Discovery Institute's Blog, page 23

Cosmic Coincidences? Materialism Faces a Choice Between Unsavory Options

It's convenient for ID advocates when materialists point out their own predicament so we don't have to do it for them. Such is the case in a recent series for New Scientist about fine-tuning.

One of the articles begins with an image of a pencil balanced on its point. Stuart Clark says:

Next time you fancy doing something really frustrating, try balancing a pencil on its sharpened tip. Your efforts will succeed for a second at most. Yet the universe has been succeeding at a similar gravitati...

Alien Physics: Scientist Offers Novel Escape Hatch from Intelligent Design

As I've said before, intelligent design can take or leave extraterrestrial life. It doesn't affect the cogency of ID arguments one way or the other. Materialism, on the other hand, must have ETs and the more intelligent and advanced, the better. After all, human life can't be special, therefore something like us must be replicated across the cosmos.

The problem is that the universe offers no hint of objective evidence for ETs. So the race is on to find plausible rationales for why the heck...

Biologist's New Argument Against Intelligent Design: Under ID, Gazelle Should Run Toward Cheetah

It will be a treat to have the recording of last week's Royal Society conference, "New Trends in Evolutionary Biology," to confirm the exact wording of a few choice quotes from the event. We've already pointed out this slide from Andy Gardner of the University of St. Andrews. It says that Darwinism's "process" is "natural selection," its "purpose" being to "maximize fitness." ID's "process," on the other hand, is "God did it" while its purpose is "???"

What a way to turn a serious argument...

On New Model for Human Ancestry, Mathematician Ola H��ssjer Responds to Critics

Over at the BioLogos Forum, a couple of scientists have taken on two new BIO-Complexity papers by Ola Hssjer, Ann Gauger, and Colin Reeves. The critics are Dennis Venema, biologist at Trinity Western University and a BioLogos Fellow, and Stephen Schaffner, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute.

The papers are here and here, described by Ann Gauger for Evolution News here. The Abstract of the first paper gives an overview:

In a series of two papers (Part 1 and 2) we explore what ca...

Really, That's Enough of the Media's Ghoulish Exploitation of Stephen Hawking

The media's exploitation of Stephen Hawking really needs to be called out. This hits a new low. From the Washington Post, among numerous other outlets venting the same story today:

Stephen Hawking just gave humanity a due date for finding another planet

If humanity survives the rise of artificial intelligence, the ravages of climate change and the threat of nuclear terrorism in the next century, it doesn't mean we're home free, according to Stephen Hawking.

The renowned theoretical physicist...

Best of Behe: Richard Lenski and Citrate Hype

Editor's note: In celebration of the 20th anniversary of biochemist Michael Behe's pathbreaking book Darwin's Black Box and the release of the new documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, we are highlighting some of Behe's "greatest hits." The following was published here on May 12, 2016. Remember to get your copy of Revolutionary now! See the trailer here.

Dishonesty comes in degrees, from the white lie told to spare another's feelings to criminal fraud...

Why It Matters: New Survey Quantifies the Impact of Evolutionary Ideas on Faith and Ethics

I remember driving our kids to school one morning a few years ago when an NPR story came on the radio, "More Young People Are Moving Away From Religion, But Why?" A young man name Kyle Simpson, raised as a Christian, explained the relationship between scientific ideas and his lost faith.

I don't [believe in God] but I really want to. That's the problem with questions like these is you don't have anything that clearly states, "Yes, this is fact," so I'm constantly struggling. But looking righ...

Evolution of Mammary Glands: Will You Take Some Teleology with That?

Science Daily reports:

A team of geneticists demonstrated that the emergence of mammary glands in placental mammals and marsupials results from recycling certain 'architect' genes. The latter, known as Hox genes, are responsible for coordinating the formation of the organs and limbs during the embryonic stage. Such genes are controlled by complex regulatory networks. In the course of evolution, parts of these networks were reused to produce different functions. Architect genes were thus requ...

Paul Nelson on Intelligent Design and the Royal Society's "White Bear Problem"

Gerd B. Mller, opening speaker at last week's Royal Society meeting in London, introduced the "explanatory deficits" of evolutionary theory's Modern Synthesis. Less understatedly, those are major failures of standard neo-Darwinism to account for the explosions of creative innovation we see in life's history. Discovery Institute philosopher of biology Paul Nelson was on hand for the meeting ("New Trends in Evolutionary Biology") and he participated in a follow-up gathering the day after it cl...

An Unbearable Rush -- Antarctic Whale Fossil Poses a Challenge to Evolution that Won't Go Away

As many readers are aware, the standard whale evolution scheme suggests that a fully terrestrial land mammal evolved into a fully aquatic whale in less than 10 million years. Richard Sternberg (see Part 1 and Part 2), Casey Luskin (see here and here), Jonathan M., and others have explained that this is not enough time for neo-Darwinian mechanisms to produce the many complex adaptations found in whales that allow for a fully aquatic lifestyle. (For another great discussion of this challenge t...