Discovery Institute's Blog, page 170

Machines Will Always Be Things, Never "Persons"

In light of transhumanist advocacy for "machine rights," should artificial intelligence (AI) ever be realized, I decided to weigh in at First Things on the craziness of it all. Machines will always be things, not "persons." From "AI Machines: Things Not Persons":

Machines have no dignity and no rights, which properly belong exclusively to the human realm.

Moreover, AI contraptions would only mimic sentience. As inanimate objects, AI contrivances could no more be "harmed" (as distinguished fr...

Some Scientists Say Intelligent Design Isn't Science -- Until They Have to Use It Themselves

Many scientists claim intelligent design is not science, until they have to use it. Then they find it very helpful. This is a story about how, out of necessity, science journal editors have had to use design principles to fight fraud. It's also illustrates the fact that ID makes no claims about the morality of a good design.

Back in 1996, Alan Sokal, a physicist, created a firestorm in academia by submitting a realistic-sounding but nonsensical paper to the postmodern journal Social Text....

Recommended Viewing: Casey Luskin and Wesley J. Smith on Dead Reckoning

We've discovered a pair of thoughtful and entertaining interviewers, Brian Mattson and Jay Friesen, and...they've discovered us. Mattson and Friesen do a weekly interview program, Dead Reckoning, which includes a segment "Above the Paygrade" where the idea is they're talking to folks they think are smarter than they are, though these guys seems pretty smart themselves.

Here they are chatting with ENV's Casey Luskin the other day about "Bill Nye, Undeniable, and Intelligent Design."

And here...

Animal Rights Zealots Insult Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 16 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. And what do animal rights activists do? Declare a despicable and inexcusable moral equivalency between animal agriculture and eating meat with the torture and murder of six million Jews, and others, in the Nazi death camps.

Adding salt to the woundof the insult, some animal rightists plan to hold a funeral for cows and pigs. From the Their Turn website:

On Holocaust Remembrance Day (4/16), victims of the animal holocaust will be remembered...

Sea Sponge's "Structural Principles" Inspire "Design Strategy"

Sponges are among the earliest multicellular animals in the fossil record. They appear at first glance to be randomly organized, full of holes, asymmetric, and lacking complex organs. Yet one particular sea sponge has secrets that make engineers drool with envy. The Venus Flower Basket (Euplectella aspergillum) mastered fiber optics and force-absorbing building materials long before physicists and architects dreamed of such things.

Researchers at Brown University and Harvard University's Wys...

The Push for Assisted Suicide Is All Kabuki Theater

Suicide pushers always point to Oregon as the supposed proof that assisted suicide can be managed and controlled without abuse. It's all Kabuki theater -- highly stylized and highly fictional.

Now, a proposal has been filed toexpand eligibility to receive doctor-prescribed death from six months to live to one year.
Some are tut-tutting, but I don't see why. Such long-distance prescribing already happens -- and nothing is done about it.

Here's the proof: The last state annual report on assist...

Neo-Darwinism's Catch-22: Before Evolving New Features, Organisms Would Be Swamped by Genetic Junk

A new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Complexity presents a computational model of evolution which shows that evolving new biological structures may be deterred by an unavoidable catch-22 problem.

The article by physicists David Snoke, Jeffery Cox, and Donald Petcher begins by observing that in order to produce a new system, evolution first needs to try lots of new things. It must generate many, many variations upon which natural selection can act in order to "find" something useful to r...

Messengers from Army HQ: Hormones and Neurohormones

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.

We live in a world made of matter that must...

Back to Basics: Reader Asks How We Know DNA Exists, What It Does

Here's a thoughtful inquiry from a follower of Discovery Institute's work, who recently asked us a basic but obviously important question: How do we know that DNA exists, and how do we know that it functions to carry genetic information? He also asks how we know what molecular machines like the nuclear pore complex look like.

Today, molecular biology is so advanced that it's not every day that we think about these questions. As scientists push forward the frontiers of biological understandin...

Sure, There Might Be Life on Mars -- But Evolutionary Thinking Doesn't Help Explain Why

The LA Times recently ran the headline, "NASA: We'll find alien life in 10 to 20 years." Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist, was quick to clarify what they meant: "We are not talking about little green men. We are talking about little microbes." And why is NASA so optimistic? Because Mars once had water, and they think water is the key to life:

For example, Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA, cited a study that analyzed the atmosphere above Mars' polar ice caps and suggests th...