Discovery Institute's Blog, page 47

The Origin of Man and the "Waiting Time" Problem

Editor's note : We are pleased to welcome a contribution from Dr. Sanford, who is Courtesy Associate Professor, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University.

My colleagues and I recently published a paper in Theoretical Biology and Medical Modeling, "The Waiting Time Problem in a Model Hominin Population." It is one of the journal's "highly accessed" articles. A pre-human hominin population of roughly 10,000 individuals is thought to have evolved into modern man, during a period of...

Twenty Years Ago Today, Did This Change the Evolution Debate Forever?

Exactly twenty years ago, Dr. Stephen Meyer and I organized an event to publicly launch the Center for Science & Culture (CSC). The occasion was a conference at Seattle Pacific University.

Speaking at the event that day, Saturday, August 10, 1996, was one of our first Fellows, a biochemistry professor from Pennsylvania -- Michael Behe. His new book, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, had just been published.

Little did we know how this launch would change our lives,...

Can You Hear Me Now? Good, Then Thank Your Irreducibly Complex Ears

Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.

Thermometer measur...

Early Whale Echolocation Was Fully Formed

Evolutionists are determined to keep the narrative of whale evolution, one of their "Great Transformation" stories, despite the evidence. It's too good to give up. Picture the egg on the faces of PBS producers if, after 15 years of promoting their TV series Evolution (and they're still promoting it on their website with teachers' guides and student guides), they had to backtrack and tell teachers that those animations of land creatures evolving into whales owed more to fancy than fact. Imagi...

Against "Darwinian Medicine"

Darwinist Randolph Nesse has been peddling "Darwinian Medicine" for years. He laid out his vision of medical science informed by Darwinian speculations two decades ago in a book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, co-authored with Darwinist George C. Williams. He pointed out (correctly) that Darwinism has no current role in medical education and medical research. He means to change that. He argues for integration of Darwinian science into medical school curricula, and he...

Evolution Makes a Child's Error

Below, protein chemist Douglas Axe briefly clarifies what Darwin got right, and what he got wrong. The problem with evolutionary theory is this: It assumes that natural selection -- true as far as it goes, in the sense that helpful variations, judged for survival and reproduction, will outcompete less helpful ones -- can account for clever inventions in the history of life. All clever inventions.

But as Dr. Axe explains, we know from our experience as human inventors that novelties are nev...

What Does It Mean to Be Intelligent?

Sometimes the unasked question reveals most. In exploring AI systems, and whether do or ever will achieve human-like intelligence, the unasked question is "What does it mean to be intelligent?" The answer is elusive since we have a sample set of precisely one species: humans. (Other species are certainly intelligent, but AI developers seek human-like intelligence so that humans may use the systems.) And, while we agree that humans are intelligent, we cannot describe what we mean, measure wha...

A Dehumanizing Ideology Unsurprisingly Catalyzes Violence

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who denies the existence of free will and has endorsed social control of human beings that is hardly distinguishable from animal training, insists that religion is a significant motivation for violence.

Coyne, who claims that in human affairs "reason is no different from a kick," is of course right, in a sense. There is no question that religious belief can motivate and has motivated violence. We are currently experiencing violence in many parts of the wor...

Brave New World Should Be Campaign Issue

Over at First Things I get into how one of the most important questions of our time -- how to maintain a moral biotech sector -- is being ignored in this election season.

Human cloning is being perfected, we are already engaging in embryonic experiments into genetic engineering, and there is a great silence from the media and the candidates.

The last time the media cared about biotechnology was when it hoped to cost George W. Bush a second term for his modest embryonic stem cell funding pol...

Register by Wednesday to See Revolutionary as We Look Forward to the Next 20 Years of ID!

Join us on August 12 at 7:30 in Seattle to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture! The deadline to register is next Wednesday, August 10, and we're filling up fast.

We'll enjoy the premiere of the new hour-long video documentary, Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, and hear from not only the subject of the film, biochemist Dr. Behe, but other luminaries of the ID community, including Stephen Meyer, Richard Sternberg...