Evolution

On December 3, Discovery Institute helped organize a press conference at the Iowa State Capitol where we released evidence that Guillermo Gonzalez faced discrimination at ISU because he supports intelligent design as a science. Someone from the pro-Darwin activist group, Iowa Citizens for Science, attended that press conference and passed out a press release. Citizens were welcome to attend the press conference and we made no objections to this person attending and distributing his press release. Within a couple days, a press release appeared on the Iowa Citizens for Science (ICFS) website, asserting that “[Guillermo] Gonzalez and the DI have announced plans to sue Iowa State University.” But that statement was both untrue and impossible: Discovery Institute is not Dr. Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 5 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.]https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0684834936 “Darwin was ignorant of the reason for variation within a species,” writes Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box, “but biochemistry has identified the molecular basis for it.”1 There were other things that Darwin did not know. For example, Darwin assumed that the cell was like a primitive blob of protoplasm that could easily evolve new biological functions. As Behe explains, “To Darwin, then, as to every other scientist of the time, the cell was a black box. … Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 4 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] As discussed in Slide #1, proponents of Darwinism often employ the “Evolution” Bait-and-Switch, using evidence for small-scale changes and then over-extrapolating to claim that such modest evidence proves Darwin’s grander claims. In fact, this is precisely what PBS does in its online materials for “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” A PBS web slide asserts, “Evolution happens through natural selection,” and then goes on to discuss small-scale changes in the sizes of beaks in finches on the Galapagos Islands as supporting evidence. Such Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 3 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] As noted in the Introduction, PBS asserts that the data “unequivocally” support the view that “[e]volution happens through natural selection.” In this dogmatic statement, PBS has again failed to clearly define “evolution.” If by “evolution,” PBS means that we can observe small-scale changes within species, then no one doubts that natural selection plays a role. But in fact, many scientists have questioned whether natural selection acting upon random mutation is sufficient to generate new species or new complex biological features. As evolutionary scientist Robert Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 2 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] No one doubts that Darwin was a gifted scientist who made careful observations of the natural world. The same could be said for Sir Isaac Newton, an early proponent of intelligent design whose ideas inspired both modern physics and modern science as a whole. Yet despite the long-lasting success of Newton’s ideas, technological advancements in the early 20th century overturned Newtonian physics and replaced them with Einstein’s theories. If history is to be our guide, science must always be open to following the Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 1 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS confidently instructs us that “evolution happens.” But should that matter? Even Darwin’s scientific critics agree that evolution happens. PBS is introducing equivocation into the discussion by failing to clearly define “evolution.” Some use “evolution” to refer to something as simple as minor changes within individual species that occur over short periods of time (Evolution #1). Others use the same word to mean something much more far-reaching, such as claiming that all living organisms are descended from a single common ancestor (Evolution #2), Read More ›

I admit it: I’m something of a Snoop Dogg fan. We’re from the same hometown, went to the same high school, and Snoop is basically revered like a god among my hometown friends. In Snoop’s words, “I’m somewhat brain boggled” by a recent press release issued by Darwinist researchers at the University of Manchester who are claiming that evolution is supported because “changes to the shape of [the St Bernard] breed’s head over the years can only be explained through evolution and natural selection.” And what is their evidence for “evolution and natural selection”? You have to see this to believe it: “over time … breeders selected dogs that had the desired physical attributes. … we can be confident that Read More ›

Evolutionists sometimes try to re-frame the debate over evolution such that it appears that there is no debate. They fear that merely using the term “evolutionist” could lead people to the belief that not all scientists are Neo-Darwinian “evolutionists.” (A belief that would be correct.) Some Darwinists have even spun urban legends claiming that “evolutionist” is a term invented by Darwin’s critics in order to make it appear as if there is a debate over evolution. For example, a biology graduate student posting on Mike Dunford’s blog scolded another poster for using the word “evolutionist,” stating: “please refrain from using the term ‘evolutionist’. It’s a made-up term from the creationists, who refuse to acknowledge that this is BIOLOGY, and people Read More ›

German geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig Tackles The Latest Claims on Giraffe Evolution Darwinists sometimes think that they can account for the evolutionary origin of a complex biological feature simply by citing some kind of experimental or theoretical evidence showing that the complex feature would have provided a selective advantage to its owner. However, such Darwinists forget that, as many have recounted, natural selection only accounts for the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. Evidence that a given feature–when fully formed–provides some selective advantage does not demonstrate that the feature can be evolved in a step-wise, mutation-by-mutation fashion. If Michael Behe is correct, then irreducibly complex features require many parts to be present all-at-once in order to get Read More ›

[This four part series responding to Paul Gross can be seen in: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.] An urban legend has cropped up among Darwinists that Michael Behe ignores indirect routes of evolution, commonly called “exaptation,” when he argues for irreducible complexity. In his review of The Edge of Evolution in The New Criterion, anti-ID biologist Paul Gross wrongly accuses that “Behe had failed to understand ‘exaptation’ (the use of an available part in function ‘B’ despite its original function ‘A’).” But in Darwin’s Black Box, Behe clearly accounts for exaptation and explains why it does not refute irreducible complexity: “Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been produced directly), however, one can Read More ›