Discovery Institute's Blog, page 106

Merry Christmas! Here Is #8 of Our Top Stories of 2015: Fighting Cancer with Intelligent Design

Editor's note: Welcome to the traditional recounting of our Top 10 evolution-related stories of the past year, as compiled in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by Evolution News staff. Sit back and enjoy the most amusing, the most enlightening, and the most important news to come our way in 2015. The countdown will culminate on New Year's Day.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your friends in the intelligent design community! If you haven't finalized your year-end...

Peer-Reviewed Article on Transposable Elements Cites "Irreducible Complexity" and Other "Teleologic" Factors

A new peer-reviewed article in Wiley's eLS, "Transposons in Eukaryotes (Part B): Genomic Consequences of Transposition," reviews the role of transposable elements (TEs). Plant geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lnnig argues that "irreducibly complex" structures may defy explanation by TEs or other Darwinian factors:

A general difficulty to be mentioned in this context (but not inherent in the selfish DNA hypothesis) is that mutation and selection may not be the full explanation for the origin of specie...

#9 of Our Top Stories of 2015: Octopus Genome Is a Big Problem for Darwinism

Editor's note: Welcome to the traditional recounting of our Top 10 evolution-related stories of the past year, as compiled in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by Evolution News staff. Sit back and enjoy the most amusing, the most enlightening, and the most important news to come our way in 2015. The countdown will culminate on New Year's Day.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your friends in the intelligent design community! If you haven't finalized your year-end...

#10 of Our Top Stories of 2015: Researcher Is Caught in a Wonderful Freudian Slip on Intelligent Design

Editor's note: Welcome to the traditional recounting of our Top 10 evolution-related stories of the past year, as compiled in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by Evolution News staff. Sit back and enjoy the most amusing, the most enlightening, and the most important news to come our way in 2015. The countdown will culminate on New Year's Day.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your friends in the intelligent design community! If you haven't finalized your year-end...

Why Would Evolution Produce Non-Essential Genes?

Recent papers have tried to identify the subset of all genes in a genome that are essential for viability. In "The Indispensable Genome," Science Magazine considers this capability a turning point in biology:

Game-changing moments in functional genomics often reflect the development and application of powerful new reagents and methods to provide new phenotypic insight on a global scale. Three independent studies describe systematic, genome-scale approaches to defining human genes that are in...

How Does Summer in Seattle Sound? Apply Now for Our Intensive 9-Day Seminars on Intelligent Design

Each summer Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture sponsors two intensive 9-day seminars. Our next session is from July 8-16, 2016 in Seattle, at the height of the most beautiful time of year in the Pacific Northwest, when you can study the mystery of nature while enjoying its splendor as well.

The seminars are primarily designed for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students, but each year we try to reserve a few spaces for a special cohort of professors, scientists, te...

Furry, Feathery, and Finny Animals Speak Their Minds

Much research on animal minds is rooted in Darwinian naturalist assumptions -- a long slow continuum of intelligence from somewhere just north of cytoplasm to humans. These assumptions may have set us back.

First, just being a life form includes a drive to survive and an ability to adapt for that purpose, which we do not find in rocks. Many life forms can also communicate for those purposes. But, so far as we know, they lack consciousness or sentience, the ability to feel things. There is no...

Avi Davis, Friend and Ally, RIP

I have some very sad news to report. Our friend and ally Avi Davis passed away today, suddenly, at age 57. Vigorous in every way, he had suffered a heart attack while bicycling in Southern California. We at Discovery Institute are shocked and deeply dismayed by the loss.

Readers of Evolution News may recognize the name of Avi's American Freedom Alliance (AFA), which precipitated a symbolically charged struggle over free speech in the context of the evolution debate.

In 2009, the AFA reserve...

Cambrian Arthropod Was a Loving Mother

An egg clutch has been identified within the carapace of Waptia, an arthropod previously known from the Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian, dated 508 million years ago). The eggs are highlighted in a photo from the University of Toronto (above), which calls this the "oldest evidence of brood care" in any animal.

Long before kangaroos carried their joeys in their pouches and honey bees nurtured their young in hives, there was the 508-million-year-old Waptia. Little is known about the shrimp-like...

Ten Myths About Dover: #1, "Judge Jones Addressed the Actual Theory of ID, Not a Straw Man"

Editor's note: The Kitzmiller v. Dover decision has been the subject of much media attention and many misinterpretations from pro-Darwin lobby groups. With the tenth anniversary of Kitzmiller approaching on December 20, Evolution News offers a series of ten articles debunking common myths about the case. Look here for Myths 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

"Everybody understood that intelligent design was a religious proposition, and we are absolutely thrilled that Judge Jones has seen throu...