Discovery Institute's Blog, page 92

A Bad Case of Expertitis

The days of extolling objective journalistic discussions of scientific and technocratic issues -- always a bit laughable -- are clearly over. Now, journalists are being told not to present both sides of important debates, but rather, to take the "side" of "experts."

An op-ed in the New York Times urges journalists to stop presenting both sides when "experts" have reached a consensus opinion. You see, it only causes confusion to give a voice to dissenting opinions. From "Why People Are Confus...

Sleepless in Oakland: Big Bang Gives NCSE Staffer Insomnia

Minda Berbeco, Programs and Policy Director for our friends at the Oakland-based National Center for Science Education (NCSE), complains of insomnia. Over at the Science League of America, she writes: "This past month I've slept terribly and it's all because of the Big Bang."

Sleepy Ms. Berbeco recently spent some time with Brian Kruse, Lead Formal Educator with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific where the NCSE is hosting some educational programs. Berbeco admits that the Big Bang is no...

Non-Adaptive Order: An Existential Challenge to Darwinian Evolution

Editor's note: In his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton not only updates the argument from his groundbreaking Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) but also presents a powerful new critique of Darwinian evolution. This article is one in a series in which Dr. Denton summarizes some of the most important points of the new book. For the full story,get your copy of Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. For a limited time, you'll enjoy a 30 percent discount at CreateSpace...

More on How Microbes Make Earth Habitable

Last week we discussed how microbes maintain the viability of life on our planet ("How Microbes Make Earth Habitable"). In the same vein, more news just arrived about the carbon and nitrogen cycles.

Following up on MIT's findings about plankton taking carbon to the ocean bottom, Ohio State has just concluded from the three-year Tara Oceans oceanography expedition that plankton -- and some viruses -- are "key to carrying carbon" from the atmosphere down to the seafloor sediments. They took pi...

Chins Revisited -- A Reader Writes

A reader, Dr. Myer S. Leonard, DDS, MD, writes:

I enjoyed reading your article on chins in this morning's Evolution News ["On the Origin of Chins"]. Until 15 years ago I was professor of maxillofacial surgery at the University of Minnesota and one of the most popular lectures I gave was "Get a Chin, Get Ahead." In this I would show slides of many famous leaders, models, and other folk in the public eye and then have their chin airbrushed out of the picture. The change was so staggering that...

Rounding Out Our Darwin Day Coverage: "Unintelligent Design," and a Reminder to Open Your Eyes

Ah, the sun will soon set on another Darwin Day, and our coverage concludes with an article published today by our colleague biologist Ann Gauger at CNSNews:

This Friday, February 12, is Darwin Day, the birth date of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). It's an occasion celebrated around the world for revealing the truth about who we really are and what we're really like -- so say Darwin's more aggressive followers. Look at yourself in the mirror. You're just an animal, and a poorly made one, at that...

Denton Nails the Problem with Gal��pagos Finches as an Evolutionary Icon

The problem with Darwin's finches as an evolutionary icon is nailed with admirable compactness by biologist Michael Denton over at The Stream. Writing in honor of today's Darwin Day celebrations, Dr. Denton says:

The Galpagos finches put on display the two strict requirements that must be present in order for natural selection to work its magic. If these two factors are not present, natural selection is impotent to change any creature at all, much less create a new species.

First, the finche...

Happy Darwin Day! Here Is The Biology of the Baroque, Featuring Michael Denton

There is an intuition that many people have. Looking at the extravagant beauty of nature, and that of life in particular, it seems impossible to account for that extravagance in the utilitarian terms of materialism and Darwinism. Tell us please, what adaptive survival value is there in the sublime?

Ann Gauger made this point just yesterday with reference to a feature of human anatomy that is essential to beauty, unique to humans, yet seemingly of no practical purpose. It's right there below...

On Darwin Day, Darwinism Is Well Past Its "Sell By" Date

Today is Darwin Day, marking the birthday of Charles Darwin, who is celebrated around the world as a secular saint. Everywhere there will be eulogies to neo-Darwinism as a philosophy, touting the support it provides to the mechanistic worldview and the notion that life is an artifact of time and chance. Darwinism in that sense, almost akin to a faith, is indeed going strong.

Yet Darwinism as a scientific theory remains, as it always has been, a highly speculative evolutionary model. My new...

For Darwin Day, Religion News Service Serves Up One Misstatement After Another

It's easy to see why many people distrust the mainstream media. It is not just that reporters often tell a story that seems inauthentic, at odds in a general way with reality as you experience it. Worse, when they report on a specific subject you know well, you find that not only are important "facts" incorrect -- which could be attributed to sloppiness -- but those errors conform to a pattern identical with the agenda of a particular partisan lobby group.

Case in point: A report by Kimberly...