Discovery Institute's Blog, page 227

In Tracing the Role of Social Darwinism in Instigating World War I, Don't Forget the Role of Hegel

After watching the new short documentary from Discovery Institute, The Biology of the Second Reich: Social Darwinism and the Origins of World War I, our Center for Science & Culture colleague Nancy Pearcey had this comment:

I would like to point out that Hegel also played a major role in the exaltation of war -- especially among German thinkers. In fact, Nietzsche went so far as to say, "without Hegel, there would have been no Darwin." Hegel taught that a pantheistic Absolute Spirit was evolv...

Where It All Leads: Professor Death Supports Doctor Death

It is time to start calling Peter Singer"Professor Death."

The Princeton moral philosopher -- surely a misnomer in his case -- is the world's foremost proponent ofinfanticide. He typically uses examples of disabled babies, but the reason he believes they can be killed is that they are supposedly not "persons." Thus, Singer hasrefused to state that killing a baby because she was ugly would bewrong.

Professor Death also supports euthanasia, both voluntary and non-voluntary against ill human non-...

Video: Still in Search of the Missing Cambrian Ancestors

Stephen Meyer reflects further here on critiques of his book Darwin's Doubt by biologist Nick Matzke. This really is pretty devastating.

Matzke thinks he has found the "missing ancestors" for the Cambrian animals. How? By employing the method of cladistic analysis -- which, however, presupposes for the history of life the model of a branching tree terminating at a common ancestor. The presupposition if accepted guarantees that the Cambrian creatures emerged from ancestral forms. But obviousl...

Postcard from Kruger National Park

For a summer holiday destination, our hardworking colleague Casey Luskin selected South Africa and just sent along these cool vacation snaps. Casey and his wife got there by way of Dubai and had an opportunity to view the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa. These pictures were taken from a balcony on the 159th floor:

(Not really. It only has 163 floors to begin with.)

Casey sampled a Starbucks and weighed the merits of coffee in Seattle versus the United Arab Emirates:

(Conclusion: About the...

What Questions About Evolution Come Down to Is, "Who ARE We?"

I have never had strong views about human evolution. But in recent years, I got a chance to look at hundreds of articles making claims for it. A summary of what I learned might be useful:

1. Real (and imagined) "human evolution" is now so integral to our culture that demand outpaces authenticity. The disappointing history of Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardi, all hailed in 2001 as human ancestors, attests to the frustrating search for "missing links." Sediba, another supposed ancestor, fared...

Introducing a New Website: From Darwin to Hitler

Please take some time to investigate an online resource that's now available: a new website, From Darwin to Hitler, highlighting the research of our Discovery Institute colleague and California State University historian Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany and Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress.

You'll find links to Dr. Weikart's books and articles, as well as the new documentary from Discovery Institute...

A New Documentary Reveals the Hidden Ideological and Scientific Roots of World War I

This month marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, the conflict took 16 million lives in brutal combat yet its causes remain strangely cloudy to most of us. One historian titled his recent book about the origins of the war The Sleepwalkers, as if nations and leaders stumbled into the global catastrophe almost by accident, unmotivated by any particular philosophy or ideology.

World War II is very different: Everyone understands what that was...

A New Video Documentary Reveals the Hidden Ideological and Scientific Roots of World War I

This month marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, the conflict took 16 million lives in brutal combat yet its causes remain strangely cloudy to most of us. One historian titled his recent book about the origins of the war The Sleepwalkers, as if nations and leaders stumbled into the global catastrophe almost by accident, unmotivated by any particular philosophy or ideology.

World War II is very different: Everyone understands what that was...

It's Optimal. It Must Have Evolved!

You're wandering through the countryside and you find an antenna array with a high signal-to-noise ratio. You wander some more, and find another; it looks different, but still has a near-ideal SNR. After finding half a dozen of these, you have a "Eureka!" moment: "They came about by blind, unguided processes!"

If this sounds absurd, read a paper by Garud Iyengar and Madan Rao in PNAS, "A cellular solution to an information-processing problem." From the title and description, you would think t...

Transhumanism's Eugenics Authoritarianism

Transhumanism is selfish, all about me-me, I-I. Its goal is immortality for those currently alive, and the right to radically remake themselves and their progeny in their own image.

ZoltanIstvan (pictured at right) is an up-and-comer transhumanist, who is very good at promoting himself and his ideas. (I met him at a transhumanist and religion conference, about which I will be opining on a later occasion, and we got along fine.)

Istvan's newest missive, in Wired, argues that transhumanism means...