Anika Smith

Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design. When asked if life developed “through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection,” a standard definition of Darwinism, only 33 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement. But 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.” The poll results come from one of four questions commissioned by Discovery Institute for a national Zogby telephone survey conducted earlier in 2009. Results from the other three questions were released previously to coincide with the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. Read More ›

CSC Director Stephen C. Meyer will be in the studio shortly with national radio host Michael Medved to discuss his new book, Signature in the Cell, for the full second hour of the program. His segment will air live at 1:00pm PDT, and you can go here to listen.

As we are ever quick to point out here at ENV, the case for Darwinian evolution has been crumbling in recent years as scientific research points to design in nature. Now a unique, new argument for intelligent design is about to revolutionize the debate over evolution. On June 23, Dr. Stephen Meyer’s long-awaited Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) will break open the radical and comprehensive new case, revealing the evidence not merely of individual features of biological complexity but rather of a fundamental constituent of the universe: information. Learn more about the book at the new website, SignatureInTheCell.com, and look for continuing updates here at Evolution News & Views.

CSC senior fellow John West has an article up at Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog highlighting the importance of an open and broad debate on faith and evolution — one that includes intelligent design proponents. Dawkins and Collins are often put forward as the two alternatives in discussions over faith and evolution, but since they both embrace Darwin’s theory, they represent only a thin slice of the overall debate. Largely shut out from current media coverage are the growing number of scientists, as well as the vast majority of Americans, who view Darwin’s theory with skepticism. In an effort to broaden the conversation, Discovery Institute has launched www.faithandevolution.org, a website featuring scientists and scholars who aren’t afraid to ask tough Read More ›

The scientists at Biologic Institute have noticed something sure to challenge and trouble Darwinian biologists: physicists are recognizing perfection as a principle in biology. When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics. It’s not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind. And it seems they have found one. Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested. Life’s complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what “optimal” means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition. Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection. Interestingly, in cases where it is Read More ›

This Sunday, May 30, Wilberforce Forum will feature a special online radio program featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture. He’ll be discussing his new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, demonstrating that the digital code embedded in DNA points to a designing intelligence and brings into focus an issue that Darwin did not address. Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wilberforceforum at 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST this Sunday to listen, and ask Dr. Meyer a question by calling in or by posting in the conference forum online.

ID The Future podcast features a special interview worth highlighting to ENV readers: Click here to listen. This episode of ID the Future features CSC associate director John West interviewed by Anika Smith on the launch of the new website, FaithandEvolution.org, bringing clarity to the conversation between the new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the new theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins. Is faith in God compatible with Darwinian evolution? Who is right, and why does it matter? Listen in, and learn more at FaithandEvolution.org.

It must be hard to be the Darwinist editor of a major science journal, to have to constantly maintain the party line that there is no scientific debate between intelligent design and evolution while publishing articles whose authors seem haunted by design arguments, often taking it upon themselves to stick up a straw man of ID to knock down with a puff of hot air. It must be especially hard when a scientist like Michael Behe bothers you, thinking it his duty to advance the debate by correcting the Darwinists’ mistaken views of irreducible complexity which you published, hoping that maybe he would go away. Alas, for the editors of Science and Trends in Microbiology, Michael Behe has not gone Read More ›

Regis Nicoll at Break Point has an excellent article for those interested in understanding the relationship between faith and science (like so many seem to be these days *cough* Francis Collins *cough*): In a recent essay in The New Republic, evolutionary scientist Jerry Coyne asked, “Does the empirical nature of science contradict the revelatory nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two institutions must be considered essentially antagonistic?” Coyne has no doubt that the answer is yes. Religion is so hopelessly inimical to scientific progress that any attempt to reconcile them is futile. As Coyne explains, “Accepting both science and conventional faith leaves you with a double standard.” And to make sure you are clear Read More ›

Having one’s position repeatedly mischaracterized by those who refuse to be corrected is an annoyingly common problem for intelligent design. While some people are just sincerely mistaken in thinking that it’s creationism, some — like Ken Miller — know better, but as UK columnist Melanie Phillips points out in “Creating an insult to intelligence,” it’s beneficial to damage people’s reputations by confusing the two:

Intelligent Design not only does not come out of Creationism but stands against it. This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science. Creationism, whose proponents are Bible literalists, is a specific doctrine which holds that the earth was literally created in six days. Intelligent Design, whose proponents are mainly scientists, holds that the complexity of science suggests that there must have been a governing intelligence behind the origin of matter, which could not have developed spontaneously from nothing.