Discovery Institute's Blog, page 476

What We Argue About When We Argue About Evolution

Among hot-button controversies of the day, Darwinian evolution may be unique in being a question on which people express forceful opinions all the time, at high levels of the media and politics, all under a protocol where it's the norm to have not even a basic idea what you're talking about.

So Wall Street Journal online columnist James Taranto tries to take to task author Jacob Weisberg for Weisberg's column on Slate that includes this derisive reference to Republicans in Congress:

So...

Presto! The Origin of Life in Four Surprisingly Easy Steps

Origin-of-life theorist David Deamer's new book First Life: Discovering the Connection between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began appears intelligently designed to make students think that dramatic progress is being been made in explaining the chemical origin of life. The book is full of almost nothing but sweetness and light on this score, giving no indication that origin of life theorists are fundamentally struggling to explain key steps. Instead, we are treated to the following...

Who Shall Live, Who Shall Die

Everyone wants to live long and enjoy good health. Almost all of us assume, too, that whether we do so will be a function of physical variables and emotional ones that translate into physical factors. Good habits, good diet, good medicine, good genes, combined with a good attitude that in turn produces a positive feedback loop with desirable physiological heath measures -- these are the secrets to living long and well.

Except that science seems not to bear this out, at least not...

Awe and Adaptation

Materialist attempts to debunk religion have shifted in their nature and focus over the past couple of centuries. The current line of thinking is well represented by Princeton neuroscientist and novelist Michael Graziano who writes in the Huffington Post that religion is just an artifact springing from humanity's evolutionary gifts for sociability.

We attribute minds and personalities not only to other persons, which had an adaptive advantage for us, but also by extension to...

Thought for the Day from Stephen Hawking

From Tom Conroy's review of Hawking's Discovery Channel special tomorrow at 8 pm, "Did God Create the Universe?"

In one of several leaps that most of us will agree to accept rather than understand, he says that the universe contains as much negative energy as positive energy, and thus, it adds up to nothing, so the mass or energy didn't need to come from somewhere else.

Yes, because it comes from the Oracle, most of us will just accept this, like steers that accept their place in the...

Water on Mars: Materialism's Shroud of Turin

Materialism and Darwinism in their dual aspect as quasi-religious faith include a Genesis story, a scientific priesthood, the equivalents of sainthood and demonology, evangelism, catechism and excommunication, an Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and so on. The news in today's Science about water on Mars and with that the consequent possibility of Martian microbial life -- how many times have we heard this before? -- offers what might be the materialist's Shroud of Turin.

Look at...

Evolution as "Both Theory and Fact"? A Philosopher Blows Away the Often-Heard Darwinian Claim

We often hear Darwin lobbyists claim that evolution (meaning neo-Darwinian evolution) is "both theory and fact." For example, Wikipedia (which is never shy about advocating specific points of view) has a page titled "Evolution as theory and fact that cites various authorities on this, including Larry Moran's Evolution is a Fact and a Theory, Stephen Jay Gould's article "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Richard Lenski's article "Evolution: Fact and Theory," and Theodosius Dobzhansky's i...

No Fear Have Ye of Evolutionary Morality?

The implications of evolutionary theory for ideas of moral conduct make Darwinians increasingly nervous, and for good reason. Just this week we've had Michael Ruse writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the subject and now, in a similar apologetic mode, Jerry Coyne in USA Today. I wonder if one occasion for the heightened anxiety is the Norway tragedy, which John West wrote about here and Robert Spencer was kind enough to invite me to do so at Jihad Watch.

Jerry Coyne, of Why ...

Four More DNA Bases?

As technology allows us to delve ever deeper into the inner workings of the cell, we continue to find layer-upon-layer of complexity. DNA, in particular, is an incredibly complex information-bearing molecule that bears the hallmarks of design.

The individual nucleotides that make up DNA are strung together in a particular order to code for particular functions. The characteristics of DNA are analogous to those of a written language with a four-letter alphabet of A, C, T, and G (or...

Rick Perry Answers the Dreaded "Evolution" Question

Governor Rick Perry on evolution, in an interview with the Associated Press:

There are clear indications from our people who have amazing intellectual capability that this didn't happen by accident and a creator put this in place. Now, what was his time frame and how did he create the earth that we know? I'm not going to tell you that I've got the answers to that. I believe that we were created by this all-powerful supreme being and how we got to today versus what we look like...