Discovery Institute's Blog, page 37

Dr. Hawking's First World Problem: What If Aliens Call!?

Here from Stephen Hawking is a First World problem if ever there was one: If aliens call, do we pick up? From The Independent:

If we actually end up discovering aliens then they'll probably just wipe us all out, Stephen Hawking has said.

When we made contact with any aliens it would probably be like when the Native Americans first met Christopher Columbus. And, in that case, things "didn't turn out so well" for the people being visited, Professor Hawking has said.

Stephen Hawking made the wa...

Richard Dawkins's Weasel Program Is Bad in Ways You Never Dreamed

Editor's note: Dr. Witt is cordially welcomed back to the pages of Evolution News after a too long sabbatical. He is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, and co-author of Intelligent Design Uncensored and A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature.

You may have heard of evolutionist Richard Dawkins's computer program designed to illustrate that evolution can accomplish amazing things. And you may have heard some good critique...

From Joshua Swamidass, a Gratuitous Drive-by Hit

I have been following the exchange with Washington University's Joshua Swamidass about cancer and evolution (see here, here, and here). I've done so from a distance and I do not plan to join in. That is because twenty years ago I grew tired of endless and fruitless debates with theistic evolutionists (now "evolutionary creationists"), who by claiming that Darwinian evolution is compatible with Christian theism abandon the principle of non-contradiction. The result is nonsense.

But on the Bio...

What Are Proteins?

In the context of the present discussion with an interlocutor about cancer and intelligent design, it strikes me that it's more helpful -- rather than straining for an analogy between cancer and evolution -- to directly test the basis of evolution itself. Nothing is more basic than proteins, those "wonderful molecules that do almost all the work of molecular life," as protein chemist Douglas Axe says in a brief video conversation.

Author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That...

Michael Behe's Challenge -- Past, Present, and Future

Twenty years after Darwin's Black Box, the irreducibly complex outboard motors showcased by Michael Behe still confound Darwinism. That's one theme of our upcoming documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe & The Mystery of Molecular Machines, which heads to Texas next month for previews. Behe's challenge is the past, the present, and the future.

Look at this quote from a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

The bacterial flagellar system has been an object of intense s...

From the American Geophysical Union, Errors and Misconceptions About Science Education

This month, the American Geophysical Union reaffirmed its statement on evolution and the history of the earth in science education. Their position says much the same as we've heard again and again from similar groups, such as the National Academy of Sciences: there is no scientific debate over evolution.

Unfortunately for schoolchildren, they're wrong. The statement notes:

AGU affirms the central importance of including scientific theories of Earth history and biological evolution in scienc...

Michael Behe and Revolutionary Are Headed to Texas for Three October Events!

The upcoming hour-long documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe & The Mystery of Molecular Machines is headed to Texas in advance of next month's release of the film on DVD and Blu-ray. Join us in the greater Houston and Dallas areas to preview the film and meet Dr. Behe, who will answer questions from the audience at each event.

Revolutionary looks back twenty years to the publication of Behe's Darwin's Black Box -- and ahead to the future of intelligent design. See below for links with eve...

Design Paper Hits a Home Run

Baseball lovers will appreciate this glimpse into what your senses and nerves have to do to bat a homer. A news item from Oregon State:

Researchers have discovered a mechanism of intercellular communication that helps explain how biological systems and actions -- ranging from a beating heart to the ability to hit a home run -- function properly most of the time, and in some scenarios quite remarkably. [Emphasis added.]

It's a noisy world out there. The batter can't focus on irrelevant sounds...

An Omission in Our Coverage of Dr. Joshua Swamidass and His New Argument Against ID

I leave it to our scientists to weigh the merit of Professor Josh Swamidass's "cancer disproves intelligent design" thesis. But a Facebook friend points out one glaring oversight in our commentary so far.

Evolution News observed, "Such mutations [as cause cancer] would not build anything new," "mutations can't build anything truly novel." Biologist Ann Gauger writes:

It's definitely not to the benefit of the organism in question. Imagine that the oil in your car's engine turned to sludge. T...

Atheism Is a Catastrophe for Science

An atheist biologist, P.Z. Myers, unloads on Christianity by citing several questions about nature that he believes atheists answer better than Christians.

Myers:

Some of us, like me, are atheists because religion provides nothing we want, is unsatisfactory at addressing what we do care about, and is really, really bad at answering a very human question, "Why?" Instead, they prefer to make tirades against the other, ignoring their own failings, and pretending that the questions they ignore...