Discovery Institute's Blog, page 89

New Solution to Darwin's Doubt: Earth Wandered into Cambrian Explosion

Since the debut of Darwin's Doubt, we have welcomed all comers to give Darwinian explanations for the Cambrian explosion. We've seen scientists propose a rise in oxygen, the emergence of hard parts, a rise in fecal material, and other creative ideas, including sheer dumb luck. If nothing else, it's entertaining, like watching Britain's Got Talent but, it sometimes seems, a bit light on the talent.

Now there comes along a new solution to the Cambrian enigma, proposed by a team from the Unive...

Canada Is Ready to Let MDs Kill the Mentally Ill

The term "culture of death" describes a society that accepts suicide and mercy killing as an acceptable response to suffering. In the wake of the country's Supreme Court creating a right to be made dead, Canada's ruling class, medical intelligentsia -- and if polls are to be believed -- population have enthusiastically embraced the culture of death (culture de la mort) for people with physical maladies and disabilities.

Now an official government panel has issued recommendations that urge le...

Do Evolutionary Principles Derive from Observation, or Are They Imposed on It?

Geneticist Dan Graur of the University of Houston is implacably opposed to intelligent design -- and brutally honest about his opposition, which makes for bracing clarity in what he writes. Recently he tweeted the following 12 principles of evolution, which he drafted.

You have to love Graur's principles, because they capture orthodox neo-Darwinism in its purest form:

All of Evolutionary Biology in 12 Paragraphs, 237 Words, and 1,318 Characters

Evolutionary biology is ruled by handful of log...

Good Questions on the Nature of Intelligent Design

Earlier, Evolution News responded helpfully to a question from an email correspondent. Here are more questions and answers. A reader writes with a few good queries on the nature of ID theory.

Question:

On the complexity and specificity arguments, I've read that there are two arguments used as evidence for a designer's existence. However, do such arguments entail that the designer is still intervening in the ongoing development of the universe and of life within it? Or does ID only state tha...

Suggested Readings on the Problem of Animal Macroevolution

An email correspondent asks:

Given the saltations seen in the fossil record (as well as molecular data), it seems that the gradual ratcheting of "point mutation by point mutation" evolution has little efficacy in explaining the diversity of life. Doug Axe has done work on this. Are there other clear demonstrations of the improbability of getting from one adaptive peak to another via this model?

Yes, an enormous literature exists within evolutionary biology about the implausibility of point-m...

Pro-Life Phobia? There's an App for That

It is no secret that the media refuse to call the pro-life movement, the "pro-life" movement. As with most cultural clashes, the AP Style Book and other media types always choose terms favored by the Left.

But now an app has been created that will protect the tender eyes of abortion supporters from having to read the term "pro-life." From the LifeNews.com story:

Abortion supporters who don't like the term "pro-life" won't have to put up with it any more. An anonymous abortion advocate create...

One in 700 Quintillion: Exoplanet Study Confirms Terran Exceptionalism

Rare privilege carries with it exceptional responsibility. That might be why many people resist the conclusion of what our colleague Wesley Smith calls human exceptionalism. The unique status and dignity of human beings compared to animals is affirmed by daily experience. The uniquely privileged status of our planet and our species in relationship to the cosmos isn't obvious in the same way. It needs rigorous scientific confirmation that goes beyond the instructions of common sense. See the...

Conversations with Dr. Denton: The Hierarchy of Nature

Darwinism, honestly regarded, should lead you to expect not an ordered, increasingly inclusive hierarchy of life but more like a disordered...smear of diversity. Such expectations are frustrated by reality. As biologist Michael Denton explains, life presents itself as a tiered formation marked by novelties or homologs. These taxa-defining novelties, such as the pentadactyl limb, are not lead up to by a series of forms increasingly like the final version.

That's strike one. Worse for Darwini...

That's a Tough Tardigrade

Last month, Evolution News explained the problem of accounting in evolutionary term for the superpowers of tardigrades, or "water bears." These incredibly tough little creatures, just a millimeter long, are capable of surviving under the most trying circumstances on Earth -- and off Earth, in outer space, that is to say in a vacuum. Yet they originated in the Cambrian explosion, just like that, presumably ready for action.

Here's a video from researchers who revived tardigrades that had been...

The Physics of Intelligent Design

Speaking of physicist David Snoke, he was here at Discovery Institute recently for a meeting of the Christian Scientific Society. A new episode of ID the Future features excerpts from his address to the group:

Click here to download the episode:

Dr. Snoke, who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, discussed the "physicality of information" and a frequently encountered stumbling block in dialogues with friendly theistic evolutionists, proceeding from a misunderstanding of information sys...