Discovery Institute's Blog, page 123

Eric Davidson (1937-2015) on Gene Regulatory Networks

With the passing of paleontologist David Raup and biologist and science historian Will Provine in recent months, we've been given the opportunity to reflect on two famous evolutionary scientists who were brave enough to critique neo-Darwinism. But there's another one we've missed -- Eric Davidson, the developmental biologist from Caltech who, sadly, passed away this past August.

Davidson is famous for formulating the concept of developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs), a description of...

Listen: Paul Nelson Remembers Paleontologist David Raup (1933-2015)

On a new episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with Center for Science & Culture Fellow Paul Nelson, sharing memories of the late David Raup, influential invertebrate paleontologist at the University of Chicago.

Nelson discusses Raup's early participation in the ID movement at the Pajaro Dunes meeting, his realism about the scientific community's attitude toward skeptics on evolution, and his courage in engaging in thoughtful discussion with those of differing viewpoints.

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Blood Pressure and the Goldilocks Principle

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." Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.

My previous article in this series showed t...

Surgeon Amputates a Man's Ears So He Can Look Like a Parrot

The Onion is in danger of irrelevancy. We have now fallen so deeply into the vortex that a woman obsessed with becoming visually impaired was intentionally blinded -- as a treatment --by her psychologist.

Now a surgeon has amputated a man's ears so that he can satisfy his urge to look like a parrot. From the story in the Telegraph:

Ted Richards, 56, is obsessed by pets Ellie, Teaka, Timneh, Jake and Bubi and has his face tattooed with colourful feathers.

But the animal lover -- who has 110 t...

In Allaying Darwin's Doubt, Two Cambrian Experts Still Come Up Short

Perceptive readers will find hints of worry in a journal's one-sided presentation of the Cambrian explosion. Darwin's Doubt? What doubt would that be? Current Biology's senior reviews editor, Florian Maderspacher, is too enraptured with "The Tree View of Life" to pay any attention to doubt. Waltzing through the grass, he ponders the distant relatives under his feet.

Whatever we see moving and growing around us is a member of our extended family. The mighty eagle and the ugly slug, the sequoi...

Countering Arguments You Don't Like, the Passive-Aggressive Way

Wesley Smith has a post over at National Review's The Corner, remarking on how the Washington Post subtly undermines a commentary article advocating honesty in discussions of assisted suicide. The article by Kirsten Powers is all about public policy, and about language -- how "verbal cloaking is the stock in trade of the 'right-to-die' forces" -- not religion. There's no mention of religion or anything to do with it, but the newspaper published the piece under the prominent heading, "Religio...

Darwin and "Providential Design"

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In an essay in the journal First Things earlier this year ("The Church of Darwin," June 2015), I discussed how debates over science and faith might have played out much differently had the scientific community embraced a guided form of evolution rather than Darwin's blind and unguided version. Biologist Glenn Sauer of Fairfield University has replied with a letter just published in the October issue of the journal. First Things had to shorten my response to Sauer, and so its editors have gra...

Seeking Alien "Megastructures" Around a Puzzling Star, Astronomers Debate Intelligent Design

A fascinating article for The Atlantic describes a disagreement among astronomers over intelligent design. Though the phrase isn't used, it's clearly about design detection and when such a determination is legitimately triggered.

A star some 1480 light years from us, KIC 8462852, emits a peculiar pattern of light, alternatively obscured and revealed, obscured and revealed -- "irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips in flux down to below the 20% level."

In 2011, several citizen scientists flagged...

From Bioethicists, a New Method for Normalizing Suicide

A big new drive in bioethics and euthanasia advocacy is VSED, "voluntary stop eating and drinking," a/k/a suicide by starvation.

The organization Compassion and Choices -- promoters of assisted suicide, bounteously funded by George Soros -- pushes VSED on its website as a positive way for the elderly "tired of life" to get out of this world.

Now a journal, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, wants stories of starvation suicides:

We would like to hear about both positive and negative experiences w...

Two Critics of Intelligent Design Prefer Darwin's Path as a Science Thinker; We Can Identify

One of the criticisms you hear about intelligent design is that ID advocates analyze ideas rather than doing research in a lab. (I'm phrasing that in a polite way.) While ID scientists do indeed perform experimental research, it's true that weighing explanations for the origin of biological information is a sine qua non, and that need not be done at a lab bench. In the case for ID, reasoning is the key.

So it's interesting to read candid admissions from two scientists bitterly opposed to ID...