Discovery Institute's Blog, page 15

To Rule Out False Positives in the Search for ET, Astrophysicist Advocates a Design Filter

Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State, writes occasional articles for lay people. Recently he put out a challenge to his readers. He wants to keep them from falling for media hysteria about space aliens. His reasoning poses an indirect challenge to any kind of explanation positing a hidden designer.

In "Aliens are never the answer" on Live Science, he begins by talking about recent reports of unusually strong signals from a sun-like star. Here's another one: physicist Carole Mundell a...

Last Minute Christmas Gift Idea -- Stephen Meyer on Audiobook, Out Now!

Just in time for Christmas, Steve Meyer's books are out now as audiobooks. Yes, the release date is today, December 20.

Look here for Darwin's Doubt (on CD or Audible) and Signature in the Cell (CD or Audible). If you sign up for a trial with Audible now, Amazon is offering two books free! How convenient. Audiobooks in either format are of course a brilliant choice for your commute. Both are read by Derek Shetterly.

Oh, you've already done your Christmas shopping? Don't show off about it. B...

Michael Zimmerman of Clergy Letter Project Joins Atheists in Making Hay from Dubious "Petition"

Writing for the Huffington Post, Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project has clambered onboard with atheist bloggers Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers, and Dan Arel to make hay from a petition effort to ban teaching evolution in public schools. As noted here yesterday, that effort is a very likely phony, transparently so, a false flag operation carried out not by evolution critics but by Darwinists.

That appears to be why the petition's initiator, purportedly seeking signatures, sent it out to...

Conundrum for Evolutionists: Shared Logic in Hair-Trigger Proteins

Here's a conundrum for evolutionists: similar design principles and strategies are found across kingdoms. Plants and animals use similar proteins as switches to activate the immune response when invaded by pathogens. The story is told in Science Magazine. The editors call it "Shared logic in diverse immune systems."

The innate immune systems of both plants and animals depend on the ability to recognize pathogen-derived molecules and stimulate a defense response. Jones et al. review how that...

Dover Decision Anniversary Today. Ho Hum. Zzzzzzzz. (Just Kidding.)

Most of us who operate in the media have come down with a case of it now and then: anniversary-itis, a condition where the existence of a yearly anniversary leads the unwary into granting more importance to an event than it deserves because well, it happened exactly 10 years ago, or 20, or 103, or 247.

The Kitzmiller v. Dover case was decided 11 years ago today. Don't get me wrong, it's an important case in a sense because it is routinely abused by Darwin advocates to fool the public and pro...

NASA Versus David Coppedge: Most Reprehensible Case of Anti-Intelligent Design Persecution Yet?

Of all the cases we've covered here where scientists and others have been persecuted for sharing ideas favorable to intelligent design, what happened to David Coppedge is arguably the most reprehensible. That's partly because Coppedge, working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab as a team lead on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, wasn't a PhD scientist with the space agency. He was a computer administrator, albeit a senior one, and therefore by definition a less powerful, more vulnerable player in the...

Fake News? Evolutionists Fall for Seemingly Phony Anti-Evolution "Petition"

Facebook promises to keep an eye out for "fake news." What would they make of this, do you think?

According to Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True, "lots of biologists and scientists were sent this link by a creationist." The link points to a petition at the website iPetitions.com titled, "A nationwide moratorium on the teaching of evolution in school." It's directed to "Mike Pence, Vice-President of the United States of America," and asserts, "It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwini...

Walt Disney and Evolution: A Study in Ambiguity

Editor's note : December 15 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of filmmaker Walt Disney. Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West is author of the new book Walt Disney and Live-Action , which explores the meaning and making of Walt Disney's live-action features. In this article, he explores the role of evolution in Disney's work.

Like many artists and intellectuals of his era, Walt Disney was smitten by the theory of evolution. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the "Rite o...

Best of Behe: Blind Evolution or Intelligent Design? An Address at the American Museum of Natural History

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of biochemist Michael Behe's pathbreaking book Darwin's Black Box and the release of the new documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, we have highlighted some of Dr. Behe's "greatest hits." The following is a talk delivered at the American Museum of Natural History on April 23, 2002. Behe spoke as a participant on a panel including ID proponent William A. Dembski and evolutionists Kenneth R. Miller and Robert T. Pen...

What the Piltdown Hoax Tells Us, 104 Years Later

A curious anniversary falls this weekend. On December 18, 1912, the infamous Piltdown hoax was unveiled to an astonished audience of the Geological Society of London by lawyer and amateur archeologist Charles Dawson (1864-1916) and Arthur Smith Woodward (1864-1944) of the British Museum. What they showed was nothing short of amazing: the apparent remains of a human-like skull attached to an ape-like jaw. Allegedly unearthed at the Piltdown gravel pit in East Sussex, England, it was hailed as...