Discovery Institute's Blog, page 181

Humans Will Evolve Beyond Ourselves Via Technology? At Least the Idea Offers Some Comic Relief

Once in a while, when the world is too much with me and I need a little entertainment, I turn to transhumanism -- the idea that humans will evolve beyond ourselves thanks to computers. The would-be immoralist crowd's latest craze concerns whether "superintelligent" computers -- those supposedly able to "think" independently -- mightbe the object of religious conversionary efforts.

From "When SuperintelligentAI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It?", by Zoltan Istvan, who is running for...

How Space Shield Protects Earth from "Sledgehammer Blow" of "Killer Electrons"

We live inside a bubble surrounded by a shooting gallery, but we've only realized for a few years how well-designed that bubble is.

The Van Allen radiation belts were detected in 1958 by the Explorer rockets, America's first satellites to orbit the Earth. Since then, physicists have known they shield the Earth from high-energy particles from the sun, but many questions have remained about the belts' structure and physical mechanisms -- especially, how electrons from the solar wind are acceler...

How Suicide Advocacy Hurts the Sick

The herd media always present assisted suicide as compassionate and caring. To the contrary, it is ultimately about abandoning sick and promotes invidious discrimination against the ill and disabled, seen broadly as unworthy of protecting fromsuicide.

Over the years, people struggling with devastating illnesses and disabilities have repeatedly told me how assisted suicide advocacy impedes their ability to struggle and undermines their morale.

As my hospice friend Robert Salamanca, who died pe...

Walking It Back? Further Reflections on the Response to Darwin's Doubt from BioLogos

In her conclusion to BioLogos's ten-part review series of my book, Darwin's Doubt, BioLogos President Deborah Haarsma suggested that I mischaracterized the perspective of the organization's reviewers in my response to them. She asserts that, contrary to my portrayal, the BioLogos scientists who reviewed Darwin's Doubt do not regard the Cambrian explosion as an unsolved problem from the standpoint of evolutionary theory.

After re-reading what the BioLogos reviewers actually wrote, I stand by...

Walking It Back? Further Reflections on the Response from BioLogos to Darwin's Doubt from BioLogos

In her conclusion to BioLogos's ten-part review series of my book, Darwin's Doubt, BioLogos President Deborah Haarsma suggested that I mischaracterized the perspective of the organization's reviewers in my response to them. She asserts that, contrary to my portrayal, the BioLogos scientists who reviewed Darwin's Doubt do not regard the Cambrian explosion as an unsolved problem from the standpoint of evolutionary theory.

After re-reading what the BioLogos reviewers actually wrote, I stand by...

Each Cell in Your Body Is a Walled City Besieged by Enemies

Editor's note: Engineers and physicians have a special place in the community of thinkers and scholars who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar in very practical ways with the challenges of designing or maintaining a functioning complex system on the order of a jet airplane, or the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News & Views is delighted to present this new series, "The Designed Body," and...

More on the Stretched-Rubber Theory of Body Plans

Earlier, we commented on news from scientists with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). They sought to answer among other fascinating questions, "How has evolution produced a structure as complicated as a vertebrate?" Vertebrates appear initially in evolutionary history in the Cambrian explosion when, to judge from the fossil record, most known animal body plans spring into existence. In dispelling the enigma of the Cambrian event, this research does not seem to hold ou...

Grim Harvest: In Vermont, a Push for Organ Conscription

A bill has been filed in Vermont for presumed consent toorgan donation, and it would grant an explicit ownership interest in the organs of all deadVermonterstothe organ transplant system. From H.57:

All Vermont residents 18 years of age or older shall be presumed to consentto making an anatomical gift of some or all of their organs, eyes, tissues, or a combination thereof upon their death for the purpose of transplantation, therapy, research, or education.

If someone doesn't want to be an org...

At the Feet of Clio: History Versus Science?

A great deal of discussion has been devoted to needless contrasting of science versus religion, as if the two were in competition, which they are not. The juxtaposition is now long outdated and adhered to only by the least informed who pronounce on the subject (Dawkins of course comes to mind here but there are many others). I'd like to pose a different question: What about history versus science?

I am just completing famed historian John Lukacs's interesting little book, The Future of Histo...

Now Head Transplants? Onward and Upward with Transhumanism

A cover story for New Scientist reports, "First human head transplant could happen in two years." We read:

It's heady stuff. The world's first attempt to transplant a human head will be launched this year at a surgical conference in the US. The move is a call to arms to get interested parties together to work towards the surgery.

The idea was first proposed in 2013 by Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy. He wants to use the surgery to extend the lives of peop...