Discovery Institute's Blog, page 91

What's Wrong with the Terms "Anti-Science" and "Anti-Evolution"?

A colleague forwards to me a confused article dealing with "antievolution state laws," aka academic freedom legislation. The article for a Web magazine published by Washington University in St. Louis, Religion & Politics,features the usual misinformation, including identifying us as "Discovery Institute, a think tank which supports teaching intelligent design." For the umpteenth time, we do not support teaching ID in public schools, never have, and in fact warn against it.

Beyond this, I'm s...

What Graduates of Our Summer Seminars Say

There's still some time left to apply for our Summer Seminars, with two parallel 9-day sessions -- one on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences, along with the C.S. Lewis Fellows Program on Science and Society. The deadline is April 7, but the program, running July 8-16, is quite selective so this is not something to enter upon casually at the last minute. Organized by Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, the program is open primarily to upper-division undergraduates and...

Reading Michael Denton's Mind...and Getting It Wrong

Michael Denton's new book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, is stirring controversy. For example, over at University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran's blog, Sandwalk, a debate over what drives evolution -- natural selection or genetic drift -- is going on.

Natural selection is, of course, the means by which evolution is supposed to receive its direction, from less fit to more fit organisms. Of all the forces proposed by modern biologists to drive evolution, natural selection is the onl...

Excavating the Intellectual Roots of Intelligent Design

There's a pair of matching, bookended myths about intelligent design -- one pertaining to its origin, the other to its purported demise. Darwinists claim ID goes back about as far as Michael Behe's 1996 book Darwin's Black Box and that a judge in Pennsylvania finally ruled it out as science in 2005. Therefore a lifespan of just under ten years. Even most dogs live longer than that.

We've pointed out before that judges -- even federal ones appointed by President G.W. Bush -- don't get to deci...

Conversations with Michael Denton: You Can Move the Statue if You Wish...

But you can't thereby dissolve the threat posed by the structuralism of the great 19th-century biologist Richard Owen to Darwinian adaptationalism. In a short video conversation, biologist Michael Denton recalls the poignant attempt by London's Natural History Museum to give pride of place to Charles Darwin by carting away Owen's statue in favor of Darwin's.

Rearranging statuary doesn't change the fact that biology increasingly recognizes the power of laws of form, woven into the design of...

Secrets of the Plant "Intranet" Are Coming to Light

Most companies are on the Internet these days, but many also keep an internal network called an "intranet" for passing messages within the organization. In both respects, flowering plants and conifers are similarly equipped. They send and receive messages through the air in the form of volatile organic compounds, and through the soil by networks of fungal hyphae. A tree under attack by beetles, for instance, can send out distress calls that other trees in the forest can pick up, giving them...

Immune Defense: How Antibodies Work

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.

The body is const...

Disinherit the Wind: An Interview with Matt Chait About His Play

I recently reviewed the intriguing new play Disinherit the Wind, which explodes many of the stereotypes about the current debate over Darwin and design. As a follow-up, I thought it would be interesting to talk with actor and playwright Matt Chait (pictured above right) about what inspired him to write and produce the play, which now can be watched on Vimeo and purchased as a book. Below is my interview with him.

Matt is interested in mounting the play again, so if you are interested in bri...

Researchers Proclaim: Instant Animals by Chance

An old preacher wrote in his sermon notes, "Point weak; pound pulpit harder." That seems to happen, too, whenever a major new success for evolution is announced. A recent headline from the University of Oregon proclaimed, "A mutation, a protein combo, and life went multicellular." Sarah Kaplan at the Washington Post rose to the pulpit and began with a stirring invocation. "Startling new finding: 600 million years ago, a biological mishap changed everything."

How? Well, in the high-stakes ga...

Lawrence Krauss Extols Human Exceptionalism

Many in the life sciences attack human exceptionalism as necessarily predicated on religion -- It can be, but isn't necessarily so -- and as reflecting an unwarranted hubris. To many of these scientists, we are just another animal in the forest, while others see us as a vermin species destroying Gaia.

That's why it was refreshing to see a theoretical physicist remark on our exceptional natures in a NY Times op-ed otherwise about the importance of the detection of gravitational waves. Better...