Discovery Institute's Blog, page 30

Is the Human Form Riddled with Bad Design?

"You have no idea how awful the human body is," Matan Shelomi begins in a recent Medical Daily article. He goes on to argue that the human body is badly designed in many ways, and that this shows we're the product of blind Darwinian trial-and-error evolution.

"To say that humans were 'intelligently designed' by a 'creator' is to insult God," Shelomi writes, "because our bodies show no intelligent design at all."

Wow, our bodies show no intelligent design at all? Even most atheist biologists...

Do New Ediacaran Fossils Muffle the Cambrian Explosion?

Whenever the mainstream journals discuss the Cambrian explosion, you can expect three things:

They will try to explain the Cambrian radiation using only unguided material causes like oxygen, temperature or chemistry. Mind and intelligence is forbidden.

They will use anthropomorphic words or appeal to magic, saying that the Cambrian animals appeared, developed, innovated, arose, emerged, filled new ecological niches, or engaged in an evolutionary arms race.

They will completely ignore the ar...

Darwinists and the Fossil Record: Missing a Few Marbles

Neo-Darwinism leads us to expect more than just change over time in the fossil record. It anticipates a fossil pattern of very, very gradual evolution of new forms -- evolution by tiny steps. On Darwinian grounds we should expect to find this pattern even given our highly incomplete fossil record. Instead the pattern we find is sudden appearance and stasis, sudden appearance and stasis, and precious little transition. Charles Darwin himself admitted that this pattern, particularly in the Cam...

Michael Behe -- Personal Portrait of a Revolutionary

Who would have thought? Biochemist Dr. Behe who has given acid indigestion to so many of his colleagues in the world of biology is such a shy, harmless, and agreeable person?

In a short feature, "Michael Behe: Up Close and Personal," to go along with the new 60-minute documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, the insurgent intelligent design advocate describes his childhood and family and religious background.

Given that he and Mrs. Behe have only nine...

Capuchin Monkey Throws Wrench into Human Evolution Story

You know all those primitive stone flake tools unearthed by archeologists the world over and attributed to our evolving hominid ancestors? Researchers in a Brazilian forest have just recorded the lowly capuchin monkey creating stone flakes by earnestly bashing one stone against another.

The New York Times was quick to minimize the significance of the discovery. After reporting on the new finding, James Gorman writes:

The findings don't challenge the record of human evolution in Africa, resea...

Tom Wolfe and the "Kudzu" of "Settled Science"

Writing in Commentary, Andrew Ferguson offers a fantastic review of Tom Wolfe's takedown of Darwin, The Kingdom of Speech.

On Jerry Coyne's review in the Washington Post:

The reviewer was Jerry Coyne, a biologist from the University of Chicago and a volunteer border cop who patrols the perimeter where science and popular culture meet, making sure that scientists are accorded the proper deference. The Kingdom of Speech is deeply transgressive in this way. Wolfe makes sport of scientific pret...

New York Times Pushes Suicide by Starvation

If there is any aspect of the culture of death not supported and promoted by the New York Times, I haven't seen it. Now, Paula Span, the Gray (Ashen?) Lady's "The New Old Age" columnist, pushes suicide by starvation, known in euthanasia parlance as "voluntary stop eating and drinking" (VSED).

It is worth noting here that Compassion and Choices, formerly known more honestly as the Hemlock Society, promotes VSED even for healthy elderly people who want to die.

Euthanasia death zealots have pus...

Revealing Michael Behe, Intelligent Design's "Revolutionary" Biologist

Thanks to a cocktail of misguided public policies, Seattle's downtown core, where we work, is awash with the mentally ill homeless. A sadly familiar figure is the man or woman furiously shouting, cursing, and gesticulating at an unseen conversation partner. There are many such individuals roaming about, crossing paths with the tourists, businesspeople, high-end shoppers, and art museum and symphony patrons. They remind me of a strange feature of the evolution debate.

Just as the mentally ill...

Strange Signals from the Stars -- Another Case Study of the Design Inference

Yesterday we noted an illustrative instance of scientists outside the context of the intelligent design community unapologetically employing the design inference ("Fairy Circles? The Design Inference at Work"). Shannon Hall presents another case study in New Scientist: "Strange signals from 234 stars could be ET -- or human error." She writes:

It's a bold claim. Two astronomers think they have spotted messages from not just one extraterrestrial civilisation, but 234 of them. The news has spa...

In California, Abandoning Terminally Ill with Mental Illnesses to Their Darkest Impulses

California has promulgated a regulation to assure that the mentally ill who have been ordered hospitalized in California have access to assisted suicide if they are dying and deemed able to make medical decisions. From 9 California Code of Regulations 4601 (emphasis added):

(a) A terminally ill patient, as defined by the End of Life Option Act, may petition the superior court for access to participate in activities under the End of Life Option Act by requesting release from the custody of t...