Discovery Institute's Blog, page 212

A Reader Asks: Can Microevolutionary Changes Add Up to Macroevolutionary Change?

After my recent article on microevolutionary changes in lizard toepads, a reader wrote to us here to ask whether there is any real distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. It's a reasonable question. In other words, could thousands upon thousands of small microevolutionary changes accumulate and add up to "macroevolution"? In response, I pointed out that there are good reasons to understand that many biological features cannot be built simply by adding up small changes.

I assum...

Darwinian Biologist Says: Don't Be So Quick to Dismiss Raëlian Science

Free-will denier Jerry Coyne, who is a biology professor at the University of Chicago and an ardent Darwinist, informs us of this new piece of important scientific research:

Science proves that consecrated wafers are still wheat and not Jesus

I don't know much about theRaëlian Movement, but what I've learned suggests that Raëlians areplenty weird. Their faith is based on Earth's life having been created by space aliens, so they're creationists, and they have all kinds of strange views, inclu...

Alien Invasion: A Biologist Reflects on a Mother's Love for Her Child

Biologist P.Z. Myers, in his post "A logical thought experiment about abortion," quotes a tweet by fellow Darwinist Richard Dawkins:

Blogger said woman's rights over own body extend to abortion even if fetus conscious & writing poetry in womb. I profoundly disagree. 1/2

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 23, 2014

Who, pray tell, could say something so callous that it offends Richard Dawkins? Myers:

The "blogger" happens to be me, and here's what I said in full:

We can make all the phi...

Memo to Vultures

Sigh. My writing is linked over at CNN in a story about Britanny Maynard, who has decided to postpone her suicide. (See our ENV colleague Dr. Michael Egnor's earlier comments.) But I am linked with the following words, meaning this iswhat the story says about me:

She's also become a lightning rod for criticism from people who criticize that approach.

No. I specifically didn't criticize Maynard for wanting to commit suicide in the post CNN linked. I criticized the media! Here is what I wrote a...

Is Google a Step Away from Developing a Computer that Can "Program Itself"?

New Scientist reports that Google may soon have a computer with "human-like learning" abilities that will "program itself":

Your smartphone is amazing, but ask it to do something it doesn't have an app for and it just sits there. Without programmers to write apps, computers are useless.

That could soon change. DeepMind Technologies, a London-based artificial-intelligence firm acquired by Google this year, has revealed that it is designing computers that combine the way ordinary computers wor...

The Dog Delusion

In his latest book, geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany takes on the widespread view that dog breeds prove macroevolution. His book is Unser Haushund: Eine Spitzmaus im Wolfspelz?, or in English translation, Our Domestic Dog: A Shrew in Wolf's Clothing? (Monsenstein & Vannerdat, 2014). He shows in great detail that the incredible variety of dog breeds, going back in origin several thousand years ago but especially to the last few centuries, represents no i...

On Evolution, Pope Francis Speaks and the Media Get it Wrong

In a statement to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope Francis conceded that evolution, defined as change over time, has happened. But he denied the materialist belief that evolution is by itself sufficient to account for all of life as we see it today. This sparked considerable excitement in the media and commentary across the Internet, as if the Pope were signaling a change in view.

At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne writes ("Pope Francis gives evolution the thumbs up, but still avow...

Insulation and Insults: Darwinist Massimo Pigliucci Goes After Jonathan Wells Again

Our colleague Dr. Michael Egnor observed the other day:

What is revealing about [mathematician Jeffrey] Shallit's denial [of the mind] is the extent to which materialists will go to insulate their ideology from critique. Philosophers raise profound questions about the validity -- and even the coherence -- of materialist theories of the mind. Rather than take those critiques seriously, Shallit denies the relevance of philosophical inquiry.

Someone should really be cataloguing the ways that Dar...

Brittany Maynard's Lethal Prescription

As you may know, Brittany Maynard is a 29-year-old woman diagnosed with a malignant incurable brain tumor. She has moved to Oregon, and plans to commit suicide this Saturday, November 1, under Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. She plans to take an overdose of medication prescribed legally by a physician.

Ms. Maynard's plight is a terrible one, and we in the medical community should (and do) work very hard to ease her suffering, even if we cannot cure her disease. But physician-assiste...

Want More Misinformation from the Creators of Cosmos? Use the Official Cosmos Study Guides!

As David Klinghoffer wrote here recently, our new book The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos provides a detailed, episode-by-episode exposé of false facts enlisted by the celebrity atheists who created the new Cosmos series that aired earlier this year.

Well, guess what? If your appetite for atheist apologetics wasn't satisfied by the program itself, we've got good news for you. The creators of Cosmos are also circulating study guides that teachers are apparently supposed to use in schools. And giv...