Kansas Evolution Hearings
In 2005, Wells participated in the Kansas evolution hearings, which were boycotted by mainstream scientists. There Wells testified:
I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence...I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence...There are already scientists-- respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.
Prior to the evolution hearings, in December 2000 after the Pratt County, Kansas school board revised its tenth-grade biology curriculum at the urging of intelligent design proponents to include material that encourages students to question the theory of evolution, the Pratt Tribune published a letter from Jerry Coyne challenging Wells's characterization in an article of his work on peppered moths, saying that his article appended to the Pratt standards was misused and being mischaracterized:
"Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells's book, "Icons of Evolution") to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory." -- Jerry Coyne, letter to the editor, Pratt Tribune.
Read more about this topic: Jonathan Wells (intelligent Design Advocate), Opposition To Evolution
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