Discovery Institute's Blog, page 489

Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species

When the Discovery fellows get together -- at their secret volcano lair, of course -- they sometimes joke that a clever constitutional lawyer could probably succeed in having Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) banned by a federal judge. The book should be kept out of public school science classrooms because of its considerable theological content. No one should be talking about God in a science classroom.

Of course, this is a joke, or is meant to be. Whatever one thinks of its...

Oxford University Admits Darwinism's Shaky Math Foundation

File this one under: Mission Impossible. An Oxford college, St. John's, is advertising to hire a pair of researchers to undertake a tough assignment: shore up the admittedly unsteady mathematical foundation of Darwinian theory, specifically in the ever distressing area of population genetics.

In a downloadable document of particulars for the two-year assignment, the college frankly concedes that ranged against them the new hires will face, well, basically the entire rest of the scholarly...

E.O. Wilson Disavows His Own Kin Selection

Modern Darwinism claims that it wasn't just the human body and DNA that evolved, but also our brains and behavior. But if human behavior evolved, why have humans essentially adopted virtually universal ethical systems that teach it's better to love your neighbor than to rape her? The field of sociobiology promise to answer such questions--and these days, much, much more.

The demands of Darwinian evolution are simple: survive and spread your genes. As a result, under Darwinian evolution...

William Dembski on BioLogos and Theistic Evolution at Patheos

Patheos is known for hosting thoughtfully provocative discussions (the future of Evangelicalism, anyone?) and the current review and response between Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William Dembski and (now former) BioLogos Vice President Karl Giberson is no exception.

The four-part conversation begins with Dembski's review of Giberson's new book co-authored with Francis Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Quesions, which is so good that it's hard not to r...

Preface to The Myth of Junk DNA by Jonathan Wells

[Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Wells' new book, The Myth of Junk DNA, out this month.]

The discovery in the 1970s that only a tiny percentage of our DNA codes for proteins prompted some prominent biologists at the time to suggest that most of our DNA is functionless junk. Although other biologists predicted that non-protein-coding DNA would turn out to be functional, the idea that most of our DNA is junk became the dominant view among biologists.

That view has...

The Osama/"Junk DNA" Connection

President Obama is said to have known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden since September but chose to wait until May to authorize action against him. Why the delay? Could it perhaps have been to provide a super-timely news hook for the rollout of Jonathan Wells' new book, The Myth of Junk DNA? If so, an additional note of congratulations is owed to Mr. Obama.

How do you think OBL's body was identified? By a comparison with his sister's DNA, evidently those non-coding regions singled out by...

Francis Collins' Junk DNA Arguments Pushed Into Increasingly Small Gaps in Scientific Knowledge

article explaining that both atheistic and theistic evolutionists have relied heavily on "junk DNA" -- specifically pseudogenes -- to argue against intelligent design (ID). In his 2006 book The Language of God, leading theistic evolutionist Francis Collins made such an argument, claiming that caspase-12 is a functionless pseudogene and asks, "why would God have gone to the trouble of inserting such a nonfunctional gene in this precise location?" (p. 139) Logan ...

Francis Collins's Junk DNA Arguments Pushed Into Increasingly Small Gaps in Scientific Knowledge

Recently I wrote an article explaining that both atheistic and theistic evolutionists have relied heavily on "junk DNA" -- specifically pseudogenes -- to argue against intelligent design (ID). In his 2006 book The Language of God, leading theistic evolutionist Francis Collins made such an argument, claiming that caspase-12 is a functionless pseudogene and asks, "why would God have gone to the trouble of inserting such a nonfunctional gene in this precise location?" (p. 139) Logan G...

Intelligent Design on the Rise Among Scottish University Students?

The Times Education Supplement (TES) has an interesting article today looking at a study of Glasgow University biology students who reject Darwin's theory. The article states that the study "may suggest a growing awareness of the intelligent design movement among secondary pupils."

It's a notably fair and objective piece, with former BBC Education Officer Alastair Noble giving his take on the research:

Alastair Noble, director of the Centre for Intelligent Design, said if the message of the...

More Signs of Design: Bacteria on the Radio

Wired Science is reporting on a forthcoming paper which has been posted on the pre-print website, ArXiv. The authors propose that chromosomes might act in a manner synonymous with a radio antennae, involving electrons travelling around DNA loops to produce species-specific wavelengths.

The paper's abstract reports:

Chemical reactions can be induced at a distance due to the propagation of electromagnetic signals during intermediate chemical stages. Although is [sic] is well known at optical...