Source: https://msu.edu/~pennock5/research/DISE_PennockVsIDC.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 03:41:30+00:00

Document:
Robert T. Pennock and Susan Epperson, the plaintiff in the Epperson v. Arkansas case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and invalidated laws that banned the teaching of evolution.
• I was called as an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board creationism case, which was tried in Federal District Court in Pennsylvania. In my expert report I explained how intelligent design creationism is not science but is a disguised form of sectarian religion. In my deposition, I answer detailed questions from Thomas More Center attorneys.
Dec. 20, 2005: The Kitzmiller verdict is in...Science wins in Dover!
I was interviewed for the PBS NOVA program about the trial, which won a Peabody award. Other portions of my interview appear as part of the web site for the program that deals with the proper definition of science. I also appeared in After the Trial: A Second Look on WKAR-TV which examines the impact of the trial in Michigan.
2009: Four books about the Dover trial have been published in the last few years including Matthew Chapman's 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania; Edward Humes' Monkey Girl; Lauri Lebo's The Devil in Dover and Gordy Slack's The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything.
AP Photo: Expert witness Robert Pennock from Michigan State University enters federal court in Harrisburg, Pa.,..
• Michigan Citizens for Science. I founded this citizens' action group together with Ed Brayton in 2001 to help respond to two intelligent design bills that had been proposed in the Michigan legislature that would have changed the state's science curriculum standards to include ID. MCFS assists legislators and school administrators in maintaining the integrity of science education in Michigan. I was president MCFS from 2001-2008 and now am a board member.
• I testified before the Texas State Board of Education in 1997 during the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) public hearings in support of their inclusion of evolution. I also testified in 2005 at the Texas State Board of Education science textbook hearings to help fight lobbying by intelligent design creationists who were trying to get proposed biology rejected for not including "weaknesses" of evolution.
• In 2002, biologist Ken Miller and I rebutted ID creationists William Dembski and Michael Behe at a symposium on Evolution or Intelligent Design: Examining the Intelligent Design Issue at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2002. A transcript is posted.
• You can read my criticisms of Intelligent Design Creationism in my book Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, published by the MIT Press.
Tower of Babel has been reviewed and praised in over fifty publications. The New York Review of Books called it "the best book opposing creationism in all of its guises."
• For the most complete collection of primary materials, I edited: Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives published by the MIT Press.
It includes representative essays from ID advocates (Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Alvin Plantinga and Paul Nelson) giving their key arguments in their own words. Critical responses includes ones from philosophers and historians (Evan Fales, Brandon Fitelson, Barbara Forrest, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Philip Kitcher, Robert T. Pennock, Michael Ruse, Kelly Smith, Elliot Sober) and scientists (Matthew J. Brauer, Daniel R. Brumbaugh, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and George C. Williams). There are also critical essays from various theological perspectives (Roy Clouser, Ernan McMullin, Nancey Murphy, Arthur Peacocke, and Howard J. Van Till).
It has been reviewed and praised in over a dozen publications including Science, The New York Times Book Review, BioScience, Quarterly Review of Biology, Evolution, Endeavour, Scientific American, Bridges, National Center for Science Education Reports, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Philosophy in Review, Science & Theology News, and Philosophy of Science.
• I co-edited with Michael Ruse this updated edition of But Is It Science?: The Philosophical Question in the Creation / Evolution Controversy, which has been a standard text on the issue for undergraduate philosophy courses.
It begins with a significanly revised historical section that provides religious, scientific and philosophical background to the contemporary controversy. The second major section compiles material on the McLean v. Arkansas case, which tested the constitutionality of teaching Creation Science. The final, completely new, section deals with the Kitzmiller v. Dover case which tested the constitutionality of teaching Intelligent Design Creationism. See the table of contents for complete article listing.
Abstract: This review article gives a thorough overview of the published literature regarding the creationism, especially intelligent design, and its key arguments.
Abstract: I consider what it might mean to teach creationism and offer a variety of educational, legal, religious, and philosophical arguments for why it is improper to teach it in public school science classes and possibly elsewhere as well. I rebut the standard creationist arguments for inclusion. I also rebut Rawlsian arguments offered by philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga.
Abstract: One new development in the ongoing creationism/ evolution controversy has been the proposal to institute opt- out policies that would allow creationist parents to exempt their children from any instruction involving evolution. By way of an explanation of some of the philosophical issues at play in the debate over evolution and the nature of science, this article shows the educational folly of such policies. If evolution is taught properly, it should not be possible to opt out of it without opting out of biology. Moreover, if Intelligent Design creationist criticisms of evolution and scientific naturalism were taken as the basis for opting out, then the effect would be even more radical and would require opting out of science entirely.
Abstract: Intelligent Design creationists cite Scripture to show that God may be detected in Creation and to suggest that scientists who deny this are idolaters who are commiting a pre-modern sin. Yet in the public square they deny that their movement is creationist or religious. This review article rebuts common arguments made by ID advocates such as Philip Johnson and William Dembski, documenting how ID improperly tries to wedge the transcendent into science and showing why their form of creationism is opposed both on scientific and theological grounds.
Abstract: That Intelligent Design Creationism rejects the methodological naturalism of modern science and in favor of a Pre-Modern super-naturalist worldview is well documented and by now well known. An irony that has not been appreciated, however, is the way that ID Creationists try to advance their Pre-Modern view by adopting (if only tactically) a radical Post-Modern perspective. This paper will reveal the deep threads of postmodernism that run through the ID Creationist movement’s arguments, as evidenced in the writings and interviews of its key leaders. Seeing their arguments and activities from this perspective highlights the danger to science posed by both ID Creationism and postmodernism.
Abstract: In the 2005 Kitzmiller v Dover Area School Board case, a federal district court ruled that Intelligent Design creationism was not science, but a disguised reli- gious view and that teaching it in public schools is unconstitutional. But creationists contend that it is illegitimate to distinguish science and religion, citing philosophers Quinn and especially Laudan, who had criticized a similar ruling in the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas creation-science case on the grounds that no necessary and sufficient demarcation criterion was possible and that demarcation was a dead pseudo-problem. This article discusses problems with those conclusions and their application to the quite different reasoning between these two cases. Laudan focused too narrowly on the problem of demarcation as Popper defined it. Distinguishing science from religion was and remains an important conceptual issue with significant practical import, and philosophers who say there is no difference have lost touch with reality in a profound and perverse way. The Kitzmiller case did not rely on a strict demarcation criterion, but appealed only to a “ballpark” demarcation that identifies methodological naturalism (MN) as a “ground rule” of science. MN is shown to be a distinguishing feature of science both in explicit statements from scientific organizations and in actual practice. There is good reason to think that MN is shared as a tacit assumption among philoso- phers who emphasize other demarcation criteria and even by Laudan himself.
• Still waiting. ID creationists mostly ignore substantive criticisms of their arguments, but Micheal Behe has conceded in print that a counterexample I made in Tower of Babel undermined his definition of irreducible complexity. Behe promised "to repair this defect in future work" ("Reply to my Critics" Philosophy of Science 2001, p. 695), but it is over seven years later and he has yet to do so.
Abstract: An experimental demonstration of how the Darwinian mechanism can produce complex functional traits. Though not a topic of the paper, the experiment provides a direct refutation of Behe's claim that evolution cannot produce "irreducible complexity" and Dembski's claim that it cannot produce "complex specified information."
Abstract: I reply to ID leader Micheal Behe's criticisms of Tower of Babel. Behe fails to reply to my criticisms in Tower of his arguments, but does try to defend Philip Johnson. I rebut Behe's claim that ID is not a form of creationism and his argument that evidence evidence against Darwinism does count as evidence of an active God. I discuss other errors in Behe's paper, including his improper appeal to Positivist philosopher Percy Bridgman.
Abstract: This paper is based on talks I gave in 1999 and 2000 about the creationist controversy in Kansas and alerting audiences to the new threat from intelligent design creationism. Using an example of the construction of arches, I rebut Michael Behe's claim that so-called"irreducibly complex" system cannot arise by gradual processes.
Abstract: An experimental demonstration of how the Darwinian mechanism can produce complex functional traits. Though not discussed explicitly in the paper, the experiment refutes Behe's claim that evolution cannot produce "irreducible complexity" and Dembski's claim that it cannot produce "complex specified information."
• Mystery Science Theater: The Case of the Secret Agent"
Abstract: Rebuttal to William Dembski's SETI and archery analogies, his explanatory filter, and his claims that complex specified information cannot be produced by natural processes. His argument is simply a recasting of the old creationist argument that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Abstract: ID creationist William Dembski has failed to respond to any of my substantive criticisms in Tower of Babel of his work, but he did write an article challenging my objection to the ID appeal to supernatural explanations, claiming that it was not ID but rather evolution that engaged in "magic". In my reply, I document that ID is indeed a form of supernnaturism and fails to offer a scientific account. I include a new counter-example to show again that his "explanatory filter" to detect design does produce false positives, and show how, conta his claim, natural processes can produce what he calls "complex specificed information."
Abstract: Johnson fails to address any of the substantive criticisms I made of his claims. This reply corrects some of his additional errors and misreadings.
Abstract: A review essay of Johnson's book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.
Abstract: The creationism/evolution controversy is not a scientific controversy but a religious and cultural one. This examines and responds to the moral and religious issues that creationists take to be at stake in the debate. It won a Templeton Prize for examplary paper in theology and the natural sciences.
Abstract: This replies to Johnson's response to the previous article. It also updates that article by discussing Johnson's 1995 book Reason in the Balance, that appeared a year after the above article was accepted for publication.
Abstract: Phillip Johnson claims that Creationism is a better explanation of the existence and characteristics of biological species than is evolutionary theory. He argues that the only reason biologists do not recognize that Creationist's negative arguments against Darwinism have proven this is that they are wedded to a biased ideological philosophy-Naturalism-which dogmatically denies the possibility of an intervening creative god. However, Johnson fails to distinguish Ontological Naturalism from Methodological Naturalism. Science makes use of the latter and I show how it is not dogmatic but follows from sound requirements for empirical evidential testing. Furthermore, Johnson has no serious alternative type of positive evidence to offer for Creationism, and purely negative argumentation, despite his attempt to legitimate it, will not suffice.
Abstract: Focussing on the writings of ID leader Stephen Meyer, this paper demonstrates how ID is a sectarian religious view. I review and critique Meyer's claim that ID has confirmed "the God Hypothesis" through an inference to the best explanation. The ID design inference is a God-of-the-gaps argument combined with a kind of Christian presuppositionalism.
Abstract: Discusses ID and peer review. Rebuts ID creationist Jonathan Wells' charge that scientific journals are biased against intelligent design. Also considers how ID perpetuates the war between science and religion.
Abstract: The new common slogan one hears from creationists trying to get their views into the public schools is "teach the controversy" together with the curriculum proposals that schools should teach "arguments for and against evolution." Creationists are using this kind of approach as an indirect way of bringing in standard Creation Science and Intelligent Design arguments without mentioning those terms explicitly. This article examines this latest political strategy and the misleading rhetoric that it uses. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board Federal court decision against teaching Intelligent Design also ruled against this strategy at the same time.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates how the design inference as put forward by ID creationists is simply another version of the God-of-the-gaps argument from ignorance. It also rebuts the ID claim that science is not religiously neutral.
• God and Nature Revisited. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. (Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 8 – 9, January 2004).
Abstract: A review of historians David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers’ edited anthology When Science and Christianity Meet.
Abstract: My testimony before the Texas State Board of Education opposing ID Creationists' attempts to include IDC in Texas biology textbooks.
Abstract: Creationists claim that evolution is a "deception" and "a lie." But, starting with Phillip Henry Gosse in the 19th century, creationists have had to deny the empirical evidence in ways that seems to make God into a deceiver. Who is deceiving whom? This paper looks at the misuses of enchantment.
Abstract: Discusses the deceptions behind the ID creationst movie Expelled and its connection to the new ID creationist strategy of sponsoring bills that would allow their arguments against evolution to be taught under the guise of "academic freedom."
• The Avida-ED Project: I am the PI for an NSF grant that developed an educational software platform for undergraduate biology lab courses that allows students to test evolutionary hypotheses experimentally using digital organisms.
Avida-ED and model curricular materials may be downloaded for free for use in classrooms at the MSU Avida-ED home page.
• As a national expert on the evolution / creationism controversy in general and intelligent design creationism in particular, I have given dozens of interviews for stories in national and international newspapers and magazines, as well as television and radio.
• In 1999, I appeared as an invited author for Author's Night at the National Press Club in Washington DC.
• A video of my talk The New Creationism as part of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech is available from the Skeptics Society (Video #AV96). In the talk I discuss the now infamous Wedge Strategy document leaked from the Discovery Institute.
• I appear in the NOVA special 2-hour program Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. Additional excerpts from my interview are used on the NOVA web page Defining Science that accompanies the show.
• I was interviewed by the History Channel for the documentary Scopes: The Battle Over America's Soul, that was part of their series 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America.
Go to Dr. Pennock's Home Page at MSU.

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