Discovery Institute's Blog, page 87

Canada, into the Abyss

I have never seen a society jump so enthusiastically into the abyss that is the culture of death as Canada has in the last year. Once the Supreme Court ended the assisted suicide debate by fiat, euthanasia boosters stopped pretending to want a limited death license and let their true agenda out.

Based on government and medical association proposed guidelines, Canada's euthanasia regime will soon include:

Death on demand for those with medically diagnosed serious sicknesses;

Death on demand fo...

Why Past History Cannot Be Infinite: There Must Be a Beginning

The evidence from science points to a beginning for the universe. Some atheists, understanding the possible theological implications of a beginning, prefer to set aside science and assert that the past is infinite either in terms of the number of years this universe has existed, or in terms of a fantasized infinite series of universes in a multiverse.

Sean Carroll, in a formal debate with William Lane Craig, suggested that all we have to do is to build a mathematical model of an eternal uni...

Racism? Here's an Interesting Take on the PLOS ONE Censorship Story

The authors and editor of the now retracted PLOS ONE paper, making reference to "design" and a "Creator" in analyzing the human hand, are Chinese. One author appealed for mercy, citing problems with the translation of their work into English. In Chinese, he explained, they attributed the architecture of the hand to "Nature," not God. Nevertheless, rather than simply amend the article, the peer-reviewed journal bowed to a lynch mob of censors and pulled it altogether.

A blogger who goes by th...

How the Latest Findings in Molecular Biology Support Intelligent Design

Our past colleague Casey Luskin is enjoying his new adventure. Luckily, we can still enjoy listening to him. Before leaving, for the occasion of a visit by a computer scientist to our offices, he recorded an informal talk on the latest findings in molecular biology. On an episode of ID the Future, Luskin explains how those findings support the theory of intelligent design.

Click here to download the episode:

Luskin discusses the non-coding DNA that controls a huge portion of the cellular p...

Picture This: What Teaching the Controversy over Evolution Looks Like in the Classroom

According to Nature and Scientific American, "[S]tudents gain a much deeper understanding of science when they actively grapple with questions than when they passively listen to answers." In Nature, Jay Labov, a senior education advisor for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, described active engagement as "learning content not as something you memorize and regurgitate, but as raw material for making connections, drawing inferences, creating new information -- learning how to learn."

Disc...

Censorship in Real Time -- PLOS ONE Retracts "Proper Design by the Creator" Paper

That was fast. The sound of one hand clapping? Now, it's no hands. Besieged by a furious mob of censors, the editors at the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE have retracted a paper on the "architecture" of the human hand that repeatedly invoked notions of "design" and a "Creator."

An announcement under Reader Comments, time-stamped an hour after we last posted on this, now says:

The PLOS ONE editors have followed up on the concerns raised about this publication. We have completed an evaluation...

Mob with Pitchforks Forms as Science Journal PLOS ONE Acknowledges "Proper Design by the Creator"

This would seem to bear out a remark by Chinese paleontologist J.Y. Chen, recounted in Darwin's Doubt, "In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Some startling language appears in a paper by Chinese researchers published in a very mainstream journal, PLOS ONE. The title: "Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living." They write in the Abstract:

The functional link be...

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Is 2016 Templeton Winner; Tweaked Dawkins with "Junk DNA" Myth

This is delightful news -- I'm a big fan of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who is this year's Templeton Prize winner. The former Chief Rabbi of Britain, he's an original thinker on faith and science and a wonderful example of humane wisdom. More to the point for our purposes here, in a memorable 2012 encounter he slipped under the radar of Richard Dawkins to tweak the atheist biologist with the myth of "Junk DNA."

Normally Dawkins only has discussions with people who disagree with him if he thin...

Absorbing and Storing Energy: How the Body Controls Glucose

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.

Just like a car ne...

The Tree of Life as a Challenge to Darwinism -- Denton on the Distinctness of Types

This cuts like a knife -- watch and share, please. The most famed Darwinian icon, the Tree of Life, poses an existential challenge to Darwinian theory. As Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton notes, the fact of evolution as we find it, not as Darwinism should expect it, is characterized by the distinctness and persistence of biological types. Under strict Darwinism, such distinctions should blend, meld, melt into each other, certainly over the course of hundreds of millions of years....