Discovery Institute's Blog, page 42

Forced Reeducation for MDs Who Don't Want to Kill

Yesterday I commented on a bioethics "Consensus Statement" published by Oxford University that advocates eviscerating medical conscience rights of doctors with religious or moral objections to procedures such as abortion and euthanasia.

Looking more closely at the authoritarian document, I see that the bioethicists would require dissenting doctors to perform community service for their thought crime and to attend reeducation classes about the harm their beliefs cause.

From the "Consensus Sta...

Douglas Axe: The Work of Intelligent Design Is Just Beginning

Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture recently celebrated our 20th anniversary, but in an important sense the work of the intelligent design community has barely begun. In a video conversation discussing his research on protein origins, Douglas Axe comments on the stages of that work.

There has been, first of all, the need for a critique of Darwinism to justify the way forward and the acceptance of the design alternative. The relevant debate is ongoing. What comes after is a new...

Bioethics "Consensus Statement" Would Force Doctors to Kill and Abort

Bioethicists want to force doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals to participate in euthanasia, abortion, and other actions that violate their consciences or religious beliefs. This wasn't formerly a serious problem. The values contained in the Hippocratic Oath were consistent with sanctity of life moral conscience.

That is no longer true. A "consensus statement" signed by prominent bioethicists from around the world and published by Oxford University would force di...

This Sounds Familiar: Theistic Evolutionist Recycles Anti-ID Argument Refuted Years Ago

In a post for the theistic evolutionary group BioLogos, Canadian biology professor Dennis Venema writes affectionately, with only a mild touch of disdain, about the intelligent design movement. Their (meaning our) hearts are in the right place, he tells readers. Like him, advocates of ID want to build an "apologetic" against materialism. They're just going about it in the wrong way. And their science is wrong.

Venema readily concedes that living cells use "highly intricate" processes to mana...

Greenland Fossils, Earth's Oldest, Pose an Evolutionary Dilemma

The origin of cellular life, with all that implies by way of mind-bogglingly sophisticated biological information in action, now seems to have occurred as early in earth's history as it could have done -- 3.7 billion years ago. Just right off the bat it happens, "immediately," as one paleontologist puts it in amazement: genetic code, proteins, photosynthesis, the works.

It's reported in Nature ("Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures"). From...

Tom Wolfe: Human Exceptionalist

The ubiquitous attacks on human exceptionalism are one of the current age's worst decadent tendencies. HE is the backbone of Western Civilization's commitment to universal human rights, individual liberty, and our generally shared prosperity.

Some focus on religious reasons for holding out man as unique and distinct from all other life ever to exist in the known universe. But there are abundant other reasons based on our attributes and capacities -- whether or not we evolved from bacteria, w...

To Practice Science, We Must Philosophize

I'd never thought of things this way, but I just came across this New Republic article from a couple of years back. In "Science Is Not About Certainty," theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses the nature of scientific advancement. At the end of his article, he notes that philosophy leads to scientific discoveries. His point is particularly relevant in origins science, where sound reasoning is crucial.

Rovelli notes that historically, great scientists have also practiced philosophy:

H...

Why Does Man Have Language?

I've just begun reading Tom Wolfe's new book The Kingdom of Speech. In his first chapter he raises a very important question for which there is a very important answer.

Wolfe:

Speech is not one of man's several unique attributes -- speech is the attribute of all attributes!... Darwin had [a big] problem: a huge gap in evidence when he came to language, which set humans far apart from any animal ancestors. It gnawed at him. He could explain man's opposable thumb, upright stature, and huge cra...

New York Times: "Darwinism Be Damned"

To be fair, the full NY Times headline reads, "In Defense of a Gift, Darwinism Be Damned," and it's a review of Tom Wolfe's new book, The Kingdom of Speech. Quite a positive one too, and -- right in your face -- on the front page of the Arts section. (The online version of the article has a more anodyne heading.)

The "gift" is man's unique endowment with language. The gist of the review:

Mr. Wolfe does not complain about evolution on religious grounds; in fact, he is an atheist. He begins by...

Tom Wolfe on Language and Evolution

As David Klinghoffer notes, Tom Wolfe's new book The Kingdom of Speech is out (and on Kindle too which makes me happy!). I'm a big fan of Wolfe.

For a little taste, Wolfe has an excerpt, "The Origins of Speech," in Harper's Magazine. He tells the fascinating story of Daniel Everett, the anthropologist who challenged Noam Chomsky's theory of language recursion. Chomsky famously has posited that human language arises from an innate ability of human beings to think and express ourselves via la...