Discovery Institute's Blog, page 44

From The Stranger, Seattle's Alternative Paper, an Odd but Welcome Embrace of Evolution's "Third Way"

The Stranger is one of our two Seattle alternative weeklies, and it can be vile, addled, or both. But this is worthy of a note of congratulations. Author Charles Mudede contributes an article titled "What the 'White Man's Fly' Tells Us About Intelligent Design." It's a little bit...strange, and certainly no embrace of ID. The gist of it, in fact, is a surprising endorsement of the thinking of University of Chicago biologist James Shapiro, a leading scientist in the Third Way of Evolution mov...

Is the Earth the Most Special Planet in the Universe, After All?

As a small boy, I thought the earth was flat...and it ended ten miles away behind the tall wooden fence at Sticky's Drive-in. The fence, of course, was to keep people from falling off the edge of the world. No one had put this idea in my head; it was simply the way I perceived the world before anyone told me differently.

A dirt road ran between our farmyard and a large forest that provided endless possibilities for my imagination. Though I was not permitted to enter it as a preschooler, my p...

Put Up or Shut Up for Evolution? Nearest "Habitable" Planet Found Orbiting Proxima Centauri

For materialists, the origin of life and the evolution of complex, even intelligent creatures needs to be a sure thing, or close to it, given a suitable planetary environment.

Reportedly Earth-like exoplanets discovered up until now have been far away and difficult to check for signs of alien biology. Not so Proxima b, reported today in Nature ("A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri"). It orbits a red dwarf star, Proxima, in the nearby Alpha Centauri sta...

Judge Rules Chickens Are "Akin to Children"

An illegal immigrant will not be deported for having engaged in a crime of moral turpitude after pleading guilty to participating in a cockfighting crime.

I bring this up because the original immigration judge ordered Augustin Ortega-Lopez deported because, the judge ruled, acting as a driver to the cockfight was akin to harming children. From the LA Times story:

Ortega-Lopez pleaded guilty to cockfighting in 2008 after he was advised by his lawyer that it was not a crime of moral turpitude,...

The Machine that Fuels ATP Synthase

Why do you need oxygen to breathe? Oxygen actually plays a secondary role in the amazing process of respiration. What you really need are protons (hydrogen atoms). For every proton captured from your food, there's an electron needing proper disposal. Oxygen is just an electron receptor at the end of a long chain of processes, driven by molecular machines, that captures protons for fuel. The machines translocate the protons across a membrane, creating a pool of protons that enter the ATP synt...

New Documentary from Terrence Malick Is Bound to Stir Complaints About a Nod to Intelligent Design

Revered director Terrence Malick has released the trailer for a new documentary, Voyage of Time: Life's Journey, that tells the story of our origins from the birth of the universe to the emergence of man. You couldn't have asked for a more auspicious and exciting choice than Malick. What there is to see so far is gorgeous -- and bound to renew complaints that he gives a subtle wink and nod to intelligent design.

The same was said about his 2011 film The Tree of Life, with its theme of somet...

The World is Watching: Teach the Evolution Controversy to Foster Science Literacy

Here's another reason to teach the scientific controversy over evolution: inquiry-based methods improve student engagement and learning -- and U.S. science education needs a jumpstart like that.

More than fifty science and engineering organizations, including the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, recently signed a letter to the two major party presidential candidates asking twenty questions about pivotal scient...

"Cyclops" Beetle Offers "Solution" to Evolutionary Problem that Wasn't Supposed to Be There

Evolution is beset by chicken-and-egg problems: How to get A and B when A requires B and B requires A? Scientists at Indiana University think they've solved one such dilemma in explaining how novel features evolve.

From EurekAlert, "'Cyclops' beetles hint at solution to 'chicken-and-egg' problem in novel trait evolution":

"These studies provide a solution to an important 'chicken-and-egg problem' of modern evolutionary developmental biology," [Eduardo] Zattara said. "For a gene to carry out...

Taking Refuge in Eons Won't Save the Day for Darwinian Evolution, Says Doug Axe

Darwinists make habitual recourse to long timelines as a defense against criticism of their theory. Deep time, they argue, measured in billions of years, makes possible things that on a more human scale seem impossible. As protein chemist Douglas Axe points out in a short video conversation, this debating maneuver relies precisely on the fact that by our nature we think in terms of far briefer spans.

Says the author of the new book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is...

The War on Fishing

Animal rights activists don't want us eating fish or catching them recreationally. Fish may feel pain, don't you know. Thus fishing is too cruel.

When the usual suspects advocate destroying a trillion dollar industry, it is one thing. But when an outdoors magazine sympathizes, attention must be paid. From "Fish Have Feelings: Does That Mean We Are Torturing Them?" in Outside magazine:

If fish feel pain, then many of us may have to rethink our life choices. We catch and eat nearly a thousand...