Discovery Institute's Blog, page 43

How Curiosity Overcomes the Yuck Factor: A Positive Take on Negative Reviews

I've been arguing that intelligent design explains life better than Darwin's theory for long enough to be familiar with reactions that amount to little more than disgust -- the yuck response. Usually I take that response as a sign that I need to move on to more receptive listeners, but I was recently reminded that the yuck response doesn't always end the discussion. A colleague of mine -- a former Darwinist who now sees life as designed -- told me how he came to change his view several years...

How a Dry Seed Can Live a Thousand Years

Maybe you have some in your garage: old seed packets that never made it into your gardening project years ago. Would they sprout if you planted them now? It's likely some would. Seeds can last for decades, sometimes centuries. In 2005, a date palm seed that survived dry conditions at Masada for 2,000 years germinated and remains on display in Israel, nicknamed Methuselah. The oldest carbon-dated seeds that have grown into viable plants are flowers that were buried under Siberian permafrost f...

University of Chicago President Decries "Efforts to Suppress Discussion of Charles Darwin's Work"

Attempts to limit free speech on college campuses are many -- for example, at Yale, students berated professor Nicholas Christakis after he suggested that the school shouldn't regulate Halloween costumes that were not culturally sensitive.

Someone finally decided to stand up and defend freedom of speech as a defining principle of education. This summer, the University of Chicago's Dean of Students, John Ellison, sent a letter to all incoming freshman, stating:

Once here you will discover t...

In The Kingdom of Speech, Tom Wolfe Tells the Story of Evolution's Epic Tumble

Darwinian evolution explains biological trivia -- variable finch beaks and the like -- but stumbles when it comes to the major innovations in the long history of life. No innovation could be more revolutionary than how homo sapiens, as Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton puts it, "slipped suddenly into being on the rich, game-laden African grasslands of the late Pleistocene."

The most distinctive thing about man is of course his gift for language. On that, the great Tom Wolfe maste...

A Simple Refutation of the "Universe from Nothing"

The origin of the universe poses a problem for atheism.

It is logically impossible to provide a natural explanation for how nature came into existence. Such an explanation must assume the existence of nature in its opening premises, thus, committing the circular fallacy. Necessarily, then, the origin of nature must be super-natural (i.e., not natural).

When Lawrence Krauss began promoting the idea of a universe arising from "nothing," it was hardly surprising that he rapidly achieved savior...

Now Living Is a "Psychiatric Disorder"

Oh, good grief. A psychiatrist has claimed that 50 percent of college students have a "psychiatric disorder." But get how broadly he defines the term. From the CBS Boston story:

Dr. Gene Beresin, a psychiatrist and Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, says 50% to 60% of college students have a psychiatric disorder.

"What I'm including in that is the use of substances, anxiety, depression, problems with relationships, break-ups, acad...

In 2017, Watch a Spectacular Display of Intelligent Design

On Phys.org, David Dickinson highlights next year's total eclipse. But at the end of his article, he notes that a total eclipse is just a "happy celestial circumstance" instead of a product of intelligent design.

On August 21, 2017, the umbra (the Moon's shadow on Earth where the Moon completely covers the Sun) of the solar eclipse will move across the United States, tracing a path from Oregon to South Carolina, lasting about two minutes.

In their book, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place...

Douglas Axe on Evolution's Search Problem

Telling imaginative stories is a favorite pastime for evolutionary theorists. Intelligent design advocates don't tell stories, which is one reason that some people express frustration with ID. These critics want a narrative, an explanation that you can picture in your head like a movie. That isn't forthcoming for the simple reason that the "how" of the design act or acts seems not to be accessible to science, at least not now.

Instead, ID scientists like Douglas Axe, author of Undeniable: Ho...

A Billion Genes and Not One Beneficial Mutation

Natural selection cannot invent things. That's a fact that Douglas Axe establishes clearly in his new book Undeniable. All improvements must come from random mutations. Think of all the progress from the first microbe to a human body. Every single instance of innovation -- large or small -- had to originate in what amounts to "blind search" for something good that natural selection could preserve at a moment in time and place. The inability of blind search to locate any benefit in a sufficie...

When "Quality of Life" Means "Not Worthy of Life"

There is a fight going on in the UK about whether to keep a seriously ill baby on life support or put her in palliative care to die. Typical of our age, the idea that a person has a life not worth living may really be about discrimination against the disabled, coupled with the imperative to save money.

That is happening in the context socialized medicine, in which National Health Service bureaucrats want life-sustaining medical treatment stopped for a baby because the life it would provide w...