Casey Luskin

On this episode of IDTF we bring to your attention the bias against intelligent design that runs through Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is becoming a prominent website for people to turn to for information about all manner of subjects. It’s unique twist is that it lets web browses update and correct entries. Except about intelligent design or evolution. The site is full of basic inaccuracies that have little or nothing to do with the actual debate over evolution and design. And, when it comes to their information regarding the theories, it is squarely opposed to telling the truth, siding with the worst evolution arguments out there. To make matters worse, these entries are forbidden to be changed, updated or corrected by design supporters.

In his book The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney declares war on intelligent design, calling it a “reactionary crusade” promoted by “[s]cience abusers.” Discovery Institute now responds to Mooney’s war on intelligent design (ID) by publishing a detailed report authored by Casey Luskin, “Whose War Is It, Anyway? Exposing Chris Mooney’s Attack on Intelligent Design,” documenting 14 major errors Mooney makes when writing about ID in his book.

This week’s IDTF podcast features a commentary on some mainstream scientific journals use of harsh diction against skeptics of evolution and how they show an intense bias against intelligent design. For more information on this and related topics be sure to visit the Center for Science & Culture at www.discovery.org/csc/.

When ID skeptics object to the claim that the universe was designed based upon the highly improbable fine tuning of the universe, they often invoke multiple universes, a concept that is not testable. Yet testability is often invoked as a demarcation criteria that excludes intelligent design from science. In this podcast Casey Luskin takes us through the pages of a science journal to show the double standard applied to intelligent design.

An recent editorial in the Washington Post, “Nothing Wrong With Kansas”, contains many inaccurate statements about the Kansas Science Standards and intelligent design. It is not unlike a host of other ill-informed and misleading articles in the mainstream media. They have made the debate over whether or not students will be allowed to learn about both the evidence for and against evolution, into a battle over whether or not to teach intelligent design, a completely separate issue.

Some Darwinists have sometimes argued that if ID were taught in schools, then that would risk opening the science classroom to a floodgate of religious ideas about origins, wreaking havoc upon the classroom and turning it into a platform for religious proseltyzation.

Despite the Darwinist community’s long-standing campaign to help the public come to the “correct” view that “evolution and religion are compatible,” public skepticism of evolution remains high. (See this link for documentation.) This would logically lead one to the conclusion that there are other factors besides religion that drive skepticism of evolution. Perhaps, one might even suggest, for many people the issue has a lot to do with science!