Words for Wednesday! Disentangling ID from Creationism

biology, creationism, creator, designer, divine agent, earth, empirical evidence, Facebook, Faith & Science, Genesis, Hebrew Bible, intelligent agent, Intelligent Design, materialists, religious traditions, Stephen Meyer, Terminology Tuesday, universe, Words for Wednesday
Yesterday on Stephen Meyer’s Facebook page we launched the new “Terminology Tuesday” feature, with a quick read about just what we mean by intelligent design. Source
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Luskin: Book Banning? Woke Forces Know All About That; They Practiced on Us

academic freedom, adults, atheists, Big Tech, book banning, book burning, Books, Casey Luskin, censorship, classrooms, conservatives, creationism, curricula, Dawkins Test, Dover Area School District, Evolution, free speech, geologists, government, Homosexuality, Intelligent Design, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, liberals, media, misinformation, natural selection, News, News Media, Of Pandas and People, Parents, Pennsylvania, progressives, racial injustice, Richard Dawkins, scientific literature, students, The Daily Wire, United States, wokeness
"Those 49 words — suggesting that students consult a library book if they wanted to learn more about a scientific idea — were too much for the thought police." Source
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What’s Wrong with Calling Intelligent Design “Anti-Evolution”?

Annual Review of Anthropology, anti-evolution, anti-science, Arkansas, common ancestor, creationism, dialogue, Eugenie Scott, Evolution, Intelligent Design, National Center for Science Education, natural selection, organisms, Paul Nelson, rhetoric, Stanley Weinberg, The American Biology Teacher
The term “anti-evolution” has been used for decades, over and over, by untold numbers of defenders of Darwin and critics of the theory of intelligent design. Source
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In the Name of “Academic Freedom,” a Scientist Calls for Punishing Creationists

academic freedom, accrediting agency, atheists, Ball State University, BDS movement, Big Tech, Canceled Science, censorship, China, Christian colleges, computational biology, creation science, creationism, customers, East Coast, employers, equality, eric hedin, free speech, freedom, freedom from religion foundation, Giant Food, Intelligent Design, invidious labeling, Israel, Jerry Coyne, Joshua Swamidass, Justice, lockdown, othering, Punishment, Race, racial indoctrination, religion, reward, scientists, social credit, supermarkets, The Boundaries of Science, viewpoint, Wall Street Journal, Washington University
The practice has a sordid history. There’s always a rationale — for example, in labeling Israeli businesses, or those doing business with Israel, to be avoided. Source
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Academic Article Correcting Misconceptions about Evolution Promotes Misconceptions about ID

academic journals, BMC Springer Nature, Brazil, Charles Darwin, creationism, creationists, David Klinghoffer, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Evolution: Education and Outreach, Human Origins, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, lobby groups, Paul Nelson, religious beliefs, scientists
It’s good to be back at Discovery Institute. Even after my fives years away, I see that some things remain unchanged. Source
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Weekend Reading: Heretics and Inquisitors

BioEssays, censorship, creationism, crime, Culture, Darwinists, Douglas Axe, establishment, Evolution News, free speech, Günter Bechly, Heresy, history, Inquisition, Intelligent Design, Italy, Middle Ages, mystery, novels, Politics, Richard Sternberg, The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, William of Baskerville
Years ago, reading Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, I got bogged down early on and stopped. Rereading it now, I can’t imagine what I found boring. It’s great! A learned crime-mystery about murders in a 14th-century Italian abbey, it deals in part with the relationship between heretics and inquisitors. What Eco relates (via his protagonist William of Baskerville) has a lot of contemporary relevance. Intelligent design is a heresy against the backdrop of conformist evolutionary thinking, and ID proponents must ever beware of Darwinist inquisitors. (See the recent threat of censorship from the biology journal BioEssays.) Eco observes that inquisitions generate heretics, rather than stamping them out. That is true. Many of the leading ID scientists (Axe, Sternberg, Bechly, and others) came to us because they were…
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Zombie History — Using Galileo to Whack Intelligent Design

Alison Abbott, Andrew Dickson White, Catholic Church, Christianity, climate change, creationism, Discovery Institute, Faith & Science, Galileo Affair, Galileo and the Science Deniers, Galileo Galilei, Heresy, historicity, Inquisition, Intelligent Design, John William Draper, Jonathan Wells, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Mario Livio, Michael Keas, Nature (journal), Nicolaus Copernicus, public schools, religion, science denialism, science deniers, Tychonian model, Unbelievable?, Urban VIII, Warfare Thesis, Zombie Science
A useful myth is hard to put down. The Galileo myth gives a premiere illustration. Ever since John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White fostered the “warfare thesis” of “science vs religion” in the late 19th century, appealing to the Galileo affair as the example par excellence, historians have had little luck convincing the scientific establishment that their version of the Galileo story is flawed. Fortunately, we have the new book by Michael Keas to help set the story straight: Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. Keas traces the development of the warfare thesis through the 19th century. Despite being largely discredited by historians, the warfare thesis lives on into our time. For instance, Mario Livio has a new book out, Galileo and the…
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Harvard Law Professor — Ban Homeschooling for “Question[ing] Science”

atheists, authoritarianism, Bible, Christians, creationism, Discovery Institute, Education, Erin O’Donnell, Evolution, evolutionary theory, Harvard Law School, Harvard Magazine, Harvard University, Home School Legal Defense Association, homeschooling, Idaho, ideologies, Intelligent Design, Kids, mind control, Newspeak, North Carolina, Parents, presumptive ban, Princeton University, prison, ProPublica, public schools, stereotyping, students, survivalists
Ban it for other reasons as well, says Professor Elizabeth Bartholet in a stunning article for Harvard Magazine. That’s right, the only form of education in the country that hasn’t been upended by the coronavirus. Well, that is a poorly timed proposal. Bartholet warns that homeschoolers are subject to child abuse, and are poorly prepared to participate in a democracy, having been oppressed by “essentially authoritarian control” by parents who are potential illiterates themselves. As depicted by Bartholet, homeschooling sounds little better than being in fundamentalist Christian prison. In fact, the illustration that goes with the article shows a girl behind bars in a house fashioned from books, on Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and the Bible. The article, by Erin O’Donnell, attacks a homeschooling group, while (as Rod Dreher points out)…
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Darwinism and Intelligent Design in Poland 

Adam Cenian, Andrzej Myc, behavior, biology, creationism, Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, Darwinism, Discovery Institute, En Arche Foundation, eugenics, Evolution, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Fundacja En Arche, Grzegorz Malec, Icons of Evolution, Intelligent Design, marriage, Marxism, Michael Behe, Michael Denton, morals, Phillip E. Johnson, Poland, Polish, relationships, restaurants, Signature in the Cell, slavery, steak tartare, Stephen Meyer, University of Warsaw, vodka, Vodka (restaurant), Warsaw, World War II
On January 29, 2020, I arrived in Warsaw, Poland, in the middle of a blizzard. Fortunately, most of the snow had cleared away by January 31, when I lectured at an event celebrating the release of a new Polish translation of my book, Icons of Evolution.  The event was organized by Fundacja En Arche (the En Arche Foundation, or roughly, the Origins Foundation). Although its critics call it a “creationist” organization, Fundacja En Arche is not about biblical creationism (whether young Earth or old Earth). Instead, it focuses on the scientific and philosophical issues of Darwinism and intelligent design. I told the staff that the foundation reminded me of Discovery Institute twenty years ago.  A major part of En Arche’s work so far has been translating into Polish books such…
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