Discovery Institute's Blog, page 27

Royal Society Meeting on "New Trends in Evolutionary Biology" Is Underway

Will it be historic? Paul Nelson thinks that is a distinct possibility. Douglas Axe is in the building in London and relaying coverage via Twitter. He conveys the photo above. More to come.

Horns of a Dilemma: Does Intelligent Design Do Too Little -- or Too Much?

An irony about intelligent design is that it is attacked from, so to speak, front and behind. Some, including theistic evolutionists, criticize ID's minimalism -- it declines to name a designer, to describe the act of design (so that you could picture it happening), to say when or how often the design is instantiated in life, among other things.

So goes the complaint. Let's see here.

When: Different scientific fields tell us different things. Astronomy doesn't tell us when the earth formed....

Robert Richards and Evolutionary Apologetics

Evolutionary apologetics is the defense of Darwinian theory against all challenges -- scientific and otherwise. That Darwinism has not coincidentally been put to evil ends, while not in itself evidence of invalid science, would seem indisputable.

Its role in shaping Nazi ideology would also seem clear enough to anyone who has read a little about the subject. Because Hitler's Germany can't be topped for evil, the defense of Darwinism must have a refutation of the Darwin-Hitler connection.

Ove...

Tropical Birds Are Not More Colorful, Prompting Evolutionary Speculation

It's gratifying to see stereotypes shattered by hard data, even if the stereotype is merely about bird coloration. We think of tropical birds as lushly colorful. Two scientists, Nicholas R. Friedman and Vladimr Reme, tested this out on Australian birds. They found it was not true, or at least not confirmed.

Tropical regions support a greater diversity of species, including more colorful birds, but, species for species, arid areas actually have the "fancier" colored birds. Now notice where t...

How Consensus Can Blind Science

The ruins of Mayan civilization impress anyone who visits. For Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, they spoke to him about the philosophy of science then and now. Recounting his experience for Nature, he describes the questions that came to his mind:

This summer, I visited the Mayan city of Chichn Itz in the Yucatn Peninsula, Mexico. It has an ancient observatory where priest-astronomers made detailed astronomical observations around AD 600-1200. The ruins -- stepped pyramids, temples, columned arc...

Breaking Bad -- Behe on How Evolution Really Works

When we hear Darwinian evolution invoked, it's typically to explain how complex contrivances -- from the protein level on up -- are built. On a new episode of ID the Future, biologists Michael Behe and Ray Bohlin chat about evolution's dark secret: When we can show it at work, in the lab or in the wild, evolution is very often engaged in breaking things, not building them.

Download the episode by clicking here:

To be sure, breaking stuff can be good or bad, advantageous or disadvantageous....

From an Unlikely Source, Praise for Richard Weikart and Hitler's Religion

Our Discovery Institute colleague Richard Weikart's forthcoming book, Hitler's Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich, is out on November 21 but it's already won favorable attention from a seeming unlikely venue.

Writing for The Humanist, Ron Capshaw concludes that Weikart, a historian at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of From Darwin to Hitler and other books, "provides an invaluable and insightful look at the twisted beliefs of a figure many still reg...

Irreducible Complexity and the Evolutionary Literature: A Response to Critics

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 by Discovery Institute on July 31, 2000. Remember to get your copy of Revolutionary now! See the trailer here.

I. Summary

Although several persons have cited numerous references from the sci...

So, You Thought Charles Darwin Discovered Natural Selection? Wrong

After marshaling evidence against the theory of evolution, skeptics sometimes throw Darwin a bone so as not to seem churlish. Hey, we say in essence, natural selection does accomplish things like spreading antibiotic resistance, and Charles Darwin deserves credit for discovering the principle of natural selection even if it isn't the bauplan-building wunderkind he made it out to be.

Yet this gives Darwin too much credit.

Natural Selection Comes to Edinburgh -- Before Darwin

Long before Darwi...

Computers Should Not Be Granted Patents

In order to receive a patent, the subject of the protection must be a human invention. Some want to change that and allow computers to receive patents. From the Science Daily story:

New research published by the University of Surrey in Boston College Law Review is calling for inventions by computers to be legally granted patents.

The research states that the rapid increase in computer power is posing new challenges when it comes to patenting an invention. Artificial intelligence is playing a...