Discovery Institute's Blog, page 166

Listen: Why Vertebrate Embryos Stick in Darwinism's Craw

On a new episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin continues his series discussing the top ten problems with biological and chemical evolution. The series is based on Luskin's chapter in the volume More than Myth, edited by Paul Brown and Robert Stackpole (Chartwell Press, 2014).

In this segment, Casey discusses the eighth problem: differences between vertebrate embryos and how they contradict the predictions of common ancestry.

Imagine a World of Religions that Naturalism Might Indeed Be Able to Explain

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker recently told CNN, "We don't throw virgins into volcanoes any more."

No? Why not?

Regarding the phenomenon of religion, here are two curious things: When naturalists (materialists) study religion, they get so many basic facts wrong, one wonders why they bother, except to bolster their own view. Second, they mainly study "revealed" religion, where the world is interpreted through a divine message (or some would say, an acute insight), revealing a higher order...

Dear Grandma, Aren't You Ready to Die Yet?

We can't have expensive old people hanging around using up resources (that their enterprise and hard work helped generate!). So the bureaucratic-controlled National Health Service in the UK wants doctors to ask every elderly person -- healthy or not -- whether they want a DNR (do not resuscitate) order put on their chart. From the story in the Daily Mail:

Doctors are being told to ask all patients over 75 if they will agree to a 'do not resuscitate' order.

New NHS guidelines urge GPs to draw...

Developments from the Study of Cells and Molecular Machines

Intelligent design becomes increasingly apparent at the smallest scales of life as imaging improves and scientists get a closer look at the cell's inner workings.

Dynein

Scripps Institute seeks to reveal the "structural secrets of nature's little locomotive." (Emphasis added.) The dynein-dynactin complex has defied analysis because "the complex's large size, myriad subunits and high flexibility have until now restricted structural studies to small pieces of the whole." Finer details have sho...

These Critics of Intelligent Design Agree with Us More Than They Seem to Realize

At Panda's Thumb, Joe Felsenstein and Tom English have written a post, "Fitness surfaces and searches: Dembski, Ewert, and Marks's search for design." That is in reply to William Dembski's article at ENV, "Responding to My Talk at the University of Chicago, Joe Felsenstein's Argument by Misdirection," which in turn was a response to another post by Felsentein at Panda's Thumb, "Dembski's argument in Chicago -- New? Persuasive?" The discussion concerns conservation of information, including a...

Habeas Chimpus: A Report from Stony Brook University

Our colleague Wesley Smith comments on the recent court decision regarding the granting of personhood to two chimpanzees here at Stony Brook University. The judge has subsequently revoked the habeas corpus ruling, although the dangerous notion of personhood for non-human animals remains a core assertion by the Nonhuman Rights Project.

I strongly oppose the granting of personhood status to non-human animals. Non-human animals are worthy of protection in accordance with their sentience and cap...

Transhumanist Claims Aside, Enhancing Human Intelligence Isn't on the Horizon

Following on what I wrote here Friday, "A Transhumanist Asks, 'Why Not Be Superheroes?'," I should explain more about the point I made that while intelligence enhancement is what gets everyone excited and riled about Transhumanism, it's the least likely thing that, for better or worse, technology can actually bestow.

In a recent (and lousy) book I'm reading, The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Will Artificial Intelligence Serve Us Or Replace Us?, author Louis A. Del Monte makes the clai...

Listen: Answering the Objection that Intelligent Design Isn't Science

On an episode of ID the Future, hear why the often-heard claim that intelligent design isn't science is false. Andrew McDiarmid launches a new series at IDTF.

How the Body Solves the Problem of Oxygen Transport

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.

Since all life is built from matter it must...

A Transhumanist Asks, "Why Not Be Superheroes?"

An article at TechCrunch poses the question, "Who's Afraid of Superhumanity?" Writer Michael Solana argues with "detractors of germline engineering," who he says

are betrayed by their true opinion: We can probably get the technology safely working, but what about the cultural ramifications?

What's to stop a very small group of people, now enhanced genetically well beyond the average human in every way imaginable, from winning at the zero sum game of life? They'd just take all the resources, r...