Discovery Institute's Blog, page 115

We Share Many Genes with Lettuce, but that Doesn't Make Us Part Salad

It is fashionable these days to denigrate human beings as mere apes. But is that notion supported by science? No.

Over at First Things, I point out some of the errors, get into some of the scientific retorts to the we-are-apes argument made by evolutionary scientists, and illuminate the actual agenda of those seeking to convince us to think of ourselves as mere chimps or gorillas.

For example, we are often told there is only a 2 percent genetic difference between us and chimps. From "You Are...

In Tampa Bay, No Fewer than Three Successful Regional Premieres of Living Waters

Congratulations are in order to our friends at the C.S. Lewis Society and Trinity College for pulling off a trio of very successful regional premieres of Illustra's Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth in the Tampa Bay, Florida, area over the weekend of November 7-8.

Two events in Clearwater and Sarasota drew nearly 600 audience members, who stayed after for a lively Q&A with producer Lad Allen and host and organizer Professor Tom Woodward. The screening in Dunedin w...

Missing the Goal: Realistic Mutation Rates Stop Evolutionary Algorithms

Winston Ewert of Biologic Institute has just published a new article in the peer-reviewed journal BIO-Complexity ("Overabundant mutations help potentiate evolution: The effect of biologically realistic mutation rates on computer models of evolution").

He and his colleagues have been engaged in a series of critiques of evolutionary algorithms for the last several years. In case you don't know what an evolutionary algorithm is, it's a computer model that seeks to represent evolution in some wa...

How Clotting Factors Form a Fibrin Clot, Completing Hemostasis

Editor's note : Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News & Views is delighted to present this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.

To follo...

Are You Infected by the Culture of Death?

A few months ago, a healthy but depressed 24-year-old Belgian woman named Emily was approved for euthanasia by a medical board. Much controversy ensued.

Alex Schadenberg, head of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, reports that she has changed her mind:

The Economist released a video on November 10 concerning Emily, a 24 year-old physically healthy woman who was approved for euthanasia for the reason of psychological suffering. The video is titled "24 & Ready to Die."

The 21-minute video i...

It's Really Not Rocket Science

In a 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote:

It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident... you have essentially "lost y...

Fear of Intelligent Design Prevents Some Biologists from Accepting ENCODE's Results

Editor's note: This is Part 6 of a 6-part series on ENCODE that Casey Luskin has been publishing this year in Salvo Magazine. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 have already been published. The prelude can be found here.

Evolutionists who accept ENCODE's results have tried to comprehend why other biologists steadfastly challenge the project's experimentally demonstrated conclusions. Many have suggested that a major force driving anti-ENCODE attitudes is fear of lending credence to intelligent design...

Ren�� Girard, RIP: A Rare Wisdom

French historian and philosopher Ren Girard (1923-2015) passed away on November 4. Bishop Robert Barron writes at Real Clear Religion:

Ren Girard, one of the most influential Catholic philosophers in the world, died last week at the age of 91. Born in Avignon and a member of the illustrious Academie Francaise, Girard nevertheless made his academic reputation in the United States, as a professor at Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University.

There are some thinkers...

More on the "Mechanism" of Intelligent Design

Following on my post yesterday ("What's the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?"), here as promised is a helpful passage from Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, pp. 393-398. Biochemist Larry Moran kindly asked how Stephen Meyer thinks design in biology was instantiated. Meyer writes there:

According to [University of Cambridge paleontologist Robert] Asher, the inference to intelligent design is actually "anti-uniformitarian" because it doesn...

What's the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?

University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran has issued a challenge at his blog Sandwalk, a challenge that advocates of intelligent design have heard before. We've answered it before as well, but it's not unreasonable and is therefore worth addressing again. He asks: Tell me the way information is incorporated into living things. Give a detailed explanation. What's the mechanism?

Indeed, I would bet that some readers have wondered the same thing. Taking Moran's post as a welcome occasion for...