Intelligent Design
2005
Smithsonian to screen anti-evolution film
An anti-evolution group has announced plans to screen a documentary at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The Discovery
Institute, a Seattle group that supports the "intelligent design" creationist theory,
said on its Web site the group and museum operators "are happy to announce the
national premiere and private evening reception" June 23 for the movie, "The
Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe," the New York Times
reported Sunday.
However, museum spokesman Randall Kremer said the event should not be taken
as support for the views expressed in the film. "It is incorrect for anyone to infer
that we are somehow endorsing the video or the content of the video," he said. He
said the museum allows organizations and corporations to use its Baird Auditorium
in return for contributions. The Discovery Institute has given $16,000 to the
museum.
The documentary, based on a 2004 book by Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant
professor of astronomy at Iowa State University, and Jay W. Richards, a vice
president of the Discovery Institute, argues an intelligent being created the Earth
and universe.
The Washington Times, May 29, 2005
Discovery of Complex, Precise DNA Language Points to Intelligent Design of
Life
Science, seen as the enemy of religious faith for over a hundred years, is now
becoming the believer’s best friend. As scientific discoveries continue, the recourse
to Darwinian Evolution is becoming more improbable as attested in a recently
published article on DNA by Mario Seiglie in the May edition of “The Good News.”
Mr. Seiglie’s article, which compiles evidence from various scientific sources,
presents the amazing reality that our DNA is, in essence, the carrier of an intricate
and complicated language that could not possibly have come about by random
chance. Mr. Seiglie writes that “As scientists began to decode the human DNA
molecule, they found something quite unexpected—an exquisite 'language'
composed of some 3 billion genetic letters. "One of the most extraordinary
discoveries of the twentieth century," says Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the
Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., "was
that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling
proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code" (quoted by Lee Strobel, The
Case for a Creator, 2004, p. 224).”
To put it into layman’s terms “the amount of information in human DNA is roughly
equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica—an incredible 384 volumes"
worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves!”
At the same time this immense amount of information is contained in a space that
is only 2 millionth of a millimeter thick. Quoting molecular biologist Michael Denton,
Sieglie explains that a teaspoon of DNA, “could contain all the information needed
to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived on the
earth, and "there would still be enough room left for all the information in every
book ever written" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1996, p. 334).”
Critics of the idea that DNA has its own language fail to consider the fact that, as a
language, it is extremely precise. As Mr. Seiglie points out “the average mistake
that is not caught turns out to be one error per 10 billion letters. If a mistake
occurs in one of the most significant parts of the code, which is in the genes, it can
cause a disease such as sickle-cell anemia. Yet even the best and most intelligent
typist in the world couldn't come close to making only one mistake per 10 billion
letters—far from it.”
Most schools in the developed parts of the world are still using textbooks that
present Darwinian evolution as fact. In the United States, however, there is an
increasingly vocal push to present Creation Science as an alternate theory. This
movement gains credibility as more scientists admit (some reluctantly) that
science is disproving Darwinian Evolution.
....
Life Site News, May 24, 2005
For the full article: DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution
http://gnmagazine.org/issues/gn58/tinycode.htm"
Debate over evolution simmers in red and blue states
Controversy goes deeper than meets the eye
Eighty years after the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, the battle between those who
support the validity of biological evolution and those who oppose it rages on in
Kansas - and in more than a dozen other states around the country.
The controversy may appear to be simply about the teaching of science in the
classroom. But it represents a far more complex, widespread clash of politics,
religion, science and culture that transcends the borders of conservative, so-called
red states and their more liberal blue counterparts.
"This controversy is going to happen everywhere. It's going to happen in all 50
states. This controversy is not going away," said Jeff Tamblyn, 52, an owner of
Merriam, Kansas-based Origin Films, which is making a feature film about the
current fight over whether to introduce a more critical approach to evolution in
Kansas' school science standards.
Hitting home
So far in 2005, the issue of evolution has sparked at least 21 instances of
controversy on the local and/or state level in at least 18 states, according to the
National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit
organization that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although such
controversies regularly have occurred over the years, some attribute the recent
wave to the success of conservatives in 2004 elections.
At the national level, one attempt to diminish the prominence of evolution in public
school curricula and introduce alternative views came in the form of a proposed
amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act.
....
Summer of 1925
In the summer of 1925, Clarence Darrow entered a Dayton, Tenn., courtroom to
defend biology teacher John Scopes against charges of teaching Darwin's theory of
evolution, after it had been banned by the state. The highly publicized trial was the
basis of the 1955 Broadway play "Inherit the Wind" and the 1960 film of the same
title.
Then, as now, the controversy over evolution revolved around two Darwinian
theories that contradict the biblical version of creation: Darwin's assertion that all
life, including humans and monkeys, descended from common ancestors and that
it is all the result of natural selection and random mutation. While fundamentalists
may recoil from these concepts, many religious authorities, including those in the
Roman Catholic Church, hold that belief in God and evolution don't conflict.
....
As there was in 1999, when Kansas de-emphasized evolution in its school science
standards - a move reversed by a more moderate board in 2001 - there has been
snickering by critics over the state's "backwardness" and head-shaking over the
idea that the validity of evolution, one of the foundations of modern science, is in
question.
This has prompted many references to the famous question posed in an 1896
editorial by William Allen White, editor of Kansas' Emporia Gazette. Listing examples
of what he deplored as the backwardness of the state, he wrote: "What's the
matter with Kansas?"
But, if Kansas is "backward," it's not alone.
Year to date, at least 13 states have entertained legislation requiring a more critical
approach to evolution in the classroom and/or allowing discussion of alternative
explanations of the origins of humans, including the supernatural.
The most recent addition is New York, a true "blue" state, where an Assembly bill
was introduced on May 3 requiring schools to teach both evolution and intelligent
design.
Intelligent design, which some critics consider an attempt to get around the
Supreme Court's ban on teaching overtly religious creationism, credits an unnamed
intelligence or designer for aspects of nature's complexity yet unexplained by
science.
....
Only a third believe Darwin
According to a November national Gallup poll, "only about a third of Americans
believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been
well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many
theories and has not been supported by the evidence." The rest said they didn't
know.
....
Upcoming battle
In September, what promises to be a test case on intelligent design will come to
trial in Pennsylvania, where Dover-area schools last fall decided to require that
students be made aware of intelligent design and of criticism of Darwin's theory.
Parents have filed a suit against the school board, arguing intelligent design is not
science but creationism in disguise.
Proponents of intelligent design assert that there is a scientific rationale to their
criticism of evolution.
One who testified at the Kansas public hearings is Jonathan Wells. A molecular
biologist, Wells also is a sen