Discovery Institute's Blog, page 224

No "Carrots," Please: Taking Pride in V-Word's "Unrepentant Bigotry"

I am on a rather lonely campaign to make the v-word -- "vegetable" -- as unacceptable as the n-word in describing human beings. I call it an "unrepentant bigotry."

Why? Like the n-word, the v-word dehumanizes the human beings against whom it is wielded toward the end of lowering their perceived moral value, thereby allowing them to be treated as somehow less than human.

Just like the n-word justified slavery and Jim Crow, calling someone a "vegetable" or a "carrot" repackages actions that wou...

Why Evolution Is Different

In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: In every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, so why should evolutionary biology be different? Even most scientists who doubt the Darwinist explanation for evolution are confident that science will eventually come up with a more plausible explanation. That's the way science works. If one theory fails, we look for another one; why should evolution...

Describing Joan Rivers: Human Beings Are Neither Animals Nor Are They Vegetables

Whatever the future holdsfor Joan Rivers, who may have experienced brain damage during surgery, she will always be an exceptional human beingdeserving of equal rights and perceived moral value.

To put it another way, contrary to some stories describing her potential health outcome, she will never be a carrot. Carrots are vegetables, human beings never are.

We need to stop using the v-word to describe our brothers and sisters with profound cognitive disabilities. That word is just as bigoted as...

Talk About Intelligent Design! Explore the New Discovery Institute Website

For your viewing and reading pleasure, we present the handsome newly refurbished Discovery Institute website, where you'll also find the new homepage of the Center for Science & Culture. It was a labor of love by our talented, tireless, and competent web developer Michael Cleek who also thanks Jens Jorgenson, CSC's special projects coordinator, with his gift for graphics.

For an explanation of all the new features on our site, see Welcome to the New Discovery.org. The big changes we've made a...

Stephen Meyer and Panel Attract a Large Southern California Audience

A rough count of 1,500 people -- sizeable for a workweek evening -- came to a large church auditorium in Santa Ana this past Thursday night to hear Steve Meyer, John Stonestreet, and Dennis Prager discuss "Faith, Science and Culture: Does God Still Matter?" Hugh Hewitt acted as moderator.

The lively discussion covered many topics and none of the panelists was ever at a loss for words. In the broad mix of subjects, ranging from terrorism to classical music, from pornography to the Cambrian exp...

Larry Moran's Lord Kelvin Moment: Are All the "Great Debates" Settled?

Lord Kelvin in 1900 may or may not have said, in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, that "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." The remark is attributed to him but there is doubt as to its authenticity. If genuine, what a silly thing to say! Even at the time it likely would have sounded foolish.

The year 1900, of course, was five years before Einstein published the Special Theory of Rel...

Still Awaiting Full Engagement: Ralph Stearley's "Well, Maybe, Who Knows?" Review of Darwin's Doubt

More than 18 months after its publication, Darwin's Doubt continues to stir discussion and debate, but that discussion all too often savors of a peculiar and unsatisfying incompleteness. As an observer of the debate, I often wonder if the critics read the same volume that I did. Most recently, the organization BioLogos has commenced a multi-part response, which I began reading with high hopes of finding the reviewers actually grappling with Stephen Meyer's central theses.

Well -- not yet. The...

Metaspriggina: Vertebrate Fish Found in Cambrian Explosion

Now that some months have passed since the discovery of another rich trove of Cambrian fossils 26 miles from the Burgess Shale, scientists are starting to publish findings from the new Marble Canyon site. One amazing find just published by Simon Conway Morris and Jean-Bernard Caron is putting more bang in the Cambrian explosion.

Not so long ago, evolutionists emphasized that no vertebrates existed in the Cambrian. They knew that vertebrates were too advanced for that first appearance of multi...

Faith, Science, and Culture: Tonight's Discussion with Meyer, Prager, Hewitt, and Stonestreet Will Stream Live at 7:15

Tonight in Santa Ana, CA, radio host Hugh Hewitt will lead a public discussion with Stephen Meyer, Dennis Prager, and John Stonestreet. You can watch it live online! See it here.

The topic: Faith, Science, and Culture: Does God Still Matter? Here's what's up for discussion:

Does God matter?
Is matter all there is in the universe?
Or is there a purpose and design to life?
How can people of faith engage an increasingly secularized culture that scoffs at the very idea of a Creator?

Join us online to...

Evolution Used the Same Molecular Toolkit? Common Sense from Jonathan Marks

Every time I see a thoughtless headline like this one at Science Daily, “Evolution Used Similar Molecular Toolkits to Shape Flies, Worms, and Humans,” where the organisms being compared are as different (morphologically) as flies, worms, and humans, I think of Jonathan Marks’s blunt comment.

Marks is an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, and an uncommonly plain speaker and writer (bless him).In a 1993 talk to the American Association for the Advancement...