Discovery Institute's Blog, page 488

Karl Giberson Has a Problem With Bill Dembski's "View of Science"

. . . though you have to wade through a few pages on young-earth creationism, global warming, and the "humiliating" rejection of consensus science by the evangelical community (also noted in his subheading for being "intellectually impoverished").

I don't question that Karl Giberson has thoughts worth reading on these subjects, but what they all have to do with Bill Dembski and the points he raised earlier in their discussion at Patheos remains to be seen.

When he finally does get around to a...

Does Giberson and Collins' Neanderthal Argument Demonstrate "Common Ancestry"?

When most people hear "Neanderthal," they think of a primitive caveman-like prehuman brute. What many don't realize is that this popular view is very much a Darwinian interpretation, and it is betrayed by much evidence. In their book The Language of Science and Faith, theistic evolutionists Karl Giberson and Francis Collins attempt to capitalize on the inaccurate popular mindset by suggesting that if humans are related to Neanderthals, then somehow that bolsters "common ancestry" in a...

Jonathan Wells Dispels The Myth of Junk DNA to Packed House in Seattle

Tuesday night biologist Jonathan Wells gave a talk on his brand-new book, The Myth of Junk DNA, at the EMP's JBL Theater in Seattle.

Around 150 people showed up on a rare fine spring evening to see Dr. Wells' presentation, which included a screening of the book's video trailer and time for Q&A.

The crowd was delighted to have Dr. Wells in front of them again after a few years between this book and his last, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. After...

When Enzymes Don't Lie, Part Two

In Part One of this series, ENV reported on a new paper published in the journal Bio-Complexity. In this paper Doug Axe and Ann Gauger explore the questions:

What is the minimum number of mutations needed to convert one enzyme to a functionally different (but structurally similar) enzyme?
Are these results feasible based on the Neo-Darwinian model?

The results of Axe and Gauger's paper do not bode well for a neo-Darwinian explanation for enzyme conversion. Evolution News and Views asked...

Northwest Premiere of Short Documentary Film Darwin's Heretic May 24th

Discovery Institute invites you to the Northwest Premiere of Darwin's Heretic, plus Q&A with Author Michael Flannery, Tuesday May 24th at the Washington State History Musuem.

One of the most renowned biologists of the nineteenth century, Alfred Russel Wallace shares credit with Charles Darwin for developing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet one part of Wallace's remarkable life and career has been completely ignored: his eventual embrace of intelligent design. Come...

Rebutting Karl Giberson and Francis Collins' Blurry Argument for Eye Evolution

In my previous article, I noted that in their latest book, The Language of Science and Faith, Karl Giberson and Francis Collins stated that "[o]ver time mutations in DNA can produce novel features, as we noted earlier, like feathers from scales..." (p. 35) We saw that leading evolutionary biologists no longer propose that feathers evolved from scales. I left off the rest of their sentence because I wanted to address it in a second post. Their full sentence reads:

Over time mutations in DNA ...

More Muddle From "Catholic" Scientists

When Pope Benedict denied in his Easter homily that we are an insignificant product of a random evolutionary process, we were bound to get some confused news stories on Catholicism and evolution. Faye Flam of the Philadelphia Inquirer has delivered with a piece titled: "Catholicism and evolution: Are they contradictory?"

The article is chock full of unexamined assumptions and the sloppy use of ambiguous words like "science" and "evolution." For instance, she quotes Pope Benedict as...

Giberson and Collins Make Outdated Argument That Feathers Evolved From Scales

In my previous article, I noted that Karl Giberson and Francis Collins have relied upon some dangerous and historically weak arguments for evolution in their new book The Language of Science and Faith. They claim that a pseudogene that is "broken DNA" has "established conclusively" that macroevolution is valid and humans share common ancestry with apes. But given the many functions being discovered for pseudogenes, they may find that their argument for "broken DNA" itself becomes...

Catholics and Intelligent Design, Part Four

This is the fourth in a series responding to certain Catholic critics of intelligent design. In the previous installment, we pondered whether ID ought to be considered "teleo-mechanistic" in its assumptions and implications. We also discussed the ways in which ID is really a tertium quid that should not be simply identified either with Aristotelianism or with teleo-mechanism.

In this installment, we consider two more complaints against ID. The first is a simple misunderstanding. Some critics ...

In Case You Missed It: Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician

As David Klinghoffer reported yesterday, there's a rather interesting job opening at Oxford University. Biologic Institute Director Douglas Axe gives us his take on the search for a mathemagician to support the claims of Darwin's Origin of Species and Dawkins' The Selfish Gene with, you know, actual math:

Scientists employ different rhetorical strategies to accomplish different things. That shouldn't be surprising, perhaps, but for some it is. The reason is that while the public is very...