Discovery Institute's Blog, page 464

From "An Interview with Lad Allen, Producer and Director of Metamorphosis"

We present an excerpt from Chapter 3, "An Interview with Lad Allen, Producer and Director of Metamorphosis," from the new companion book Metamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Nutshell Chrysalis. You can now download this FREE e-book which presents the detailed argument for intelligent design, by scientists, philosophers and historians, from the evidence of butterflies.

Butterflies often inspire a sense of wonder in children and adults alike. Did you experience that when working...

Garry Trudeau Joins a Special Club with an Unfortunately Large Membership

It's the club of those scientists, journalists and other "thinkers" who feel entitled to condemn and mock intelligent design without having first bothered to do even a little homework on their own and learn what ID actually says. The revered "Doonesbury" cartoonist comes out today with a strip where fictional reporter Rick Redfern asks real-life Texas governor Rick Perry, "You've dismissed evolution as 'Just a theory that's out there.'"

Perry replies: "Yes, I believe in intelligent design."

R...

Another Bogus Claim of "Novel Function Arising Through Mutation and Selection"

Intelligent Design and the Origin of Information: A Response to Dennis Venema

In this article, Part 6, we:• Understand why Dennis Venema's citation of Joseph Thornton's steroid research does do not demonstrate a "fascinating case of a novel function arising through mutation and selection"
• Review the multiple responses to Thornton's research from leading ID proponents (all ignored by Venema) who found the changes were not information-rich, not necessarily produced by natural selection...

Life on Mars! Again!

Perhaps with all the budget debates in Congress, NASA now fears budget cuts more than once a year, necessitating semi-annual life-on-Mars stories. Discovery News (no relation) has the story:

Scientists have found water-bearing deposits on Mars that are out of step with what was happening elsewhere on the planet, raising the prospect that the sites could have hosted Martian life's last stand.

The deposits are a type of clay called smectites, which contain a blend of silica with aluminum, iron...

A Still Small Voice

I thought I would share with you my Introduction to the new companion book to Metamorphosis. It's called Metamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Nutshell Chrysalis. You can now download this FREE e-book which presents the detailed argument for intelligent design, by scientists, philosophers and historians, from the evidence of butterflies.

In editing this book, I thought with regret about how infrequently we get to see living butterflies in the wild here in Seattle. It's a ...

How Big Bangs Could Lead to Big Changes

For decades, Antony Flew was one of the most prominent atheist intellectuals in the world. Since his days of philosophical sparring with C.S. Lewis, Flew had maintained that until empirical evidence was provided showing otherwise, one should presuppose atheism. True to his word, once evidence began to surface that intelligent design was likely, Flew recanted his atheism and became a deist in the Thomas Jefferson sense.

The reason for his conversion: Flew claimed "the most impressive arguments ...

How Big Bangs Might Lead To Big Changes

For decades, Antony Flew was one of the most prominent atheist intellectuals in the world. Since his days of philosophical sparring with C.S. Lewis, Flew had maintained that until empirical evidence was provided showing otherwise, one should presuppose atheism. True to his word, once evidence began to surface that intelligent design was likely, Flew recanted his atheism and became a deist in the Thomas Jefferson sense.

The reason for his conversion: Flew claimed "the most impressive arguments ...

Inconsistent Nature: The Enigma of Life's Stupendous Prodigality

By the latest reckoning we share this planet with more than 8 million species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, fungi, plants etc., etc. -- with 6,500 new species being described every year. The more notable of recent discoveries include the Eternal Light Mushroom (mycena luxeterna) from Brazil, which emits a bright yellowish light, and the impressive 6-foot-long Golden Spotted Monitor Lizard that had eluded detection in the dense forests of the Philippines.

The prodigality of these forms of ...

A Free New Companion e-Book to Metamorphosis Explicates the Latest "Icon of Intelligent Design"

I would love to see some of our customary Darwinian antagonists and interlocutors answer the challenge set by Paul Nelson and Ann Gauger in their very detailed and powerful essay that is the centerpiece of the gorgeous new companion e-book to Metamorphosis, the new documentary from Illustra that makes its case for intelligent design with great persuasive power. If you want my prediction, the bad guys won't have the guts to read it and try to offer a response in defense of Darwin.

As for you...

Oxford Physicist: Information Is Irreducible to Physics

Oxford physicist David Deutsch is an atheist -- who also endorses the reality of information as irreducible to physics.

"Information, in my view," he says in the clip (at about 40:35), "cannot be reduced to statements about atoms." He then gives a story about the transmission of information which should be familiar to any intelligent-design advocate. "It's only special kinds of information," he goes on, "that are preserved and instantiated," not because of their physical instantiations, which ...