Discovery Institute's Blog, page 213

October 29, 2014

In Case You Had Any Doubts About What the Freedom From Religion Foundation Really Is

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is planning to distribute some... literature... to public high school students in Florida:


An atheist group is planning to distribute a pamphlet in several Florida public high schools that depicts an illustration of a cartoon Bible sexually assaulting a young woman.


According to a report by Brittany Hughes at CNSNews.com, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) plans to hand out a pamphlet entitled "An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible...

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Published on October 29, 2014 04:35

October 28, 2014

Henry Gee's View Notwithstanding, We Matter More than Giraffes or Begonias

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What is it with many in the anti-humanism crowd? On one hand, they insistthat we are just another animal in the forest -- not exceptional! On the other, we are ordered to engage in radical self-sacrifice to save the planet and perform other acts of biological altruism.


And they seem to have such an emotional stake in knocking us off our well-deserved pedestal. Frankly, I think it is neurotic.


Now, in the Guardian, the angrily anti-human exceptionalist paleontologist and Nature senior editorHen...

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Published on October 28, 2014 15:31

Sure, Atheism Is a Religion, to which Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos Seek Converts

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Some Twitter correspondents objected to my comment, in connection with our new book The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos, that "Cosmos is not appropriate for public schools, where you're not supposed to advocate any religion, including atheism."


Cosmos Guide.jpegBut of course Tyson-style atheism counts as a religion. As I'm hardly the first to say, it has almost all the trimmings that religions commonly do: An account of origins (panspermia and Darwinian evolution), a philosophical commitment to a certain way of un...

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Published on October 28, 2014 13:46

Since When Is This News? Rapid Microevolution in Lizard Feet Reveals Little About the Origin of Species

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In 2009, the journal Nature came out with an online resource titled "15 Evolutionary Gems," which was offered "for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection." Nature promoted the packet while "urg[ing] scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word'" about evolution and "highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact." But of course all of the verified examples of evolution among the e...

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Published on October 28, 2014 05:40

October 27, 2014

The Difficulty of Designing an Error-Correcting Code

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Your job is to design a code that can fix its own errors. Could you do it?


MIT News announced "New Frontier in Error-Correcting Codes: Coding scheme for interactive communication is the first to near optimality on three classical measures." What, exactly, is an error-correcting code?



Error-correcting codes are one of the glories of the information age: They're what guarantee the flawless transmission of digital information over the airwaves or through copper wire, even in the presence of the...

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Published on October 27, 2014 16:45

William Dembski on Materialism's "Tang Problem"


I love this image that William Dembski uses in his new book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Materialism tries to imagine reality as if information were not the substrate underlying everything. It extracts information in the same way that the old orange-colored breakfast drink Tang takes real orange juice and extracts the orange "solids," producing the familiar, vaguely disturbing orange powder.



The result of then reconstructing or reconstituting either the universe or the j...

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Published on October 27, 2014 13:07

Peter Singer to Court: Make Chimps Persons!

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There he goes again. Peter Singer -- who has arguedthat cognitively devastated people should have been used instead of chimps in the creation of the hepatitis vaccine -- urges a court to impose chimp personhood on society.


Why? Well, because he wants to destroy human exceptionalism.


And what could accomplish that task better than "breaking the species barrier" (his term from the Great Ape Project) by making some animals legally and morally equivalent to people -- thereby reducing us (and our s...

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Published on October 27, 2014 05:40

October 26, 2014

Privileged Species Pacific Northwest Premiere Will Feature Special Guest Dr. Michael Denton

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Join us on Thursday, November 13, 2014, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle for the Pacific Northwest premiere of Privileged Species! The screening is at 7:30 pm and will be highlighted by the presence of our special guest Dr. Michael Denton, whose work is featured in the documentary.


This is a highly anticipated film, posing ultimate questions: Are humans the accidental products of a blind and uncaring universe? Or are they the beneficiaries of a cosmic order that was planned beforehand to he...

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Published on October 26, 2014 16:39

Among the Mind Deniers: A Darwinist Mathematician Reflects on Philosophy

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Darwinist mathematician and computer scientist Jeff Shallit has a low opinion of philosophy of the mind -- not just any particular theory, but the whole endeavor. Shallit's post, with my commentary:



Most Philosophers Have Nothing Interesting to Say About the Brain


If you want to understand the brain, look to neuroscience.



Neuro: brains, etc. Science: the study of... It's like asserting: "If you want to understand the heart, look to cardiology." Shallit, a Darwinist, has a weakness for tautol...

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Published on October 26, 2014 14:10

October 24, 2014

Evolution and the Ebola Virus: Pacing a Small Cage

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I received a request to comment on the evolution of the Ebola virus. The best, most recent work, which sequenced and compared 99 entire virus genomes, was published in Science last month: "Genomic surveillance elucidates Ebola virus origin and transmission during the 2014 outbreak." It came at a very high cost -- five co-authors actually died of Ebola in the course of the work.


The paper is mostly concerned with tracing the timing and spread of the virus. The authors show that the virus is a...

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Published on October 24, 2014 14:23

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