Discovery Institute's Blog, page 486

Contradictions, Irony, and Appeals to Authority Permeate The Language of Science and Faith

This is part 6 of a 6-part series reviewing Francis Collins and Karl Giberson's book The Language of Science and Faith. The full review can be found and the original articles can be found as follows:• Part 1: 'Junk DNA' and 'Pseudogene' Arguments Pushed Into Increasingly Small Gaps in Scientific Knowledge
• Part 2: Outdated Argument That Feathers Evolved From Scales
• Part 3: Rebutting Blurry Arguments for Eye Evolution
• Part 4: Does Neanderthal Argument Demonstrate "Common Ancestry"?
• Part...

New Book Sheds Light on the "Dark Age": The Religion vs. Science Myth Exposed

 

According to a new book by James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, many scientists and historians of science have gotten it all wrong. Citing Andrew Dickson White's classic study, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896), Hannam insists that the work merely gives "the illusion of meticulous scholarship" and that a careful check of the references would lead anyone to "wonder how he could have maintained...

More Points on ERVs

In my previous two articles (here and here), I explored some of the background information concerning the integration of retroviral elements into primate genomes and the various arguments for common descent which are based on them. I explored, in some detail, the evidence for common descent based on the shared placement of retroviral sequences. In this final article, I will discuss the two remaining points which are raised in the popular-level article which I have been examining.

Shared...

Scientists Issue Letter Supporting Louisiana Science Education Act

As reported here, yesterday the Louisiana Senate Education Committee voted down a bill that would have repealed the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Louisiana College biology professor Wade Warren gave testimony in favor of the LSEA and opposed the repeal, and also distributed to the Committee a letter from 15 Ph.D. scientists supporting academic freedom. The letter (available as a PDF here) also challenges the ideological motives of many of the scientists who have opposed...

Louisiana Preserves Science Education Act That Encourages Academic Freedom to Discuss Criticisms of Darwinism

Yesterday the Louisiana State Senate Education Committee voted 5-1 to kill SB 70, a bill intended to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). The LSEA was originally adopted in 2008 by an overwhelming bipartisan majority (Louisiana House: 93-4; Senate: 36-0). It is the first Academic Freedom law passed in the nation to protect public school teachers who teach students to think critically (read: scientifically) on controversial scientific topics like Darwinian evolution.

Befo...

The Education of a Science Writer, or The Dangers of Trusting a Single Source

CSC Fellow Cornelius Hunter has another great piece explaining the problems science writer John Farrell has when reviewing Jonathan Wells' The Myth of Junk DNA.

Last week science writer John Farrell discussed the genetic evidence for evolution in his Technology article at Forbes. Farrell referenced evolutionist Stan Rice to argue the genome could not have been designed. Not only is it a clumsy design but it is susceptible to terrible, debilitating mutations. Such a design would never have...

Do Shared ERVs Support Common Ancestry?

In my previous article, I discussed the background of one of the most commonly made arguments for primate common ancestry. In this article, I want to examine the first of the three layers of evidence offered by a popular-level article written about this subject.

The author of the article under discussion tells us,

When we examine the collective genome of Homo sapiens, we find that a portion of it consists of ERVs (IHGS Consortium, 2001). We also find that humans share most of them with...

Science Writers, Metaphysics, and the End of the Dissemination Chain

CSC Fellow Cornelius Hunter gives us the big picture view of the recent dustup with John Farrell at Forbes as "an interesting example of how evolutionary thinking is handed down and disseminated." Hunter makes the point that the philosophy comes before the science in Darwinism, and that the best arguments used against design having nothing at all to do with empirical evidence:

Believing that god does not exist does not preclude believing things about god. In fact, ironically, atheists often...

Revisiting an Old Chestnut: Retroviruses and Common Descent

One common argument for common descent which one hears very frequently in the evolutionary literature concerns the placement of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) in orthologous loci in primate genomes. By far the most clear and succinct presentation of the strongest version of this argument which I have encountered can be found in this popular-level internet article. The article sets out three layers of evidence, based on ERV elements, which, it proposes, serve to confirm the evolutionary model ...

At Forbes, John Farrell Joins in "Ayala'ing" of Jonathan Wells

As a friend of ours puts it, Jonathan Wells's The Myth of Junk DNA is in the process of being "Ayala'ed." To "Ayala" a book is to attack it in review without having bothered to read or even read much about it, simply on the basis of what you think it probably says given your uninformed preconceptions about the author. The term comes from the wonderful instance where distinguished biologist Francisco Ayala pompously "reviewed" Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell for the Biologos Foundation w...