Discovery Institute's Blog, page 216

Bill Dembski's New Book Is Out and Ready to Order; Pre-orders Are in the Mail

What does it mean to call yourself an informational realist, as William Dembski says of himself? Read Dembski's new book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information and find out.

Finally, finally, it's out and ready to order! Pre-orders are in the mail and will be reaching customers across the country this week.

In our latest video conversation with him, Dr. Dembski puts his case in terms of the way scientists were able to distinguish the Higgs boson by its characteristic informational s...

Detective Columbo of Chemistry: "I Don't Understand Evolution"

In the spirit of Peter Falk's classic TV character Detective Columbo, whose method was to apologize for a lack of comprehension until he finally solved the mystery, a renowned chemist says he doesn't "understand" evolution. What he means, he subsequently makes clear, is that Darwin's theory doesn't make sense to him.

Dr. James Tour of Rice University, regarded as one of America's fifty top scientists, is quoted by Christian News about his innocent-sounding discussions with fellow scientists i...

Survival of the Fittest: ENV's Paul Nelson Completes Chicago Marathon

You want a scholar-athlete? We've got one right here. Belatedly, the editorial staff of Evolution News & Views wishes our own Dr. Paul Nelson a hearty mazal tov on running the Chicago Marathon on Sunday. It was his first outing at the yearly event and with a finishing time of 4:58 he was just steps behind winner Eliud Kipchoge (2:04:11) of Kenya.

How many steps? We'll get back to you on that.

Paul says he is resting comfortably and looking forward to going at it again next year. He was running...

Our Success as a Species Is Not Something to Regret

Who says humans aren't exceptional? Scientists have renamed the current era "Anthropocene," e.g., the age of humans. :

It's an ugly word, one many people don't understand, and it's even hard to pronounce, [W. John Kress, acting undersecretary of science for the Smithsonian], admitted. (It's AN'-thruh-poh-seen.) That's why when he opened the Smithsonian's symposium ["Living in the Anthropocene"], he said, "We are living in the Anthropocene," then quickly added, "the age of hum...

Ciliate Organism Undergoes "Scrambled Genome" and "Massive...Rearrangement"

A fascinating new paper in the journal Cell, "The Architecture of a Scrambled Genome Reveals Massive Levels of Genomic Rearrangement during Development," describes how a unique single-celled eukaryotic organism, Oxytricha trifallax, scrambles and then reassembles its own genome as the organism reproduces. According to a story about the paper over at Princeton University's news desk:

The pond-dwelling, single-celled organism Oxytricha trifallax has the remarkable ability to break its own DNA in...

Intelligent Design Can Explain: Ciliate Organism Undergoes "Scrambled Genome" and "Massive...Rearrangement"

A fascinating new paper in the journal Cell, "The Architecture of a Scrambled Genome Reveals Massive Levels of Genomic Rearrangement during Development," describes how a unique single-celled eukaryotic organism, Oxytricha trifallax, scrambles and then reassembles its own genome as the organism reproduces. According to a story about the paper over at Princeton University's news desk:

The pond-dwelling, single-celled organism Oxytricha trifallax has the remarkable ability to break its own DNA i...

More from Hip-Hop's Je'kob Washington on Stephen Meyer and Intelligent Design

This is pretty stereotype-shattering. I can't claim to be a connoisseur of hip-hop, but we mentioned here last week that hip-hop artist Je'kob Washington is not only a thoughtful guy but also a fan of intelligent design. Here he is talking with syndicated radio host Chris Chicago of Jam the Hype about his interest in science, from Einstein to Paul Davies...to Stephen Meyer. Mr. Chicago is also a fan.

Find it here. This is just very charming and refreshing. The context is a discussion of Je'ko...

Big-Brained Scientist Says We Aren't Conscious

Count on the New York Times to publish anti-human exceptionalism pieces in its opinion section or magazine at least twice a month. This time, Princeton neuroscientist Michael S. Graziano asks the question,"Are We Really Conscious?" I'll bet you can guess the answer.

You know the drill. First, make humans seem as puny as possible:

What is our relationship to the diversity of life? Darwin answered that one. Biologically speaking, we're not a special act of creation. We're a twig on the tree of...

Would We Give Up Naturalism to Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?

Boldly putting aside Darwin's"horrid doubt" about the naturalist view of the mind, researchers decided toembrace naturalism. That meant, of course, addressing what philosopher David Chalmers has called"the hard problem" of consciousness.

Decades later, they have not discovered anything that reduces basic, overlapping concepts such as consciousness, the mind, the self, or free will to naturalistic explanations. There are those, like philosopher Alex Rosenberg, who simply assert such explanatio...

Double Your Pleasure: What Exactly Can You Get from Polyploidy?

Polyploidy, also known as Whole Genome Duplication (WGD), means having multiple copies of your chromosomes in your genome. For unknown reasons, many flowering plants are polyploid, but polyploidy is rare in animals, although animal hybrids are common. This much is uncontroversial.

The reasons for these observations are not fully understood, nor are the implications. We know that extra copies of chromosomes can occur accidentally during cell division and persist in some plant genomes, althoug...