Friday, April 06, 2007

Darwinian Fundamentalism Is Alive and Well in Dallas

There is an opinion piece by Lee Cullum in the Dallas Morning News that hits just about all the talking points of Darwinian Fundamentalism: dogma, obscurantism, misrepresentation and an effort to muzzle those who question macroevolutionary theory. The many errors in fact and straw man arguments are adequately analyzed in John West's post here.

One of the sections that is most remarkable is this:
If advocates of intelligent design would assemble a conference with their own speakers and professors versus, say, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and an evolutionary biologist, that would be a solid and fascinating program.

The sponsors of the conference agree. Prior to the publication of this piece, the Discovery Institute invited members of the science faculties at SMU to a debate during the conference. To date, none have accepted. What more can the DI do? Apparently Cullum thinks that the science profs should have veto power over the conference by simply refusing to debate.

For an mp3 download of a debate that did occur, go here. Perhaps the results of that debate scared away the SMU faculty.