Discovery Institute's Blog, page 36

Evolution's Iron Curtain

Robert George teaches jurisprudence at Princeton and is well known both as a scholar and as a conservative. On Facebook recently he posted a dialogue with a "closeted conservative colleague" who chooses not to go public with his own views out of considerations of career safety. (Rod Dreher reproduces and comments on it.) The colleague feels implicitly judged by Professor George for his not speaking out, and a really interesting conversation ensues. It reminds me of the situation faced by Dar...

Clergy Letter Project Scares the Public by Misrepresenting Texas Science Standards

Texas is in the process of streamlining its science standards, so you know what that means: It's time yet again to frighten the public with dire warnings about "creationists" running amok. At the Huffington Post, Michael Zimmerman, founder of the Clergy Letter Project, sounds the alarm about some of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) biology standards on evolution. He begins:

The creationists are back in Texas attacking high quality science education. Well, to be honest, they we...

Human Speech as a Stumbling Block for Darwinism -- Distilled to Five Minutes

Darwinian evolution accounts for adaptive features of organisms, or claims to do so. That is, it explains features that advance reproduction. With evolution, reproductive advantage is the name of the game. The theory chokes, however, on what is non-adaptive or "beyond-adaptive."

We are still savoring Tom Wolfe's takedown of evolution as an explanation of speech. But what Wolfe does in 169 pages in The Kingdom of Speech, our documentary short The Biology of the Baroque accomplishes even more...

Scientists: Oxygen "Fueled" Evolution of Complex Life

Writing at the tail end of Cenozoic Era, Dante wouldn't have progressed very far in composing his poetry if the oxygen content of the late medieval Italian atmosphere were too low to sustain life. Oxygen was a condition for his work. However, nobody would say that it "fueled" Dante's creativity. Maybe his love for Beatrice did.

Yet over at Science Daily we find another retelling of the oxygen theory of the Cambrian explosion, with the vital gas as the "fuel" for evolution's creativity ("Oxy...

No Abuses in Assisted Suicide? What a Crock

The media often tout the "statistics" from Washington and Oregon that, they claim, demonstrate no abuses in assisted suicide. What a crock.

First, the statistics come from doctor self-reporting. And second, most assisted suicides are herded through the system by Compassion and Choices or other suicide groups, meaning they have a huge potential influence on what the state learns, and what we are told.

Example: In Washington, a suicide facilitating group called End of Life Washington (formerly...

Gloves Off -- Responding to David Levin on the Nonrandom Evolutionary Hypothesis

As readers of Evolution News likely know, the National Center for Science Education is an organization dedicated to dismissing scientific criticism of Darwinian theory. Recently the group's bimonthly publication, Reports of the National Center for Science Education (RNCSE), reviewed my book The Evolution Revolution. I was not surprised that the review by David E. Levin, who teaches in Boston University dental school's Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, was negative. I prepared a polite...

Trace Fossil Experiments Put Pressure on Cambrian Explosion

Take a look at side-by-side photos in the middle of an article posted by NASA's Astrobiology Magazine. They look identical, but the ones on the left are fossils, and the ones on the right were made in the lab by shuffling around microbial mats. The title of the article suggests a setback for evolutionists: "First Signs of Animal Life on Earth May Be from Microbes."

To muffle the Cambrian explosion, scientists have searched for clues to the existence of complex animals in the Precambrian. The...

The Ethical Menace of "Bioethics" Grows

Bioethics discourse aims to change the practice of medicine and the thrust of public policy -- usually not for the better. As I have been noting, the field increasingly targets the right of doctors to refuse to perform an abortion, euthanize patients, or perform other procedures or issue prescriptions that violate their religious beliefs.

Recently I discussed a "consensus statement" on this issue in Practical Ethics, published by Oxford. Now, two internationally influential bioethicists -- J...

The Devil May Not Be in the Details -- But the Truth Is

It's common to hear evolution presented as a nearly impregnable theory. All you have to do is praise science with its undoubted merits, then slip in a quick statement about how evolution is accepted by scientists. Bingo! But science has a method, and it has limits, and those facts get elided when evolution is praised this way.

In an article at The Conversation, "What exactly is the scientific method and why do so many people get it wrong?",Peter Ellerton, lecturer at the University of Queen...

In Oregon, a Push to Starve Dementia Patients

People have the right to refuse medical treatment, including in an advance directive. But they do not -- and most definitely, should not -- have the right to force caregivers to starve them to death when sustenance is not medically delivered, e.g. by spoon feeding.

There has already been one Canadian case -- lost -- to force a nursing home to starve an Alzheimer's patient. Now, in Oregon, there's another such dispute. From the Mail Tribune in Medford, OR:

Although food isn't being shoved in...