Discovery Institute's Blog, page 159

Were Paleoanthropologists Too Eager to Detect Design in Ancient "Stone Tools"?

Some critics of the theory of intelligent design complain that ID makes unwarranted design inferences. While the critique is mistaken, it is at least not irrational. Clearly, the danger of "false positives" exists and ID researchers must guard against it. But so should scientists in other fields, notably paleoanthropologists who find a rock and leap to claim it as a "stone tool" fashioned by human ancestors.

As David Klinghoffer observed last week, scientists working in Kenya have identifie...

Answering a Common Complaint: Does Intelligent Design Require Faith?

Recently I attended an informal philosophy discussion group including both theists and atheists. The topic for the meeting was whether intelligent design qualifies as science or not. After I presented my handout to the group showing that ID is indeed a scientific theory, we had a cordial conversation, with a healthy mixture of pro-ID and anti-ID viewpoints being expressed. Toward the end of the meeting, a few participants still complained that intelligent design is in fact a faith-based posi...

Darwin, Design, and Phototropism

The first exposure to scientific experimentation for many a precocious youngster is putting a bean seedling in a box, poking a hole to let some light in, and watching the seedling grow toward the light even after it is turned around. The study of this phenomenon, called phototropism, has a long history -- but questions remain.

An article in Current Biology on phototropism (plants' attraction to light) reminds readers that Charles Darwin wrote more than The Origin of Species and The Descent o...

Gallup Reports: One-Third Believe Animals Deserve Equal Rights

I hope these people didn't think the question through: Gallup reports that a worrying 32 percent of respondents believe animals should have "the same rights as people."

Good grief. That would mean no ownership of animals. After all, people have the right not to be owned.

It would also mean no eating meat, no animal experimentation to achieve medical and scientific advances, or perhaps even the ownership of pets -- unless you had to obtain a guardianship for dogs, cats, fish, and birds as one...

Listen: Darwinists Grapple with Findings on Convergent Evolution

On an episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin discusses findings on convergent evolution that conflict with conventional evolutionary thinking.

Darwinian evolution is supposed to have no goal, but convergent evolution implies that, against all odds, species evolve the same complex traits -- over and over again. Is this "surprising" conclusion best explained within the paradigm of Darwinian theory, or that of intelligent design? Listen and decide for yourself.

Stephen Meyer on the Meanings of Evolution

What a concept! Any conversation about evolution should start by defining the term. Yet that is precisely what Darwin defenders habitually fail to do. Here's a great resource to help you pick up the slack for them.

Available for the first time free thanks to Stephen Meyer's Facebook page, here is "The Meanings of Evolution," a chapter from the 2003 peer-reviewed volume Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press). Share and enjoy!

Addressing a "Misunderstanding" About Academic Freedom with Discovering Intelligent Design

It's a policy here to deal charitably and give critics the benefit of the doubt, as far as we can do so. Notably, when opponents repeatedly say things they should know by now to be untrue, having been corrected on them multiple times, we prefer to call that a "misunderstanding," a "failure to grasp the truth of the matter," an "error," "goof," or "blunder," not a lie. We like to say it's a result of their being nave, deluded, uninformed, not dishonest.

This morning finds me receiving tweets...

Letter to a Young Darwin Activist's Parents

For more on Zack Kopplin, in case you don't recognize the name, see here. What follows is an open letter to Zack's father and mother, though it is applicable to others as well, young and old.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kopplin,

I hope this finds you both well.

On occasion, my wife and I have received notes directed home from a teacher about issues with our children's behavior in school. I've always been grateful to hear what was going on, from another adult's perspective, since moms and dads are ofte...

John Glenn, Please Don't Let the Media Tarnish Your Reputation

Out of all the content in reporter Julie Carr Smyth's interview with John Glenn, the Associated Press selected this for the headline, now echoing around the country: "John Glenn: Evolution should be taught in schools." Since many readers never make it past the headline, this is the message they got from the AP: An American hero wants to keep Darwin in science class, with the implied background that nefarious creationists and other science deniers, the favorite bogeymen of the popular media's...

California Medical Association Embraces "Death Selection"

The California Medical Association has rescinded its opposition to assisted suicide. How a medical association can adopt a (supposedly) neutral stance on something as ethically portentous and radically subverting of Hippocratic values as assisted suicide is beyond me. But these are the times in which we live.

I am not surprised at this downward turn. The CMA has been seriously courting the culture of death for more than forty years. Here's a quote from a California Medicine editorial from 19...