The launch of the new Brazilian research center on intelligent design is already bearing some welcome and very interesting fruit. Discovery-Mackenzie was inaugurated at São Paulo’s Mackenzie Presbyterian University just over a week ago. Discovery Institute staff and friends were on hand to celebrate — Steve Buri, Michael Behe, Doug Axe, and Brian Miller.
On Sunday, a popular program on Brazilian national TV, Domingo Espetacular (Amazing Sunday), broadcast a quite lengthy treatment on ID, highlighting the visit by Discovery Institute scientists. Ratings indicate the program was seen by 3.5 million viewers. Not bad!
The program’s description, in a translation by Google, says:
Scientists question the origin of life and prove the existence of a higher being
A new line of research, known as intelligent design, believes that the complexity of life and the perfection of nature prove the existence of a higher being. In the research center in Science, Faith and Society, recently inaugurated by one of the largest universities in São Paulo, in partnership with American institutions, scholars discard the creation of the world with a simple chance [event] and analyze genetic codes as a kind of “God’s signature.”
Well, ID does not, in fact, speak of God’s signature, name, or identity, or venture any inference or proof at all as to the nature of a designing intelligence acting through the history of life. These are questions appropriately left for philosophy, metaphysics, and other relevant scholarly studies, not biology, as we’ve noted many times before.
That having been said, the broadcast overall looks and sounds great. Find it here. I don’t speak Portuguese, but it’s good to see Dr. Axe, Dr. Behe, Dr. Miller, and President Steve Buri with the distinguished and prolific chemist Marcos Eberlin of Campinas University, Brazilian National Academy of Sciences, and the Brazilian Society of Intelligent Design.
The Brazilian ID scene has made a very impressive debut. Stay tuned for more.
Photos, with apologies for the crude screenshots, via Domingo Espetacular.