Textbooks

Today’s episode of ID the Future features Part 1 of a talk bestselling author Eric Metaxas gave at the 2019 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith in Dallas. His topic was the miracle of our fine-tuned universe, taken in part from his book Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life. Metaxas also discusses another thing he finds amazing: that so many people think the progress of science means the retreat of religion.

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid again hears from science historian Michael Keas about another science myth exploded in Keas’ new ISI book Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. This time it’s the belief that Copernicus’s sun-centered cosmos demoted humans from our privileged position at the center. As another pioneering early astronomer, Galileo, noted, under the old astronomy the center was no privileged place. Instead it was viewed as the bottom of the universe, the “sump where the universe’s filth and ephemera collect.” So Copernicus’s discovery, if anything, elevated Earth’s place in the cosmos.

On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong and Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, debunks a new study purporting to breathe fresh life into an old and throughly discredited icon of evolution, the peppered moth. Wells also tells how this icon of a moth “evolving” from light to dark still lives on in current textbooks, in the same form many parents probably remember from their school days. Dr. Wells and others have shown that many of these pictures used dead moths, pinned in places that live ones never rest. The supposed science of peppered moth evolution has been shown to be false as well. But the pictures and the claims are persuasive, so some textbooks still use them. This prompts host Rob Crowther to ask Dr. Wells, what can parents do to help their kids know the truth? Listen in and to hear Dr. Wells’ advice.

In this edition of ID The Future, Casey Luskin discusses a newly updated report on 22 recent textbooks and their treatment of evolution and intelligent design. In 2000, Jonathan Wells published a review of textbooks in his popular book Icons of Evolution. He discovered that many textbooks presented inaccurate or incomplete information about evolution and either omitted or undermined alternative viewpoints. Wells’ criteria is used again 11 years later. Tune in to find out what has changed.