Discovery Institute's Blog, page 235

So, Michael Behe Was Right After All; What Will the Critics Say Now?

A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA has vindicated Michael Behe in one of the central controversies over his 2007 book The Edge of Evolution. Behe already reported here on the paper, which found that multiple mutations, at least two, are required to confer resistance to the drug chloroquine on malaria parasites:

A minimum of two mutations sufficed for (low) CQ transport activity, and as few as four conferred full activity. ... The findings presented here reveal...

Yet Again, Answering Paleontologist Donald Prothero on the Duration of the Cambrian Explosion; Plus Bonus "Taradiddle" Alert

In his debate with "skeptic" Michael Shermer on the Michael Medved Show this week, Stephen Meyer had the opportunity to respond to a spurious review of Darwin's Doubt that appeared under the auspices of Shermer's Skeptic magazine. The widely cited review by paleontologist Donald Prothero focused on Prothero's contention, nothing more than a definitional trick, that the Cambrian explosion was an 80-million-year event rather than (as most paleontologists say) a 10-million-year one.

Of course i...

It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future

As I noted here at ENV on Monday, a recent paper confirms a key inference I made in 2007 in The Edge of Evolution. Writing in PNAS, Summers et al. 2014 conclude that "the minimum requirement for (low) [chloroquine] transport activity ... is two mutations." This is the second of three posts on the matter.

Actually, with apologies to Yogi Berra, on some topics it's not all that hard to predict the future -- like on the need for multiple mutations to get some selectable biological function. Way...

Video: Douglas Ell at MIT on Counting to God

Last month, Casey Luskin favorably reviewed Douglas Ell's book Counting to God: A Personal Journey Through Science to Belief. The reference to counting has to do with seven wonders of science, forming a "mathematical road," that Ell reasoned point to a creative intelligence guiding the origins of the cosmos and of life.

Ell went back to his alma mater, MIT, recently to speak about his book, with a gracious introduction by physics department head Peter Fisher. Dr. Fisher observes rightly that...

For the Intelligent-Design Community, an Unexpected Honor

Candidly, we weren't expecting to be credited with Germany's victory in this year's World Cup. But as the German team returns home to a crush of welcome and delight, we're moved by the honor all the same and gratefully accept the admiration of soccer fans worldwide. The Guardian's headline summarizes well:

I'm on Twitter. Fiollow me @d_klinghoffer.

The "Flat Animal": Is It a Cambrian Ancestor?

Placozoans ("flat animals") are free-living marine invertebrates with a very simple, blob-like structure. Possessing no organs, their relationship to other animal phyla is a matter of debate. The only known examples are lumped into a single species, Trichoplax adhaerens. Since they do not appear in the fossil record, their origins can only be inferred from genomics and comparative anatomy. The results have been troublesome for evolutionary theory.

The most complete examination of cell types o...

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Against the Backdrop of Human Exceptionalism

Like Wesley Smith, I saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes over the weekend and can report, in agreement with him, that it appears not to relish the decimation of the human race. Good! In that sense, as Wesley says, it doesn't fit neatly under the "War on Humans" heading, as some pre-release reviews hinted and as I earlier speculated that it might.

Yet it very much reflects a culture at odds with what Wesley calls human exceptionalism. That comes across most clearly if you compare Dawn with the o...

Today at 1 PM Pacific, It's Stephen Meyer Versus Michael Shermer on the Medved Show

Don't miss what promises to be a lively exchange today at 1 pm Pacific on the Michael Medved Show. Stephen Meyer and "skeptic" Michael Shermer will go head-to-head on the question "Should Scientists Be Skeptical About Darwinian Evolution?" Hear it on the radio or online at Michael's website.

Of course, the factual answer is that many already are, whether they should be or not. See our coverage, for example, of the recently launched website The Third Way.

Dr. Shermer is founding publisher of Sk...

Planet of the Apes Doesn't Fit Snugly in the "War on Humans" Category

It's part of my job as a human exceptionalism apologistto see movies that try to tear down the unique value of human life. I have some good news to report: Unlike Noah and the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, theDawn of the Planet of the Apes doesn't fit snugly into the misanthropic "War on Humans" category.

The movie has a rather trite plot about how a man-made plague -- caused by attempting to find a cure for Alzheimer's -- decimated humankind. But some genetically altered chimps esc...

A Key Inference of The Edge of Evolution Has Now Been Experimentally Confirmed

A recent paper in PNAS confirms a key inference I made in 2007 in The Edge of Evolution. Summers et al. conclude that "the minimum requirement for (low) [chloroquine] transport activity ... is two mutations." This is the first of three posts on the topic.

Let me start with some background. Darwinian theory proposes that the astoundingly intricate machinery of the cell developed step by excruciatingly tiny step, by natural selection acting on random mutation. I argued against that in 1996 in D...