Discovery Institute's Blog, page 140

Spectacular Convergence: A Camera Eye in a Microbe

They thought it was a joke. A century ago, biologists could not believe that a one-celled creature had an eye. But since the warnowiid dinoflagellate was difficult to find and grow in the lab, detailed research was rare, until now. A team from the University of British Columbia gathered specimens off the coast of BC and Japan for a closer look. They found that the structure, called an ocelloid, has structures that mimic the complex eye of higher animals. PhysOrg says:

In fact, the 'ocelloid'...

New Book, Cosmological Implications of Heisenberg's Principle, Argues for Purpose and Design in Nature

In 2014, I wrote about a book, Intelligible Design: A Realistic Approach to the Philosophy and History of Science. Now, one of the co-editors of that book, Julio Gonzalo, a computer scientist and physicist at National Distance Education University (UNED) in Spain, has written another book, Cosmological Implications of Heisenberg's Principle, published by World Scientific.

Much of Dr. Gonzalo's new book is fairly technical. However, many sections are easily accessible, starting with the prolo...

Watch: The Case for Intelligent Design from Dolphin Echolocation

It's getting down to the wire. The Northwest premiere of the new Illustra documentary Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth is now just two days away. Discovery Institute will host the event this coming Friday, August 7, at McCaw Hall in Seattle. Find more information here, and don't neglect to register by the end of business tomorrow, August 6. Door open at 7 pm; the shows begins at 7:30.

This may be the most powerful case for ID that our colleagues at Illustra have y...

Planned Parenthood Videos Would Disgust Even Margaret Sanger

In the midst of the Planned Parenthood video sting scandal, it's worth noting that founder Margaret Sanger was emphatically opposed to abortion.

Sanger's disgust with abortion is well documented. David Tell recounted in The Weekly Standard:

She turned women seeking abortions away from her clinics: "I do not approve of abortion." She called it "sordid," "abhorrent," "terrible," "barbaric," a "horror." She called abortionists "blood-sucking men with MD after their names who perform operations...

Nature Agrees: Science Students Should "Actively Grapple with Questions" Not Just "Listen to Answers"

Discovery Institute has long promoted critical thinking in the science classroom, noting that it is remarkably scarce in the way evolution is taught. Despite media opposition to academic freedom laws, active engagement, asking questions, and thinking analytically have been demonstrated to promote student understanding and success.

That insight has now been confirmed by no less a source than Nature, the world's most prestigious scientific journal, in collaboration with Scientific American. T...

Debating Darwin's Doubt: Casey Luskin on Theistic Evolutionary Responses to Stephen Meyer

On a new episode of ID the Future, Sarah Chaffee talks with Casey Luskin, Research Coordinator at the Center for Science & Culture and contributor to the newly released Debating Darwin's Doubt, edited by ENV's David Klinghoffer. Debating Darwin's Doubt documents the intense controversy sparked by the case for intelligent design made by Stephen Meyer in Darwin's Doubt.

Luskin discusses a series of exchanges with BioLogos, the prominent Christian theistic evolutionary group, exploring several...

"Unintelligent Design": What "Dialogue" about ID Looks Like at One Southeastern University

An email correspondent brings to my attention a course to be offered at Lynn University in Florida for the fall 2015 semester titled "Unintelligent Design" (backup PDF) taught by biologist Gary Villa (backup link). It's part of Lynn's "Dialogues of Learning" course offerings, under the specific category "Dialogues of Belief and Reason." As the course's title suggests, this doesn't sound much like a dialogue, but a monologue where the professor bashes intelligent design. The impression is con...

Spectacular Discovery Reveals Power Grid in Muscle Cells; Design Implications Are Profound

A new finding announced in Nature is a blockbuster for intelligent design. We knew about ATP synthase -- that rotary engine that uses proton flow to create "batteries" of energy-packed ATP molecules. Those motors in the mitochondria are arranged along folds (cristae) in the mitochondrial membranes to maximize their output.

Now researchers have learned that the mitochondria themselves are connected by electrical wires in a vast intracellular network. This allows us to see, for the first time,...

Stephen Hawking: "Philosophy Is Dead"

Physicist Stephen Hawking tells Google that "Philosophy is dead." An article in the Telegraph recounts:

Speaking to Google's Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. "Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes...

Steven Pinker Pushes Unethical Human Research

Steven Pinker believes in scientism. What's more, the Harvard evolutionary psychologist doesn't seem to believe in robust ethics.

That is the gist of his recent Boston Globe op-ed arguing against ethical restraint in medical research involving human subjects and within cutting-edge fields such as germ line genetic engineering.

And he blames bioethics -- of all fields -- for slowing down medical progress because it insists that human beings be treated with "dignity." If only.

Pinker is long o...