Discovery Institute's Blog, page 230

Intelligent Design in Action: We Could Detect an Alien Civilization by Their Pollution, Astrobiologists Say

You might think fouling your own environment with lots of toxic smog is a poor indicator of intelligence. But obviously, heavy smog on Earth is gift of the industrial revolution. Our modern machines blow out smoke as a byproduct of energy production. That smoke is distinct from natural molecules. Methane, coal, and oil may be produced by natural causes, but burning them to do work takes intelligence.

Methane is produced naturally in a number of ways. For years, astrobiologists have thought th...

Does God Still Matter? On August 28 in Santa Ana, Meyer, Prager, Hewitt, and Stonestreet Will Discuss Faith, Science, and Culture

Our friend Dennis Prager hosts a weekly Ultimate Issues hour on his daily radio show. If you're in the neighborhood of Santa Ana, CA, on Thursday, August 28, join Dennis, Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer, radio host Hugh Hewitt, and BreakPoint co-host John Stonestreet for an unrestrained discussion as they take up some of the most ultimate of all ultimate issues.

Does God still matter? Is physical stuff all there is in the universe? Or is there a purpose and design behind life? How can peop...

From PNAS, a Scathing Rebuke to Hype over Homo Floresiensis, Lost "Hobbit" Species

As our friend Denyse O'Leary has pointed out, Darwinian expectations would be fulfilled by the discovery of other human species living alongside modern humans:

If Darwinian evolution is true, the human race should evolve into different species. Indeed, Darwinsaid thatin the Descent of Man. It is a feature, not a bug. But there is no clear evidence that it is happening. Thus, it would be most helpful to the argument if a new species (i.e., clearly human but not Homo sapiens) was unearthed. Or...

Is NASA Really on the Verge of Finding Extraterrestrial Life?

When I was a kid, NASA's space programs played a major role in inspiring my interest in science. So it saddens me today to see how the space agency, to justify its share of the federal budget, overstates the case for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life. Such claims from NASA are a staple of Internet journalism, virtually unavoidable if you go online. Unfortunately the best available science, including a new paper by our colleague and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, demonstrates that t...

War on Humans: Yes, It's Right to Kill Monkeys to Find Ebola Vaccine

Monkey experiments have determined that a proposed Ebola vaccine may be safe, leading to early human trials. From the New York Times story:

The government plans to fast-track development of a vaccine shown to protect macaque monkeys, aiming to test it in humans as early as next month.

Generally, here's how the experiment was conducted:

Groups of monkeys were vaccinated, while others were not.
Themonkeys were then infected.
The unvaccinated monkeys died from Ebola.
The vaccinated monkeys didn'...

Video: Stephen Meyer Reflects on the Debate with Charles Marshall

Stephen Meyer's debate with UC Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall back in November was unusual and valuable in several different ways. You may remember that Dr. Marshall had reviewed Dr. Meyer's book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, critically but respectfully in the pages of Science. The encounter on British radio stood out for its graciousness and substance. Its length too -- it runs to an hour and half.

In a video conversation...

Memories of the Discovery Institute Cruise to Alaska

Our cruise ship, the Westerdam:

Mendenhall Glacier in Glacier Bay, near Juneau:

Margerie Glacier:

Kelley Unger, Director of the CSC Discovery Society, in front of Margerie Glacier:

The Westerdam in Glacier Bay:

Left to right: Bruce Chapman, Steve Buri, Angelica Buri, Skip Gilliland, George Gilliland, Susan Gilliland:

Whales near Sitka:

Spawning salmon near Juneau:

The eagle has landed:

Photo credit: George Gilliland.

Letter from Palo Alto: Overselling Our Techno-Futures

Spend time in a place like Palo Alto and you'll have a front row seat watching young people brimming with technical talent as they write tomorrow's killer apps, talk about the latest tech news (everyone is in the know), and proclaim their vision for the technology of the future. Walk down University Ave. and take it all in; it doesn't matter much which bistro or restaurant you wander into, you'll hear the same excited future talk -- the next "New New Thing" as writer Michael Lewis put it, wr...

What Can We Responsibly Believe About Human Evolution?

We've been looking at the recentFlores man find(not really a "new species") and the gradual reassessment of the Neanderthals as not very different from us eitherphysicallyormentally. Human evolution studies seem to have reluctantly absorbed this change in view, though popular culture may lag.

"In the minds of the European anthropologists who first studied them, Neanderthals were the embodiment of primitive humans, subhumans if you will,"notedFred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at Loyola...

Feathers Not Flying Over New Dinosaur Fossil

There are three general problems with claims of feathered dinosaur fossils: (1) they aren't feathered (i.e., they have dinofuzz, a wispy hair-like feature that isn't the same as feathers), or (2) they aren't dinosaurs (i.e, they are secondarily flightless birds and not dinosaurs at all), or (3) they aren't fossils (i.e., they're one of the examples of fake fossils that's appeared like the infamous Archaeoraptor). A new fossil ornithischian dinosaur reported in Science is said to have had "avi...