Discovery Institute's Blog, page 168

Aristotle Rediscovered: What Exactly Is the "Mechanism" for Intelligent Design?

In a post yesterday, I responded to a question from Discovery Institute's Chairman of the Board, Bruce Chapman ("A Maze with One Exit: Why Evolution Had No Choice"). He goes on to query me about how the direction in nature's evolution was imparted:

Darwinists often ask what they seem to regard as a killer question: If there is intelligent design, what is the mechanism for it? Of course it's possible to reply that the question is intended as a trap -- which it often is -- or the result of fa...

Listen: Casey Luskin on Why Molecular Biology Has Failed to Yield a Grand "Tree of Life"

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 upon 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 sixth problem: how molecular biology has failed to yield a grand "Tree of Life."

Either Be Prepared to Kill, or Get Out of Medicine

[image error]medical martyrdom, a term I coined to describe doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other such professionals being forced -- soon -- to choose between their callings and participating in the intentional taking of human life.

That is already the law in Victoria, Australia, where doctors must either perform abortions when asked or refer to a colleague they know will do so. Some doctors I met there moved across the country to escape the draconian diktat.

Canada's Supreme Court recentl...

Slate Says We're Afraid of Life on Mars -- Right After We Published an Article Explaining Why Martian Life Wouldn't Challenge ID

The debate over intelligent design isn't a right vs. left issue, but there must be an editorial style guide in use at various left-leaning anti-ID Internet news outlets that tells reporters how to write about challenges to evolutionary orthodoxy. That's the only explanation I can think of for how, when it comes to ID, journalists at these venues all seem to express themselves in the same way. I imagine this style guide as advising, "Whenever critiquing Discovery Institute or other proponents...

A Critic Asks: Doesn't Our C. elegans Video Commit the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy?

A few points relevant to the new release, "How to Build a Worm," from Discovery Institute:

1. Does the video about C. elegans employ illicit "backwards" reasoning?

"How wise of the Creator," a lady is said to have remarked to a philosopher in an apocryphal exchange, "to have designed all the major rivers of Europe to run through its main cities." "And our noses were perfectly placed," a friend of hers added, "to support our spectacles."

Struck speechless by this double-barreled blast of blis...

A Maze with One Exit: Why Evolution Had No Choice

Our Discovery Institute colleague Bruce Chapman writes to me to ask the following question:

From your standpoint, the fine-tuned universe and nature on Earth give evidence of having been ordered for "beings like ourselves." However, wouldn't a Darwinist or any other materialist say, "What seems to you a universe and nature designed to accommodate us is really the reverse. We are the response, the consequence of random mutations and natural selection over billions of years to the constraints...

Listen: Michael Denton on Paradigm Shifts in Science

In this episode of ID the Future, ENV's Casey Luskin sits down with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Michael Denton for a discussion of paradigm shifts in science. Dr. Denton reflects on shifts that he has witnessed in his lifetime, how his own ideas have changed over the years, and how major shifts in thinking challenge Darwinian evolution in new ways.

Note: This interview was recorded on November 13, 2014. Denton and Luskin refer to the premiere of Privileged Species, which you can now s...

Softening Ground for "Rational" Elder Suicide

The assisted suicide movement is pushing society in a pro-suicide direction. You see, it isn't about terminal illness at all. It is an ideology that sees suicide as an acceptable -- perhaps desirable -- way to end suffering.

To accept that premise is cross a moral Rubicon, exposing ever increasing categories of suicidal people to abandonment by those who might save their lives.

The mental health professions are being pushed to have a "conversation" -- the euphemism for radically changing eth...

Rocket Science in a Bacterium

Ready, aim, fire! The armed warhead rises from its silo, breaks free of its mooring, and aims for its target. This is not some element of a Golden Dome anti-missile program, but the Type VI Secretion System (T6SS) in action, one of half a dozen such molecular machines whose job is to send payloads into other cells. You may have heard of the Type III Secretion System (T3SS) that shares a few elements with the bacterial flagellum. This one is completely different. The T6SS was described recent...

The White Space in Evolutionary Thinking

When certain biologists discuss the early stages of life there is a tendency to think too vaguely. They see a biological wonder before them and they tell a story about how it might have come to be. They may even draw a picture to explain what they mean. Indeed, the story seems plausible enough, until you zoom in to look at the details. I don't mean to demean the intelligence of these biologists. It's just that it appears they haven't considered things as completely as they should. Like a car...