Discovery Institute's Blog, page 16

United Methodist Theologian Thomas Oden Understood the Importance of Intelligent Design

Thomas C. Oden, the distinguished United Methodist theologian and scholar, passed away December 8 at the age of 85. Oden is best known for his numerous theological works focusing on what he called "paleo-orthodoxy." By that he meant a return to the teachings of classic Church thinkers such as Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas.

Oden saw clearly the cultural impact of naturalism, a philosophy that is, as...

In Supporting Discovery Institute This Christmas Season, Please Consider All That Hangs in the Balance

Let's be honest. Scientists, media commentators, and clergy are fooling themselves when they reassure you it's a perfectly plausible view that "God used evolution" to create life. At the back of their mind, they must know they're fooling themselves. Of course, one could develop a guided form of evolution that would be compatible with theism, but the mainstream evolutionary theory adopted by Darwinian biologists today specifically excludes that option.

The arch-Darwinists see this clearly. Th...

London Guardian Acknowledges the Irony of Excluding ID Advocates from the Royal Society Meeting

Writing in the London Guardian, University of Warwick sociologist Steve Fuller takes note of last week's Royal Society meeting and its exclusion of intelligent-design advocates:

The Royal Society and British Academy recently held a high-profile interdisciplinary conference on 'New Trends in Evolutionary Biology'. Officially, the event was open to the widest possible range of criticisms of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. Yet the invitation did not extend to proponents of intelligent design theor...

NASA on Trial: Persecution of David Coppedge Was a Preview of Creeping Totalitarianism

Whether the context is media or academia, a creeping totalitarianism is hard to miss in our public life. Its signature move is to suppress controversial or disfavored views with appeals to what sound like reasonable legal or journalistic standards. The flavor of the day is "fake news," which follows in the footsteps of buzz phrases like "anti-science," "science denial," and the like. The point is to shut down discussion and intimidate dissenters without admitting that that is what you are do...

A Flash of Insight About Physics, Reality, and DNA Launched Bruce Buff as a Novelist

It's a remarkable and telling thing about human creativity that ideas come to us so often not through a step-by-step process but in an instant, a flash -- not unlike the way the history of life is characterized by bursts of innovation that seem to come out of nowhere.

In an interview with Catholic News Agency, novelist Bruce Buff describes the burst of insight about DNA that led him, some years later, to write his novel The Soul of the Matter. I reviewed the book here and commented on its th...

For the Love of Humpback Whales

In the intelligent-design documentary Living Waters, Illustra Media offers beautiful footage of humpback whales from above and below the ocean surface, heaving their massive bulk into the air, coming down with a mighty splash. Even more wondrous, though, is the design of these mammals that are perfectly adapted to full-time aquatic life, though they breathe air, lactate and give birth to live young like other mammals.

The film only had time to treat a couple of specific design aspects of wha...

Robert Marks: What Computers Will Never Do

"About an hour into the second game of its match against a world-ranked Go player, the Google Artificial Intelligence program AlphaGo made a move that stunned the commentators:

"I don't really know if it's a good or bad move," said Michael Redmond, a commentator on a live English broadcast. "It's a very strange move." Redmond, one of the Western world's best Go players, could only crack a smile.

"I thought it was a mistake," his broadcast partner, Chris Garlock, said with a laugh.

South Kore...

Aimed at Convenience, Artificial Gestation Would Be Unethical Human Experimentation

Efforts continue to permit human gestation outside a woman's body. Machines could save the lives of premature babies and the like. Splendid. Extreme circumstances sometimes require extreme measures.

But if artificial gestation became a route from the point of implantation -- at about ten days -- used for the sake of convenience or to surmount nature, that would be a real problem. Discover Magazine's blog "The Crux" has a list of potential uses:

Advances in reproductive technology may radical...

Fifty Years Later, Recalling Walt Disney and Scientism

Editor's note : December 15 marks 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 scientism in Disney's work.

Someone once quipped that Walt Disney harbored "19th-century emotions in conflict with a 21st-century brain." The characterization was apt.

Disney, who died...

Join Us in Advancing the Case for Intelligent Design -- Give to Discovery Institute Today!

Last month, pro-intelligent design scientists from around the world spoke publicly at a packed conference at Cambridge University organized by Discovery Institute and the UK's Centre for Intelligent Design. They highlighted the growing evidence for intelligent design throughout nature.

The very same day, a writer for the London Spectator -- one of the world's oldest and most distinguished English-language magazines -- named Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis by Discovery Institute genetici...