Science and Culture Today | Page 1228 | Discovering Design in Nature

Philosopher Jay Richards has published an interesting piece about IBM’s Watson computer trouncing Jeopardy champs looking at the consternation this caused for some people.

Can Darwinian evolution explain the complex coloration patterns found in insects that led to biomimicry? According to an article published late last year in BioScience, Darwinian evolution faces “problems” that are “huge” when trying to account for the origin of biomimicry in butterflies: The balance of Dazzled and Deceived focuses on the genetics and development of mimetic patterns, as revealed mostly through work with butterflies. The problems here are huge for evolutionary biologists. How does natural selection build a complex organism with all its integrated parts through fixation of random mutations? Butterfly mimicry has been a classic arena in which to tackle this problem precisely because the gambit is so obvious: To be a good mimic of another species requires Read More ›

Discovery Institute senior fellow William Dembski is apparently living inside the heads of intelligent design critics. A recent opinion article by Massimo Pigliucci in EMBO Reports, published by the European Molecular Biology Organization, states, “In some quarters, ‘information’ seems to be a magical word: Intelligent Design proponent Bill Dembski, for example, keeps repeating that evolutionary theory cannot explain the production of new information…” Aside from the “magical” slur, Pigliucci’s description of Dembski’s view is reasonably accurate. Pigliucci, who apparently knows Dembski well-enough to call him “Bill” in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals, attempts an explanation of the talk about the origin of information: As for the claims that Dembski and others make about information and evolutionary theory, Read More ›

World Magazine has an excellent report on the David Coppedge story with new insights into his background — and new reason to do something about the discrimination he’s suffered.

A new paper in the journal Nature, authored by paleoanthropologists Bernard Wood and Terry Harrison and titled “The evolutionary context of the first hominins,” is critical of the claim that Ardipithecus ramidus (“Ardi”) was a bipedal ancestor of modern humans. In 2009, the journal Science devoted an entire issue to introducing Ardi and promoting it as a likely human ancestor. It seems that Nature is in something of a rivalry with Science now that it has published this authoritative paper. When constructing phylogenetic trees, evolutionary biologists generally seek to minimize homoplasy, or instances of convergent evolution. Wood and Harrison observe that the problem for Ardi is that if she is on the human line, then there must be high levels Read More ›

The writers for the Associated Press recently claimed that ID is a position that “contends life can be so complex it must have been created by an intelligent being, as opposed to evolving through natural selection.” This statement is ALMOST right. Unfortunately, it reflects the AP’s propensity to continually get things wrong when it comes to ID and then perpetuate the myth in a mindless Darwinian fashion. It should say that intelligent design is a position that “contends that the complexity of life is best explained by intelligence, as opposed to evolving *mindlessly* through natural selection.”

Across the country legislation is moving forward that will protect teachers and students who want the freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. February 12 used to be universally recognized as the birthday of Abraham Lincoln–a day celebrating freedom. Needing a patron saint, modern Darwin lobbyists have recently converted February 12 into “Darwin Day.” At this very time, U.S. Congress’s lone atheist is trying to honor Darwin’s birth by submitting a congressional resolution to get a government declaration that Darwin’s theory is “strongly supported,” and attacking the teaching of dissenting viewpoints. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating Darwin’s birthday–if that’s what you really want to do. But in recent years the advocacy of evolution has become Read More ›