Discovery Institute's Blog, page 234

An Open Letter to Kenneth Miller and PZ Myers

Dear Professors Miller and Myers,

Talk is cheap. Let's see your numbers.

In your recent post on and earlier reviews of my book The Edge of Evolution you toss out a lot of words, but no calculations. You downplay FRS Nicholas White's straightforward estimate that -- considering the number of cells per malaria patient (a trillion), times the number of ill people over the years (billions), divided by the number of independent events (fewer than ten) -- the development of chloroquine-resistance in...

Self-Intelligent Design Proves Human Exceptionalism

Opponents of human exceptionalism never tire of inventing arguments for why human beings are entitled to no special moral standing. The arguments are various.

Environmentalists rail against the human "cancer" afflicting Pachamama (the Inca Earth goddess).

Animal rightists get an emotional high from thinking that cattle ranching is an equivalent evil to slavery.

Utilitarian bioethicists distinguish between human persons and "nonpersons," in order to allow the weakest among us to be killed and har...

A Deep and Abiding Need for Neanderthals to Be Stupid. Why?

When Neanderthal man was first classified, he satisfied a felt need for a separate,intellectually inferiorhuman species, fleshing out (so to speak) the Ascent of Man. But there has been a significant change in his status in recent years, as researchers began separating what we see from what we think ought to be or must be true.

The editors of the British newspaper The Guardian, for example, recently reappraised Neanderthals' intelligence in the light ofevidenceof their use of pigments and deco...

Setting the Record Straight: Stephen Meyer and "Junk" DNA

Apparently, you can't review a book on Amazon if Amazon thinks you know the author. A recent reviewer on the online retailer's website gave Stephen Meyer's 2009 book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design one star out of five, labeling it "useless" because Meyer "doesn't address 'junk' DNA at all." As Dr. Meyer's assistant and a media-relations specialist at Discovery Institute, I wanted to clarify to this reviewer and other interested parties that, actually, Meye...

War on Humans: How Would Legalizing Assisted Suicide Help the Downtrodden?

How would legalizing assisted suicide help the downtrodden, poor, and discriminated against?

It wouldn't, which is one reason why legalizing doctor-prescribeddeath is mostly a cause of the well off, for whom access to quality health careis not a problem. To be blunt, these folks know what they want for themselves and don't care who else gets hurt.

But for the destitute, the elderly, people with disabilities -- the multitude who can't access quality care -- it is a tar pit. That is why advocate...

The Edge of Evolution: Why Darwin's Mechanism Is Self-Limiting

As we've discussed extensively here over the past week, a recent paper confirms a key inference I made in 2007 in The Edge of Evolution. Summers et al. 2014 conclude that "the minimum requirement for (low) [chloroquine] transport activity ... is two mutations." This is the last of my three posts on the matter. The first may be found here and the second here. Casey Luskin's remarks are here.

Looking down from an airplane at 30,000 feet, the landscape can appear pretty smooth. It can be hard to...

Peer-Reviewed Science: What the Field of Systems Biology Can Tell Us About Intelligent Design

Yesterday I brought to your attention an exciting new peer-reviewed paper in the journal BIO-Complexity, "Systems Biology as a Research Program for Intelligent Design." In the article, University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke observes that while the burgeoning field of systems biology did not grow out of the ID movement, and while many of its practitioners are materialists, the approach nonetheless has significant implications for intelligent design. Snoke writes:

It goes without saying...

Now with 12 Emmy Nominations, Why Shouldn't Cosmos End Up in the Schools?

Next month we'll see how many Emmys Cosmos walks away with but 12 nominations isn't bad at all. At Mother Jones, Chris Mooney is jazzed about this triumph for "educationally driven science content" on TV.

With that kind of recognition going for it, the series seems even more likely than it did before to end up as a staple in public-school science instruction. Dan Arel at Salon is looking forward to it:

It is a safe bet to assume that the popular, critically acclaimed show will turn up in cl...

The Tang Factor: Last Night with William Dembski at McCaw Hall

Last night's event with Bill Dembski at McCaw Hall in Seattle wasn't strictly a book launch party for his new book -- since Being as Communion won't be published till this autumn and is still in the pre-order stage (at a fantastic discount) -- but it was a great evening anyway. John West interviewed Dr. Dembski, a rock star of the ID movement, and took a page from Stephen Meyer.

Dr. Meyer is rarely caught giving a public presentation without coming armed with humble visual aids to illustrate...

When Biologists Think Like Engineers: How the Burgeoning Field of Systems Biology Supports Intelligent Design

Wikipedia's infamously biased, rule-violating, and error-filed entry on intelligent design states that "any appeal to an intelligent creator is explicitly excluded for the paralyzing effect it may have on the scientific progress." But what if scientists are already using intelligent-design reasoning to study life? What if they are treating biological systems as if they are designed, and what if this approach turns out to be scientifically fruitful?

What if many scientists are doing this and...