Discovery Institute's Blog, page 467

What Exactly Was Darwin's Religion?

At first glance, that question may appear to pose an enigma. For the position that Charles Darwin believed in God is completely untenable. Yet it is certainly also true that Darwin was no arch-atheist.

Somewhere in between is Karl Giberson's attempt to imagine a more sympathetic Darwin by admitting that he was "neither a deathbed convert [as Lady Hope had claimed] nor lifelong crusader against belief in God. He was, in fact," according to Giberson, "a sincere religious believer who...

Monday's Forecast for University of Oklahoma: High of 88° and Sunny with 100% Chance of Butterflies

Having rolled out its California premiere on Saturday, Illustra Media's fantastic new intelligent-design documentary, Metamorphosis, takes its show on the road, landing on Monday, September 19 at 7 pm, at Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK.

See MetamorphosisTheFilm.com for the full release schedule! Download the new free companion e-book, edited by Discovery Institute's David Klinghoffer, here.

Butterflies are the new "icon of intelligent design....

California Metamorphosis Premiere Stars Live Butterflies

A thousand people responded with long, resounding applause to Illustra's new film, Metamorphosis, at its California premiere on Saturday. The auditorium was filled and the audience was thrilled, especially at the very end when the stars of the show made a surprise appearance.

The classic Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton was the venue for the premiere. Every family who RSVP'd ahead of time got a free DVD of the film.

As people arrived, Mark Edward Lewis at the piano played a suite of...

Australopithecus sediba: The Hype-Cycle Starts Again

The hyping of alleged human ancestors, fossils whose claim to fame invariably turns out later to be disproved by the evidence, has a long and undistinguished history. The trail of fallen ancestors brings us to the present day, September 2011, when the media has started a new cycle of hype with Australopithecus sediba. If history is a guide, within months or a few years we should expect to see cooler heads prevail in their analyses of this fossil. For now, though, what exactly can we make of...

Among Darwin Advocates, Premature Celebration over Abundance of Habitable Planets

Ian Musgrave at Panda's Thumb is all excited. He discovered a stray comment by Bill Dembski from 18 years ago, delivered at a conference at Seattle Pacific University, where in retrospect it sounds like Dembski was mistaken on what would turn out later to be the number of observable planets in the galaxy. From this, Musgrave derives the sweeping, celebratory headline, "The Discovery Institute Fails at Exoplanets." Yay!

But wait. The occasion for all this merrymaking and victory-dancing is

Southern California, University of Oklahoma, Southern Methodist University: Metamorphosis Prepares to Touch Down in Your Town! (Or Very Nearby)

Metamorphosis is the fantastically beautiful and enlightening new documentary that makes the case for intelligent design from the evidence of the world's most magical creature: butterflies. In the next few days, this latest film from Illustra Media will premiere in locations across the country: Saturday, September 17 at 2 pm at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, CA.

Monday, September 19 at 7 pm at Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK.

Tuesday, September...

Hominid Hype and the Election Cycle

It's that time of the election cycle again. You know, the time when the media starts regularly deploying the "evolution test" to decide whether a candidate is mentally impaired. Those who capitulate to the Darwinian consensus are deemed of normal intelligence and fit for office. Those who don't are subjected to public mockery and humiliation.

In this context, the media is naturally going ape over papers recently published in the journal Science discussing an australopithecine fossil. ...

At BioLogos, Still Critiquing the Book Steve Meyer Didn't Write

The BioLogos Foundation has got quite a team of Christian-Darwinian evolutionists assembled. But reading comprehension, the kind measured on SAT tests, is not their strong suit. Or so it would seem from the persistent refusal by several BioLogos writers -- Ayala, Venema, Falk -- to grapple with the main point of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell and from their strange insistence that the book makes an entirely different argument from the one it in fact does.Dr. Darrel Falk...

Intelligently Designing Music to Match Butterfly Magic

One of the things that grabs your attention in the very first seconds of Metamorphosis, the new documentary from Illustra Media about butterflies, is the music. The vibrant voices of an African choir superimposed on a dynamic orchestral score explodes into a celebration of life, worthy of the opening majestic scenes of nature. From there onward, the music, at times pensive, at times effervescent, maintains its perfect match to the visuals to the end of the final credits, sending the v...

Wesley Elsberry, Granville Sewell, and the Hypocritical "Self-Plagiarism" Charge

A recent article at World Net Daily (WND) discusses the case of mathematician Granville Sewell. Earlier this year the journal Applied Mathematics Letters paid Sewell $10,000 in attorneys' fees and publicly apologized to him after wrongfully withdrawing his paper critiquing neo-Darwinism. What caught my eye wasn't so much the WND article itself (which has some factual errors) but a comment by Wesley Elsberry to WND's reporter, Ellis Washington:

Hey, Ellis, what do you have to say to...