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Monday, May 16, 2005

Media watchdog utterly shocked that journalist wonders about Darwinism

Just when I wondered if legacy media could get any dozier about the controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design, a liberal media watchdog, Media Matters jumps into the fray and proves that the depths haven’t been reached yet.

The May 12 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight featured Jonathan Wells for intelligent design, John Morris for creationism, and Michael Ruse for Darwinism.

On the show, Dobbs remarked, "The fact is that evolution, Darwinism, is not a fully explained or completely rigorous and defined science that has testable results within it. Like a – " (At that point he was interrupted by a panelist.)

Shocked, just shocked, Media Matters informs us,

During a debate on "the origin of life," CNN host Lou Dobbs stated on his own authority: "The fact is that evolution, Darwinism, is not a fully explained or completely rigorous and defined science that has testable results within it." The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which advises the federal government on "scientific and technical matters," disagrees with Dobbs’ "facts" about
evolution.


Sure it does. With the exception of one lone member, Phil Skell, NAS is an establishment organization obediently yapping the party line—or to put it more politely, defending Darwinism as one of their big causes, oblivious to the questions that are growing all around us about whether mind really evolves from mud.

Media Matters, has it ever occurred to you ... like, is it even barely possible that ... oh, I am not going to complete this thought for you. Compare your ridiculous sucking up to an establishment organization with the insightful Michael Powell article above, and then go rend your hearts and not your press passes.
To find out more about my book on the intelligent design controversy, go to By Design or by Chance?

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Insightful Washington Post profile of intelligent design founder Phillip Johnson (must-read!)

Amazingly, this Washington Post story avoids the cliches and the Darwinist super-yes-men, and talks about some of the real issues behind the intelligent design controversy, in a profile of Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson, who did more than anyone else to force the issues into the open:

“Phillip is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record -- it's always good to point this out,” Provine says. “It's difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient!”

Provine's faith, if one may call it that, rests on Darwinism, which he describes as the greatest engine of atheism devised by man. The English scientist's insights registered as a powerful blow -- perhaps the decisive one -- in the long run of battles, from Copernicus to Descartes, that removed God from the center of the Western world.

“Give Johnson and the intelligent-design movement their due -- they are asking terribly important questions," says Stuart A. Kauffman, director of the Institute for Biocomplexity at the University of Calgary. “ To question whether patterns and complexity, at the level of the cell or the universe, bespeak intelligent design is not stupid in the least.

“I simply believe they've come up with the wrong answers.”

Wow, an intelligent discussion in a national newspaper, of all places!

Here are some excerpts from a letter I wrote, thanking journalist Michael Powell:

As one who spent three years researching and writing a book on the intelligent design controversy (By Design or by Chance? Augsburg Fortress, 2004), I was impressed with your willingness to actually look at the issues the ID folk raise.

...

Michael, your signal achievement, in my view, is to get PAST the idea that the best way to understand the ID controversy is to hear what the detractors of the ID folk say and then print that as if it is some sort of satisfying truth.

Not so. The issues are much bigger than the detractors of the ID guys, or even the ID guys themselves. Those ID guys could well perpetrate a tragedy they don't even understand, by promoting a materialistic conception of God (even if they don't intend to - witness the law of unintended consequences).

But who knows? Generally, you will find, the ID guys are a much more interesting lot than their professional detractors, who - in my experience, tend to be super-yes-men, promoting establishment thinking that is actually quite unsound at many points, but the super-yes-men are the last to know. They are certainly not my favourite type, anyway, when I am looking for a really good story, which is why I find the dependence of so many journalists on the Darwinist super-yes-men so much less than praiseworthy.

Find out more about my book, go to By Design or by Chance?

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