Discovery Institute's Blog, page 48

Flight of the Bumblebee Reveals Optimization at Multiple Levels

A biological revolution is underway. Technology has allowed field biologists to track individual animals as small as insects, allowing scientists, for the first time, to gain real-time data on their lifetime behaviors. A team using this technology says in PLOS ONE:

Recent advances in animal-tracking technology have brought within reach the goal of tracking every movement of individual animals over their entire lifetimes. The potential of such life-long tracks to advance our understanding of...

Biology as Engineering -- Specifically, Systems Engineering

Evolutionary biologists should spend more time talking with engineers and doctors -- in other words, specialists who deal with large complex systems that work as wholes, and only as a wholes, to a certain purpose. Listening to evolutionists, you often get the impression that they forget life is such an exquisitely orchestrated "performance" (in Stephen L. Talbott's apt expression).

In a new episode of ID the Future, Todd Butterfield wraps up a great conversation with enterprise architect and...

NIH Can't Be Trusted to Regulate Animal/Human Research

The National Institutes of Health is considering funding research that will inject human stem cells into animal embryos, thereby creating human/animal chimeras.

We have to be careful how we react to such stories and not assume that all such human/animal research is, by definition, unethical. For example, transgenic animals -- that is, an animal with a gene or genes from another species -- have been created that contain valuable medicinal properties in their milk (as just one example), withou...

Darwin Apologists Could Take a Lesson from This Christian Apologist

Now why can't a Darwinist do something like this? Review a book you don't entirely agree with, but state its thesis correctly and evaluate its contents fairly.

At The Stream, Sean McDowell contributes a thoughtful article about Michael Denton's Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. Dr. McDowell is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University. He admits the book is "challenging" to read, and says he disagrees with Denton on "some points." But he gives an admirably lucid summary of...

A Reasonable, but Incomplete, Account of How Humans Mastered Fire

In a recent article, "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process," J. A. J. Gowlett cites Darwin's view that the discovery of fire was second in importance only to the discovery of language. He argues that the advances derived from man's mastery of fire over the later Pleistocene played a critical role in our biological evolution and in the development of our first primitive technologies.

He speculates that the increased nutritive value of cooked food, which followed fro...

The Mystery of Vision

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.

Everyone knows tha...

Cambrian Explosion Story Hour: Oxygen as a Creative Force, Again

Gather round, children. It's the Cambrian Explosion Story Hour and Douglas Erwin is back. The theme of the hour: "Debunk Stephen Meyer and Darwin's Doubt without naming them." Yes, this is familiar ground. Since we examined his proposals a year ago, Erwin seems to have joined the Oxygen Party (see our reviews from 2013, 2014, and 2016).

In his latest paper, co-authored by scientists from Yale, Georgia Tech, and UC Riverside, the renowned paleontologist from the National Museum of Natural Hi...

It's Personal: Steve Laufmann on the Role of Bias and Worldview in the ID Debate

Talking with Todd Butterfield on ID the Future, Evolution News contributor Steve Laufmann discusses the multiple issues around the perennial question, "Is intelligent design science?" Laufmann is not only a splendid, lucid writer but an equally compelling talker.

He reflects on the demarcation question -- What are the limits of science? -- and on the defining qualities of historical science. He explains that ID's offense is not against science but against the demands of a materialist worldv...

Watch Doug Axe and Bill Nye Side by Side

This is instructive. Douglas Axe of Biologic Institute has challenged "Science Guy" Bill Nye to engage in a friendly discussion about evolution and intelligent design. Above is a brief video conversation with Dr. Axe, author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed. Axe defines intelligent design, an alternative to Darwinian evolution, and describes a better future where biologists are allowed to think about life conceptually.

In other words, science should not...

Doug Axe Challenges Bill Nye -- Come Visit Us in Seattle, Why Don't You?

At The Stream, Douglas Axe issues a challenge to "Science Guy" Bill Nye. Axe invites Nye to visit his team of scientists in Seattle and confront the genuine science that is rocking orthodox evolutionary theory, while also considering the evidence for intelligent design.

Mischievously, Dr. Axe gave the same title -- Undeniable -- to his new book as Nye gave to his own recent work. So in that respect, the two are well matched as conversation partners. Beyond that, I think Nye would be at a dis...