Discovery Institute's Blog, page 465

Music for Monarchs: A Conversation with Mark Lewis

In the first installment of our interview with composer Mark Edward Lewis, we asked how he pulled off such a stunning soundtrack for Metamorphosis, the new documentary from Illustra Media that documents the case for intelligent design from butterflies. This time we wanted to ask about one of the most noticeable aspects of the score: the African vocals.

Let's talk about the singers a bit. What made you decide to try African vocals this time?

Lad Allen, the producer-director, was...

Judaism Without God?

The Washington Post carries a very babyish and silly article, "Judaism without God? Yes, say American atheists," timed to the upcoming Jewish high holy days. It's a spin on the old "Have your cake and eat it too" theme that we're familiar with from the discussion with theistic evolutionists. Excerpt:

Unlike other religions, Judaism has often embraced its atheist strain. The 18th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish community for equating God with nature...

Self-Plagiarism for Me, but Not for Thee: Wesley Elsberry Replies

Evolution activist and marine biologist Wesley Elsberry hypocritically charges mathematician and ID advocate Granville Sewell with "self-plagiarism" and "deliberate gaming of the [academic publication] system." What's hypocritical about the charge?

Well, recently in the journal Synthese, Elsberry himself self-plagiarized his own prior work. I don't care if Wesley Elsberry "plagiarizes" himself, if that's even the right the word for reworking or repurposing your own writing for...

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: HuffPost Reviews The Myth of Junk DNA

In following the literature in which advocates for Darwinism review books by advocates of intelligent design, you come to be grateful for little things: when they get the name of the book right, when they give evidence of having read the book, when they do not grossly misrepresent the author's thesis or substitute a totally different thesis that they feel more comfortable answering for the real one.

On these points, writing on Jonathan Wells's Myth of Junk DNA at Huffington Post, John...

NCSE's Eugenie Scott Reassures Scotland: There's No Scientific Controversy on Evolution or Climate Change

Last week in Glasgow, Scotland, Centre for Intelligent Design (C4ID) director Alastair Noble, David Swift, and I attended a lecture presented by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. The event was organized by Glasgow Skeptics, who previously hosted a talk by PZ Myers back in June.

To her credit, in contrast to Myers's performance, Eugenie Scott was respectful in tone, even when challenged by several questioners in the Q&A. Overall, the usual personal hostility and...

The Closing of Charles Darwin's Formerly Christian Mind

Richard Weikart has an exceptionally crisp, clear and unsentimental take on the trajectory of Darwin's religious belief over the course of his lifetime. It's up now at the The American Thinker. Excerpt:

So, what lessons can we draw about the relationship between religion and evolutionary theory from Darwin's own trajectory? First, as he developed his evolutionary theory, he moved from Christian belief in a personal God to a deistic position to agnosticism. It is not clear to what extent his...

Another One Bites the Dust?

If you think Darwin's theory of evolution is as secure as Einstein's theory of special relativity, well...maybe you're right.

The Guardian has the story:

It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time -- nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world's largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles travelling at a speed that...

A Reason to Doubt the Real, Rather than Pretended, Confidence of Darwin Advocates

Much of the debate about Darwinian evolution is conducted in public online forums. If interpreted with some care, these give a convenient way of measuring the real confidence of leading spokesmen on the Darwin side. I don't mean the level of bluster -- they're all full of bluster -- but rather what they really must feel at some level deep down.

If you follow the top Darwin blogs you'll notice how eagerly and often they go in for mocking extremely marginal and daffy creationists. PZ Myers...

Privileged Planet: Dartmouth Physicist on the Surprising Fact of Complex Life, on Earth or Anywhere

A theoretical physicist at Dartmouth, Marcelo Gleiser, observes in an NPR commentary just how unlikely it is, even under Darwinian assumptions, that complex life exists other than on Earth:

A very clear distinction must be made between simple, unicellular life and more complex life forms. It's hard not to doubt that Earth is the only planet where life took hold. After all, we have seen how resilient it is here, with extremophiles defying our previously held assumptions of where life can...

A Cordial Invitation to Dr. Dennis Venema and Others: The Gates to Commenters Are Thrown Open

Casey Luskin has been writing about the response to Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell from our theistic evolutionary friends at the BioLogos Foundation. Dennis Venema in particular has critiqued Signature in a series of blog posts that, as Casey argues, misunderstand Meyer's book and the whole meaning of intelligent design. In our current top story ("Richard Lenski's Long-Term Evolution Experiments with E. coli and the Origin of New Biological Information"), Luskin replies to Venema in...