New blogs on the controversy between intelligent design and Darwinism

I am pleased to announce that CreationEvolutionDesign has just joined the list at your right of new blogs relevant to the ID controversy that balance the generally negative (and know-nothing) perspective of major media. Stephen E. Jones of Perth, Australia, is a Darwin doubter who has read more books than anyone I have ever heard of on the subject of evolution. He operated an excellent discussion group at Yahoo for several years. He accepts the evidence for common ancestry but does not think that the evidence really supports the idea that it all happened by natural law acting on chance events. He recently took a biology degree in order to better write his book, Problems of Evolution, which I am really looking forward to. So if you like this blog, and I am not around for some reason, go to that one.

(Note: If this is not the story you were looking for, see the Blog service note below or the stories listed in the sidebar. )


And ... if that is not enough, I have also linked to a couple of other new ones. Notice Darwinian Fundamentalism, featuring blogger Lawrence Selden, who says about himself only this, “I am a macroevolution agnostic. I used to accept evolutionary theory. Then I looked at the evidence. It became clear to me that macroevolutionary theory is built more on a priori philosophical assumptions than on evidence. Microevolution, on the other hand, is supported by the evidence. The distinction between the two is critical and is largely ignored, or not understood, by the media and general public.”

I like his approach. He asks, for example,

When will the mainstream media pick up on the fact that the roles have changed in the current evolution debates? The supporters of Darwinian theory show many of the characteristics of religious fundamentalists, and the critics of the theory are not appealing to scripture or religion, but are basing their arguments on scientific evidence. The Darwinists are lobbying for a "Darwin only" doctrine in public schools and want to ban any consideration of the weaknesses of the theory. The critics are actually lobbying for more teaching on evolution-- exposing students to the evidence for evolution and the evidence against and encouraging them to think critically and analyze the evidence for themselves.

Lawrence, legacy mainstream media do not understand obvious things like that because they have been whacked upside the head by the news revolution created by new media. The legacy media still behave as though 1) they can create truth and therefore 2) facts need their imprimatur in order to be true. Most of the many scandals plaguing the New York Times are rooted in that attitude. Don’t wait for them to change. Go boldly into the future.

And I must also commend to you Real Physics, operated by Meta-Jester, who claims that he aims at Total World Domination, but seems to content himself with great blogging on the ID controversy. For example, he debunks the idea that traditional Europeans assumed that the Earth was flat.

M-J sometimes addresses issues that are not clearly related, but presumably the man who aims at Total World Domination must be a generalist. Speaking for myself, I will settle for dominating the bottom of my intray.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Blog service note: Did you come here looking for any of the following stories?

- The op-ed by Catholic Cardinal Schonborn in the New York Times? Note also the Times's story on the subject, some interesting quotes from major Darwinists to compare with the Catholic Church's view, as expressed by the Cardinal, and an example of the kind of problem with Darwinian philosophy that the Cardinal is talking about.

- the Privileged Planet film shown at the Smithsonian, go here for an extended review. Please do not raise cain about an "anti-evolution" film without seeing it. If your doctor forbids you to see the film, in case you get too excited, at least read my detailed log of the actual subjects of the film. If you were one of the people who raised cain, ask yourself why you should continue to believe the people who so misled you about the film's actual content ...

- the showing of Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian, go here and here to start, and then this one and this one will bring you up to date.

Blog policy note: This blog does not intentionally accept fully anonymous Comments, Comments with language unsuited to an intellectual discussion, URLs posted without comment, or defamatory statements. Defamatory statement: A statement that would be actionable if anyone took the author seriously. For example, someone may say “O’Leary is a crummy journalist”; that’s a matter of opinion and I don’t know who would care. But if they say, “O’Leary was convicted of grand theft auto in 1983,” well that’s just plain false, and probably actionable, if the author were taken seriously. Also, due to time constraints, the moderator rarely responds to comments, and usually only about blog service issues.