Discovery Institute's Blog, page 493

The "Newspeak" of Evolutionary Biology Hopes to Banish the term "Design," by Design

The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Now some ID critics today are so fearful of lending any credence towards intelligent design that they are recommending that biologists stop using the word "design" entirely.

A recent article in the journal Bioessays by its editor Andrew Moore, titled "We need a new language for evolution. . . everywhere," suggests that biologists...

No Bones About This Nanocomposite Material

One of the most astounding things about the human skeletal structures is the bones' ability to harden with repeated stress. Conversely, bones have a remarkable tendency to weaken when not put under dynamic physical stress, or in a low-to-no gravity environment. Bones are a considered a brittle material that will either break or strengthen under pressure depending on the bone density. Scientists have replicated these remarkable abilities of human bone by synthesizing a nanocomposite material ...

Catholics and Intelligent Design, Part One

In three chapters of God and Evolution, I respond to the criticisms of ID from certain, but by no means all, Thomists such as Ed Feser. Feser (whose work I generally hold in high regard) recently wrote a lengthy response to my arguments. Since Feser reiterates many of his previous arguments in this response, I've decided to post several excerpts from God and Evolution so that interested readers can evaluate the merits and reasonableness of the competing arguments for themselves.

As...

Intelligent Design & the Fear of Death

The other night my oldest son and I watched the 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu, an early cinematographic take on the Dracula story that includes many haunting images. One of them is a mantelpiece clock that strikes the hours by an automated hammer-wielding skeleton. It's a classic memento mori, a reminder of death's relentless approach and a stimulus to the wisdom that comes with that knowledge. People once decorated their homes with such objects for the purpose of attuning the...

Who Misrepresented Who? A Response to John Farrell

It's a common debate tactic to overstate or misstate your opponent's argument. While John Farrell's response on a Forbes.com blog to my recent article "A Positive, Testable Case for Intelligent Design" accuses me of making that mistake, it is in fact Mr. Farrell who badly misrepresents my arguments. Mr. Farrell chides me for not contacting Dartmouth evolutionary biologist Mark McPeek before writing a response to his paper. This is ironic and hypocritical, since Farrell did not contact me b...

"Boy, were we wrong!"

So says a highly placed spokesman inside the Discovery Institute who prefers to remain anonymous.

"We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt," says the spokesman, "that Darwinian evolution is a fact. There is overwhelming evidence that all living things are descended from a common ancestor by accidental mutations and unguided natural selection. Intelligent design is wrong, wrong, wrong!"

The anonymous spokesman says that this remarkable turn of events is due to recent scientific...

Can a Computer Think?

Alan Turing asked that question in 1950 and proposed a test to determine if a computer could think. Turing, a mathematician and a pioneer in computer science, proposed that it would someday be possible for a sufficiently advanced computer to think and to have some form of consciousness. How would we know if a computer was conscious? Turing suggested that if a computer and a human being were hidden behind a screen, and another human being were given the task of interrogating each of them, it w...

William Lane Craig Debates Lawrence Krauss Tonight, Takes on Sam Harris Next Week

CSC fellow William Lane Craig is always worth listening to, but it's when he's debating prominent atheists that the acuity of his mind comes into sharp relief. For those who enjoy a good argument, this week offers us not just one, but two such debates.

First, in what is certain to be an electric event tonight, Dr. Craig is going up against Lawrence Krauss at North Carolina State (event information here). Dr. Krauss is an eminent theoretical physicist at Arizona State University. Dr. Craig i...

A Positive, Testable Case for Intelligent Design

In 2009, I discussed a paper in BioEssays titled "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion" which stated that "elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself, and cannot be explained away by coupling extinction of intermediates with long stretches of geologic time, despite the contrary claims of some modern neo-Darwinists." At that time...

Inconvenient Fungus Genetic Data Leads to Epicycles in the Tree of Life

We recently posted a rebuttal to Richard Dawkins' overstatement of the molecuar evidence for common descent. The article cited a number of cases where those who use molecular data to build phylogenetic trees have encountered conflicting trees depending on which gene is being used to construct the tree. Another striking example of this common phenomenon was also discussed last month at GeneticArchaeology.com in an article titled "Discovery of jumping gene cluster tangles tree of life."

Accor...