Discovery Institute's Blog, page 471

Stampede! What the California Science Center Scandal Reveals about Our Scientific Culture

You've heard a lot in this space the past few days about the viewpoint-discrimination lawsuit settled by the California Science Center for $110,000. That's money the CSC found it advisable to pay out to the American Freedom Alliance in order to avoid having to go to court and argue the case in public, with all that would have entailed by way of exposing a trail of incriminating emails by CSC staffers and scientists around the Los Angeles area.

Lead by Casey Luskin, ENV writers have...

California Science Center Issues a Press Release Full of Misleading Claims: A Point-by-Point Response

The California Science Center Foundation (herein "CSC," as it is essentially a shell organization that is very difficult to distinguish from the California Science Center) has put out a press statement full of inaccurate and misleading information about the settlement in the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) v. CSC lawsuit. E-mail evidence disclosed during the case, as well as a myriad of other facts, directly contradicts CSC's claims. In particular, is noteworthy that CSC's statement m...

Meyer and Nelson on a Failed Explanation for the Origin of the Genetic Code

Ann Gauger has already drawn our attention to the new paper, published just last week, in the journal BIO-Complexity. Authored by Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer and Paul Nelson, the paper is concerned with the question of the origin of the genetic code, and seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the so-called Direct RNA Templating (DRT) hypothesis as an explanation for its origin.

First formulated and proposed by Michael Yarus in 1998, the DRT scenario has enjoyed support from such...

Evidence Revealed in California Science Center Lawsuit Shows Intolerance and Efforts to Suppress Intelligent Design

Readers who could use a bit of background to the unfolding media war about evidence of censorship by the CSC may find the following to be helpful.

In October 2009, a non-profit group in Los Angeles called the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) contracted with the California Science Center (CSC) to rent CSC's IMAX theater to screen the documentary Darwin's Dilemma. However, when CSC learned that the film documentary portrayed the theory of intelligent design (ID) in a positive light, CSC a...

Not Really about Censorship of Intelligent Design? E-Mails Expose California Science Center's Sham Pretext

When members of the Darwin lobby get caught in the act of discriminating against intelligent design (ID), their usual reflexive response is simply to deny the evidence of their intolerance. We saw this with the Guillermo Gonzalez case, where the censors blamed the victim. That's exactly what is happening in the current media war over the settlement in the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) v. California Science Center (CSC) lawsuit.

The evidence in this case shows CSC cancelled the...

Series of Costly Case Settlements Warns Darwin's Bullies: Stop Censoring Intellectual Freedom

"Three case settlements this year show that it is a costly mistake for intolerant academic elites to suppress the viewpoints of Darwin-critics," said Casey Luskin, an attorney and policy analyst with Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. "The growing trend is that those who discriminate against intelligent design face stiff penalties."

This month, the state-run California Science Center (CSC) paid $110,000 to avoid a public trial and settle a lawsuit by American Freedom A...

AP's Coverage of California Science Center's $110K Payout for Censorship Predictably Misses the Mark by 150 Years

Big surprise. The MSM missed the real news. The news here is that a state-run museum censorsed a film because they had contempt for the film's pro-ID viewpoint.

Imagine a news story about Hurricane Irene in the New York Times today, that leads off by saying something like:

A deadly hurricane, downgraded to a tropical storm by some in the meteorological community who think that there is a conspiracy to fool the public about global climate change, was the result of oddly severe weather...

First Amendment Victory in California

Free speech to most of the establishment means free speech for unpopular liberal causes. The position of the Left is that conservative positions -- especially on cultural issues -- do not deserve to be heard on their own terms. Their advocates do not get to speak on the record; they only are spoken about.

So the just-announced $110,000 settlement of a First Amendment case against the publicly supported California Science Center in Los Angeles is an important breakthrough in...

James Shapiro's Evolution: A View from the 21st Century Offers a Stunning Look at Biological Complexity and Non-Darwinian Evolution

University of Chicago molecular biologist James A. Shapiro is not a proponent of intelligent design (ID). And he is an evolutionist. But his new book Evolution: A View from the 21st Century is recommended reading for ID proponents who have an interest in biological complexity.

Shapiro is not a promoter of the classical modern neo-Darwinian model of evolution. Rather, he believes that in a sense, biological organisms are programmed to evolve. That programming, he believes, ultimately ...

California Science Center Pays $110,000 to Settle Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit

The state-run California Science Center (CSC) has paid $110,000 to settle a lawsuit by American Freedom Alliance (AFA) against CSC for violating AFA's First Amendment free speech rights to advocate intelligent design (ID). As part of the settlement, the CSC also has invited AFA to present the ID event it previously cancelled.

CSC rented its IMAX theater to AFA to show Darwin's Dilemma, a science documentary advocating ID. However, when CSC learned the film would portray ID favorably...