodore Dalrymple" not only has one of the most droll pen names I have seen (the man is a doctor who enjoys his privacy), but he also is one of England's best writers on social issues--and its finest contrarian. One of his favorite targets is scientism and the ways it ravages the poor and ignorant. In this review in The New York Sun he is singing the song whose tune I know well and whose lyrics I never tire of: "Marx is Dead, Freud is Dead, and by the way, so is Darwin."http://www.nysun.com/article/69618

Americans and Europeans don't pay enough attention to the fact that the second largest body of Christians in the world, after the Roman Catholics, are the Eastern Orthodox, about 300 million souls, by some counts. If these two bodies ever get together, Christianity will heal a nearly thousand year rift and greatly enhance the authority of traditional understanding of Christain doctrine. Striving for such unity was a high priority for Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI has not slackened the Vatican's pace on this topic. Slowly, but surely, progress is being made.

Among the several Orthodox national groups, the Russian Orthodox have long been the most resistant to unity discussions. Even a high level meeting was unachievable. But now the Russians' past reluctance seems to be dissipating a bit. A story from a week ago illuminates a new milestone.

I was out of the country when this story first appeared, so I missed it. But the mainstream media seem to have missed it, too. Too bad.

Christianity is growing in the Global South, but, beset by secularism and an increasingly truculent and letigious atheism, it it seems to lack confidence in Europe and most of the rest of the Global North. But the fall of Soviet communism has unleashed something of a revival in Russia that could contribute to a general revival of Christianity elsewhere in the "North". Unexpected because of its geographical location, a Orthodox/Catholic demarche would be a true stimulus to broade revival.

The Orthodox have their own problems, including divisions, but on faith and morals they tend to be quite...well, orthodox. Therefore, the unity talks of Rome and Moscow bode well for all traditionalist Chrstians, and for those of other faith communities who wish them well.

My colleague, David Berlinski, is a profound and adroit writer on matters scientific. But he admits that he has no talent for the close plotting and realistic dialogue of a novel. Fortune, however, has given him two children who do: Claire (a sometime novelist living in Istanbul and working on a new non-fiction book on Margaret Thatcher) and a son, Mischa. A few weeks ago, David let it drop that Mischa had written a "wonderful" first novel called Fieldwork that was published by the grand house of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and had just been nominated for the National Book Award.

I read it. Now I recommend that you read it. In Fieldwork the youngest Berlinski has told a story of surpassing grace and compassion about the modern human person, set out in an unlikely place--northern Thailand, close to the dangerous Burmese border--and introducing characters that are at once familiar and exotic: a family of Christian missionaries, a Berkeley anthropologist and the droll and admirable hill tribes of a region now rife with change and intrigue. Berlinski got to know such people living in Thailand and, having visited there, I was delighted by the verisimilitude of his novel's descriptions of street life and modern bureaucracies as much as that of the legacy of primitive culture found in hamlets one has to walk to find. Shades of the estimable Graham Greene.

The story is memorably inventive. The "Dyalo," the hill tribe Berlinski has created, has its own language, customs, food, clothing and, of course, religion. I can't think of another writer (even Conrad) who shows such engaging artifice. These people not only are believable, but they also are identifiably cousins to the actual tribes of the Golden Triangle, such as the Hmong and the Karen.

Fieldwork is a murder mystery that is so enthralling that you will want to read it through in a few sittings. It is also almost satirical in its comic outlook, yet avoids cynicism. (The Washington Post reviewer called it "disturbing and entertaining.") Ultimately, you fall in love with practically everyone. All by itself that makes it worth your time, and the time of anyone real that you already love and wish to gift this season. They'll thank your for this novel when they get it and thank you again, with still greater sincerity, once they experience it.

I have been thinking lately about how hard it is for people with different world views to communicate with one another. Within our own culture the difficulties are almost equal to those of dealing with other cultures. Maybe one reason I resonated so much to Fieldwork is that David Berlinski seems to have this very subject on his finely tuned and intuitive mind.

You undoubtedly know some people who think they understand all about the issue of evolution and don't need to know more to have an informed opinion. That would include all the presidential candidates, 90 percent of the editorial writers (the majors, anyhow) and columnists (start with George Will), vast numbers of teachers in various fields and, strangest of all, a large number of pastors. A few of the latter even hold "Darwin Sunday" services at their churches in February to show fearlessly that they are more in sync with the New Atheists than they are with scientists and philosophers who question the Great Man. No need to find out what the critics actually are saying; just read The New York Times and it'll tell them all about the subject. Besides, they studied this in high school or college, right?

Indeed, you may have people with such attitudes in the bossom of your own family and the closest circle of your wassailing friends this festival season. You may even be such a person yourself, God (or Natural Selection) forbid!

There are a number of scholarly antidotes for such cases of smugness. Some deal with physics or cosmology, some with biology, some with mathematics and philosophy of science, some with the devastating legacy of Darwinism for our times.

In the latter category, I uncategorically recommend John West's authoritative and new work (from ISI Books), Darwin Day in America. The subtitle, "How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," and the chapter headings are an indication of the breadth and depth of influence worked on the modern mind by Darwin's seemingly harmless little theory, from criminology to mental illness to economics to education--literally from the cradle (abortion, embryonic stem cell research, cloning) to the grave (euthanasia, assisted suicide).

Dr. West, a distinguished writer, former Chairman of the Political Science Department at Seattle Pacific University, and a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute, is scrupulous in his handling of history, even sometimes denying his position the benefit of the doubt if he cannot precisely footnote or otherwise account for a fact. As a result, criticism of his book has been reduced to whining, dodging and name calling.

For a fair minded reader, Darwin Day in America is a shocking mirror held up to our own unconscious prejudices and assumptions. All of us tend to use "evolve" in a bland way that lulls our mental discrimination. After reading this riveting and compelling story, you may wish to reconsider some those assumptions, even if you already are in the camp of the Darwin critics. In other words, the reality is even grimmer than you thought.

Well, I always like a bracing read for this time of year, even if it is a bit more suited for Advent than Christmas! In the end, in addition to everything else, Darwin Day in America is inspiring. It will straighten and harden your backbone.

Another book I want to recommend for your Christmas list is A Meaningful World by Drs. Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt. This is an affordable paperback and would gracefully stuff the stockings of your most cherished reading friends and family. As the quotation below from the great Catholic evangelist Scott Hahn suggests, it would make the very best gift for your parish priest or minister. Give it to your rabbi for Hanukkah! This book is sheer exploration and discovery; that is, joy.

If you are feeling especially expansive, buy some copies for your local church leaders and others who like the idea of design in the abstract but just can’t see how it applies to the real world of science and sensory experience. They might learn something from you for a change!

Oh, of course, you also should buy it for yourself!

This is from Dr. Hahn:

A Meaningful World is astounding, breathtaking! This is a book about both the beauty of science and the beauty of creation, a book I wish I had as an undergraduate taking science courses. Wiker and Witt draw us beyond design, to the sheer grandeur, elegance, and deep intelligibility of nature, all of which bespeak a creative Genius. It will help overcome the residual fear of science that plagues all too many devout believers, and instill a sense of childlike wonder at the splendor of our world. A Meaningful World admirably answers the call of Pope Benedict XVI to see the glory of God’s wisdom, God’s Logos, permeating creation. I can’t wait to get this into the hands of my own teenagers, and even my college grads.

Over the coming days I’ll recommend some promising books for that difficult certain someone on your gift list—the know-it-all son-in-law, the besieged college student, the intellectually deprived expat in Mexico. Maybe it’s even a stealth purchase for yourself!

Let’s start with “Mike Gene’s” book, The Design Matrix.

One of the most interesting figures in the intelligent design debate is the maverick theorist "Mike Gene," who runs the webpage www.idthink.net, and contributes commentaries at the group blog Telic Thoughts.

Mike Gene is a pseudonym, used by its author to focus the attention of his readers on the content of his arguments, and the scientific evidence -- and not on the
personality, academic training, or background of "Mike Gene" himself. That's a healthy attitude to have in a debate all too often dominated by ad hominem attacks and motive-mongering. It also presumably protects Mike Gene from attacks by Darwinist colleagues. We have seen what they can do to dissenters, haven’t we? For the record, I don’t know who “Mike” is.

The Design Matrix, regardless, is Mike’s long-awaited book, released in time for the shopping season by Arbor Vitae Press. As befits his independent nature, Gene's approach in the book cannot be placed in any familiar category -- and that makes the work deeply fascinating and refreshing.

For those who have grown weary of apparently entrenched arguments, The Design Matrix is full of surprising insights and examples. Might the process of evolution itself, for instance, have been designed to bring about novelty and complexity? Mike Gene's answer to that question is loaded with potentially fruitful
(scientific) implications. Why has the frequency of the term "molecular machines" increased so dramatically in the scientific literature over the past few years? And so on.

Treat your gift-recipient (and yourself) to an intellectual journey along new and largely unexplored paths, in The Design Matrix.

Richard Hayes, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, explains in an admirable Los Angeles Times article
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hayes22nov22,0,340355.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrailthat many scientists who opposed embryonic stem cell research on various grounds were reluctant to say so until now: they didn't want to be seen helping President Bush politically. Hayes' candor is commendable, but the scientists' motives it perhaps unintentionally betrays are craven. It is, in truth, an indictment of the current politicization of science.

This is a serious matter. We can all be thrilled that new technology seems likely to make the use of human embryos an unnecessary source for stem cell production in research. It is a victory for human life and for common sense in laboratory science. Politically, it takes off the table an issue that hurt conservatives and that the materialist Left has been using as part of an attack on pro-life forces, whom they represent as "anti-science." It was slated to become a major theme in the 2008 elections.

But politics should not trump everything else. If scientists who were skeptical of embryonic stem cell research remained silent for essentially political reasons or were influenced by the big bucks that were behind efforts in California and Missouri to use taxpayer funds to support embryonic stem cell research, they should be chagrined now. They let their politics take precedence over their calling as scientists.

Politics was definitely at play in Missouri, for example, where the issue of stem cells on a state ballot measure was used to defeat conservatives. It was a real "wedge" issue. You can understand why the Left deployed it; polls showed 2 to 1 public acceptance of embryonic stem cell research. But that doesn't let scientists who knew better off the hook, does it? It is appalling that some scientists privately opposed embryonic stem cell research on what they might regard as liberal grounds--such as the program's exploitation of poor women for their eggs--still were guided chiefly by political correctness and kept their peace. Some others surely would have spoken out if the media had asked them. But most of the media, too, are P.C., of course.

So, on how many other issues are dissenting scientists holding their fire because they don't want to be seen helping President Bush or social conservatives? How about end of life issues? How about Darwin's theory of evolution, the sacred writ of materialism?

In some periods of history courage is demanded of statesmen, or military men, or even economists. In our period, we need scientists to show the courage of their private convictions on the whole range of issues that pertain to human dignity and distinctive worth.

One way you can tell an ideologue is if he ditches an old friend because the old friend no longer agrees with him. It has happened to me occasionally on the issue of Darwinism, and I rather relish it, frankly. I have been a card carrying member of the Centrist Establishment my whole adult life, so I experience a certain excitement in being stigmatized as an extremist by the Leftist Establishment. Me? An extremist? Why thank you so much!

The same thing is happening to Anthony Flew now, in double dossage, and I hope he, too, is enjoying the notoriety. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6501078.html

The New York Times--media headquarters for the Give No Quarter to Darwin Doubters campaign--decided to respond to the recent apostasy of England's hallowed Professor of Atheism by intimating that the old man must be daft. Never let it be said that The NYT lacks for objective anaylsis and journalistic professionalism on science issues. They simply are following the lead of that noted Darwinian ethicist, Richard Dawkins.

But Flew is fighting back. I may be old and slow, he says, but stop your carping insinuations about my intelligence and your eggregious age discrimination (okay, I added that last twist myself). Let my recent book speak for itself, he says.

Lovely. I say that the AARP (or their UK branch) should file a suit against The Times.

Meanwhile, let The New York Times wallow in its patronizing zeal. When the history of our real times is written it will be noted that The Times newspaper was no more accurate about trends in science in the early 21st century than it was about the nature of communism in the middle of the 20th. It is easily addled by its ideology.

I had the honor as a young man to write editorials for the late, great New York Herald Tribune. We distrusted The Times then and I can't find any reason to think better of it as years go by.

The erudite and entertaining M.D. Aeschliman of Boston University and the University of Italian Switzerland has written a fine tribute to that promethean intellectual figure of our time, Jacques Barzun, who turns 100 this month and will be feted at Columbia University.http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZDhjM2Y1YzhlY2JmNjE4NWZmNjk1NThhNTA0MjlkYTc=

Dr. Barzun published From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life in 2000--when he was 93, a great inspiration for all of us!

I like him also because he was onto Marx early, onto Darwin early, and quick to see the limits of the modernist artistic perspective.

I like him further because he disputes the determinist interpretations of history that threatened to prevail for his entire lifetime. He believes that individuals make a difference.

One individual who makes a difference is Jacques Barzun. In a time when intellectual pipsqueaks, montebanks and popinjays scurry about our culture, what a welcome relief a giant makes against the horizon!

The intelligent new on-line Seattle regional magazine "Crosscut", edited by David Brewster, carries a column (as Anika Smith pointed out yesterday) called "Bruce Chapman is Right," written by "Mossback" liberal Knute Berger. It generally agrees with recent comments of mine on Dr. James Watson and the battle over eugenics.

I hate to cavil after such welcome praise, but I have to demur from Berger's one demurral. That is, when he says that we should remember that many Christian and Jewish clergy backed the original eugenics program in America, some heavy qualification is needed.

I will leave the details to John West's authoritative new book, Darwin Day in America—being launched today at a Washington, D.C. book event at the Heritage Foundation—but the point I want to make here is that most traditionalist Christian clergy did not back eugenics. Those who did tended to be liberal theologians in liberal denominations that already had made their peace with Darwinism and modernity. In contrast, virtually the whole scientific establishment not only lined up behind the "consensus" position in support of eugenics, but they also sought to silence dissent. (Sound familiar?)

Theologically conservative Protestants and the Catholic Church were largely opponents of eugenics. The Vatican, which is always a little behind the times, thank God, set Catholic public policy on the issue. As for evangelicals, almost forgotten now is the fact that eugenics was one reason former Democratic presidential candidate and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan became so passionately involved in the Scopes Trial of 1925.

The eugenics was preached in Hunter’s Biology textbook and its treatment of evolution, and it was this book that was at issue in Dayton, Tennessee and all around the country.

Playbill from Inherit the Wind, National Production, Chicago, 1956

Bryan feared that evolutionary theory was being used to justify mistreatment of the weak in society, as well as to discredit religion. This motivation takes on even more significance when one realizes, as Ed Larson makes clear in his book on the Scopes Trial, Summer for the Gods, that Bryan himself was not a young Earth creationist, even though his fictional surrogate is so characterized in the play and film, Inherit the Wind. It might help to rehabilitate the liberal reputation of Bryan, "The Great Commoner," if his stand on evolution was better understood and not permanently warped by the fictional accounts.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Scopes Trial, what about H. L. Mencken, the famous Baltimore Sun journalist who did more than anyone to denigrate Bryan in the public eye and whose bitterly funny style was employed so effectively against other opponents of Darwinism? Well, Mencken's sarcasm has been a great inspiration to aspiring journalists right up to our own time and especially on the topic of evolution. But as to his content, Mencken was an on-and-off-again eugenicist, a racist and an anti-Semite right up to and past the time when that was no longer an acceptable position in polite society.

Sorry, but that is the history. Those who doubt it should be prepared to debate it in public. John West, the expert, along with Richard Weikart of California State (author of From Darwin to Hitler) have the research mastered.

Meanwhile, regardless of the above, I want to repeat that I'm grateful that Knute Berger has been so clear on the need to examine the real way eugenics developed. Because eugenics is still with us in various forms. It is a human rights issue of historic proportions. It goes right to the question that John Paul II always asked, "What does it mean to be human?"

There are 21 pages of comments on a blog essay written by author Disesh D'Souza to answer the question, "Was Hitler a Christian?" It is an excellent polemic against the bizarre claims of Darwinian atheists (Hitchens, et al) who want to chalk up the crimes of Hitler to religion--Christianity, of all things. The whole attack is backfiring, since it practically invites people to examine the real intellectual roots of Nazism.

Of course you can find Hitler propaganda quotes--especially in his early political career--posturing in defense of Christianity, but his whole record runs against it. As for those who want to credit the Spanish Inquisition with inspiring Hitler, forget it. The complete death list of people ever burned at the stake for heresy would not have equalled the number of people killed by the Nazis on slow day at Auschwitz.

Let this debate continue, by all means. Historian Richard Weikart's resource book, From Darwin to Hitler, is totally authoritative and scholarly, unlike the ramblings of Hitchens, Harris, et al. As for D'Souza, following Weikart, he is not claiming that Darwin and Nietszche would have been Nazi admirers, only, as he says, that the Nazis definitely admired Darwin and Nietszche.

The furor over Dr. James Watson's comments on the supposed racial inferiority of black people—resulting from evolution—caused cancellation of at least one of the Nobel scientist's speeches in England this week. He may even have lost his job at Cold Spring Harbor. This brings a new element into the story.

Continue reading this post at Evolution News & Views.

I have written here before of how one supposedly settled “scientific consensus” after another is constantly being overturned, much to the distress of those who have staked their prestige and grant money on the status quo. Sometimes it seems to intelligent design proponents that Darwinism is the only subject where scientific dissenters are routinely shut down, ostracized, denied tenure or fired and personally attacked in the media. But it is not so. Scientific persecution has happened repeatedly in history and, oddly for a supposedly enlightened age, it is happening more and more now.

Yes, the Scopes Trial of 1925 has been turned on its head eight decades later. Scopes was fined for teaching Darwin’s theory, while today’s teacher will be fired if he offers the evidence against it, as well as for it. The same is true of the trial of Galileo. He upset the scientists of his day enough to cause them to get Church help in silencing him, while the scientific establishment of our day would use methodological naturalism to intimidate anyone (Church included) who challenges a materialist explanation for the origin of the universe.

But the anti-Darwinists are not the only dissenters undergoing a contemporary scientific Inquisition. Here are two current illustrations, the first from an article by John Tierney in The New York Times that fat is not the public health menace that consensus science made it out to be a quarter century ago. Just think how many billions of dollars have been spent in the false belief that it was so! “Fat-free this,” “fat-free that.” Until recently you really couldn't challenge the consensus.

Now, as to persecution of dissent, it would be hard to match the ill-treatment Larry Summers got at Harvard for the sin of suggesting that there are differences between the brain biology of men and women. Humiliated already by losing his job as Harvard’s president, he is having his reputation for apostasy from accepted PC science ground into him at the University of California, Davis. Imagine, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary is now a “don’t invite’m” in polite liberal society.

There is a pattern here, friends. Global warming, abortion, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, the list goes on and on. Of course, it is not nearly so fierce in most fields as in the supposedly “non-existent” scientific debate over the adequacy of Darwin’s theory. You would be hard pressed to think of a subject where the leading spokesman in the field—Dr. Dawkins, in this case—not only wants rival scientists fired and disgraced (his New York Times review of Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, shows that), but he also wants ordinary citizens barred from teaching their children anything other than The Gospel According to Dawkins. The English haven’t been burning people at the stake for five hundred years now, but Dr. Dawkins’ apparently thinks the custom should be revived.

Since this subject is now slated for politicization in America, thanks to the National Center for Science Education and even the National Academy of Science, PBS, and at least one presidential candidate (Sen. Clinton), I plan to keep posting examples of failed scientific consensus and the crimes that have been committed in its name in the past. And those being committed now.

We all have to get over the childish assumption that scientists are superior beings immune from human pride and ambition, not to mention human guile and bile. Here’s a question though, do these negative qualities derive from evolutionary adaptation—and therefore must be excused—or from a human nature anchored to the very existence of man's soul, and therefore must be confronted?

There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality.

One can be grateful that there are so many cases where science does proceed along the ideal path, but there is no excuse for trying to fool the public into thinking that great injustices and bad judgments don’t occur, too.

I asked Steve Martyn, a summer intern from Seattle Pacific who was at Discovery Institute this summer to research some historic examples. He came up with a number; in fact, he could have found scores.

Take, for example, the shameful cases of the “Vanguards of Germ Theory” (see the paper and footnotes here), including Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, the Hungarian working to solve the problem of puerperal fever (childbirth fever) in Vienna in the early 1840s. Before the work of Louis Pasteur, Semmelweiss correctly identified the solution if not the exact diagnosis: thorough cleanliness on the part of doctors delivering babies.

Semmelweiss showed that requiring doctors to wash up between operations and deliveries could sharply reduce mothers’ deaths in childbirth. Nonetheless, his strictures offended the medical establishment and he was driven from his hospital. It is a long, gloomy story of harassment that ended in a mental breakdown by Semmelweiss.

A few days ago I sat in one of the rooms where the producers of a new film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," were screening a trailer and passing the word to interested individuals and groups. It's the same pre-release publicity approach used recently for other Hollywood offerings, including documentaries. My emotion was almost as much one of relief as excitement. It is going to be a terrific film treatment of the whole controversy, and far fairer than any we have encountered.

For two years we have known that the Hollywood actor/critic/comedian/writer Ben Stein was making a film with a company called Premise Media that would inspect the controversy over Darwinian theory and intelligent design. Let's just say that some people at Discovery Institute were eager to cooperate, others more cautious. We have been burned so often by sweet-talking film-makers and television people who wanted to hear about "the science" and to hear our "side" of the controversy, only to be appalled by the one-sided, selectively edited final products that resulted.

The New York Times carries an apparently objective story about gender science controversy and the persecution (I'll use the word) of a scientist at Northwestern whose views differ from the mainstream of political
correctness.

This is increasingly familiar territory. All sorts of academic pressures and tricks are used to bring non-pc scientists into line, and failing that, to get them fired or demoted or ostracized (e.g., no research grants). We see it on the global warming issue (as the previous Discovery Blog item attests) and, of course, in cosmology (the persecution of Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State) and biology (too many cases to mention in regards to Darwin critics and/or supporters of intelligent design). It is also practiced in areas like embryonic stem cell research and anything to do with abortion.

If you have not read C.S. Lewis' novel, That Hideous Strength, with its description of the superficially benign government research group, "N.I.C.E." (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments"), this is a good time to enjoy a read. Lewis was ahead of the times on this as well as other moral issues.

And it is a moral issue. It is an issue particularly for the media, most of whom are influenced by the trend in such journals as Columbia Journalism Review that recommend that reporters not bother providing "balance" on science stories where "a consensus of science exists" and not to allow dissenters on scientific issues to appear on op-ed pages.

The results are abundant. The Times itself today carries an oblique reference to Michael Behe's new analysis of the limits of Darwinian evolution by science reporter Ken Chang. While he critiques his argument, it appears Chang did not consider it seriously enough to interview Behe. And when it came time for publish a review of Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, the Times not only chose a sure-fire hit piece by Richard
Dawkins, but allowed Dawkins to descend into an almost totally ad hominem assault that avoided science. (Dawkins of course would never debate Behe.)

We have seen this before in history, though not on so many subjects at once. The Darwin-inspired eugenics movement is one example, but so are repeated cases in medical history where new cures were spurned for years--and medical innovators tormented or destroyed--before their views ultimately triumphed. Something similar happened with Big Bang Theory.

Meanwhile, trendy scientific theories without any supporting evidence (string theory, multi-verses, etc.) are perfectly okay to teach and advocate for the clear reason that they serve one overriding, objection-demolishing purpose: to advance philosophical materialism.

In May Mary Ellen Tiffany Gilder, a medical student in Albany, New York, published in this space a devastating critique of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, drawing on public research. Ms Gilder, a daughter of Discovery Senior Fellow George Gilder, is saluted for her global warming analysis in Steve Forbes' lead column in the new Forbes magazine (September 3 issue: "Fantasy Fears").

The line of Forbes' I like the best: "Scientists who arrive at an opposing conclusion (from Gore's) are ostracized and often denied grants. Universities won't hire them or, if they are already tenured, will make sure they don't get promoted." Any scientific critic of Darwinian theory can sympathize!

You can read or re-read Mary Ellen ("Melly") Gilder's original paper--"Good News, Mr. Gore, the Apocalypse Has Been Postponed"--on our site.

One motivation for writing the paper apparently was Melly's conviction that exaggerated or wrong scientific analyses could wind up hurting the world's poor, as happened with DDT studies relative to malaria forty years ago. Ms. Gilder's medical training and deep Christian faith has propelled her into medical missionary work in South East Asia in recent years, some of it in dangerous territory.

Not only is Melly Gilder intent on serving the needy and neglected, this lovely young woman clearly has the same kind of talent and trained writing skills as her father, George--and her mother, Cornelia Brooke Gilder, a distinguished historic preservationist who champions the remarkable built environment of the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts.

It bothers me to think that young atheists would be harassed by anyone, especially Christians. If that is why they need to go to "Atheist Camp" in the summer, it is a sad commentary.

Also, if young atheists don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, that is fine, too. I do wonder at people like a scientist at the Smithsonian who emailed a colleague that his son says "One nation under dog," instead of "under God." Can't he just leave it out, or leave the whole thing out?

So, if you know any young person who is intolerant of someone who is an atheist, help him or her to reconsider their attitude.

Of course, our experience is that young atheists are not intolerant of people of faith. But old atheists certainly are.

The following appears in the Summer 2007 Discovery Institute Views, our semi-annual newsletter for members.

You have been reading about Discovery Institute fellows on the front pages in recent weeks, as well as in op-ed articles, interviews and Internet blogs. In a few cases we have struck a chord across ideological lines, as with our Cascadia Center’s promotion of plug-in hybrid autos. As a way to substantially lower dependence on foreign oil (or any oil), reduce air pollution and improve our economy, it has bi-partisan appeal. Whether you believe that human beings are primarily responsible for global warming, or not, you can agree on win-win strategies for energy conservation.

Interestingly, in happy cases like the plug-in hybrid car, the follow-on questions that have to do with process — how do we achieve this policy we all support? — are less contentious than they are for other public issues. Perhaps that is because the search for practical answers is one that simply doesn’t raise peoples' temperatures. Rather, it's the clash of values that excites passions.

The Discovery mission has always been to “Make a positive vision of the future practical.” The difficulties come these days with the vision, not with the practical solutions.

The published letters of Charles Darwin reveal a man who debated about design in a manner that seems “more tolerant and humble” than one encounters in the current debate, says Anthony Barnes in a book review in The Independent (U.K.). It could also be noted that Darwin was treated better by his critics 150 years ago than his followers—the dominant neo-Darwinists—treat their critics today.

Darwin himself obviously thought a lot about religion, but, like his successors, he had what seems like a rather puerile understanding of theology and philosophy. He told the American botanist Asa Gray that Darwin’s own nose, which he considered large and unattractive, was evidence against design. “Will you honestly tell me that the shape of my nose was ordained and guided by an intelligent cause?” he chided Gray.

The existence of what appears to be sub-optimal design a sad argument that cannot be evaluated scientifically. There is nothing in the scientific question of design to suggest that the source of design had to have our particular understanding of optimal design in mind. What appears sub-optimal at one time (the appendix, for example, turns out later to have had serious functionality. Furthermore, considerations of beauty (noses, female girth, etc.) are often products of culture, not science. Flaws in nature, likewise, do not disprove design.

What a shame that Darwin’s faith and his knowledge of philosophy was not up to the quality of his scientific inquiry.

(Cross-posted at Evolution News & Views)

Discovery Institute fights against the conceit that only a secularized culture can have a legitimate public life. Indeed, we would argue that people of serious religious perspectives not only have a full, long-recognized right to contribute to the leadership of political culture (broadly defined), but also that they often provide intellectual insights beyond the reach of the culturally deracinated secularist. In consequence of this stand we find ourselves described by foes on the Darwinist evolution debate as a "Christian" or "religious" think tank. That is really an ignorant, philistine description, though one that always amuses those Discovery fellows who are Jewish or non-religious.

We do weigh many issues in the scales of ethics that have been employed for centuries in the Judeo-Christian world. We do so without apology. The standards are sound even without reference to religion. In staking out this ground, we are constantly intrigued by a number of brilliantly edited magazines that look at politics and culture through a religious lens. The wonderful thing about such magazines as Touchstone, First Things, Crisis, World, Christianity Today and Commentary is that within their respective circles of writers, one actually finds more diversity of religious backgrounds—and more true tolerance--than, say, at The Nation or The New York Times magazine, and more relevance to lasting consequences of public policy than one encounters at certain increasingly rudderless conservative journals.

Commentary is an example that stands out in this group of magazines because its Jewishness is ethnic as much as religious, and because it has an utterly unique history and record of achievements. (One of our own senior fellows, David Berlinski, has been responsible for some of those achievements.) A new account of Commentary's history by Nathan Abrams obviously doesn't do the subject justice, if Benjamin Balint is to be believed. And my own familiarity with the magazine over the decades suggests that Balint is to be believed, indeed. His review of Abrams' book, running in the new issue of The Weekly Standard, has real authority.

Balint explicitly asserts that "Commentary showed that there is no contradiction between ethnic particularities and participation in the larger culture," and that the path to full participation need not fall into the trap of cultural relativism or "multiculturalism". Abrams apparently doesn't come close to grasping that point.

Overall, Balint's fine review suggests that the full story of one of America's most under-recognized cultural resources—Commentary magazine—has still to be written.