Science and Culture Today | Page 1262 | Discovering Design in Nature

In May, pro-Darwin-only education advocates issued a press release lamenting that “25 percent of biology teachers do not know it is unconstitutional to teach creationism.” Then last month the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) publicized its new “Creationism and the Law” web page, which states that “Since 1968…, U.S. courts have consistently held that ‘creationism’ is a particular religious viewpoint and that teaching it in public schools would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.” While these statements are legally correct, they leave out a crucial point of law that the NCSE may not wish to publicize: “scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories [may] be taught provided that such curricula are enacted with the clear secular intent of enhancing Read More ›

Discovery Institute senior fellow David Klinghoffer has written an insightful column in The Jerusalem Post on the evidence for design in DNA — and what it means for materialism: DNA are three letters full of paradox. What they represent remains little understood by the public, yet they are on everyone’s tongue. Amid the chatter of popular culture, the truth gets lost that DNA is one of the most powerful clues we have of the existence of a spiritual reality, maybe to the existence of God. An acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA refers to the form taken by the biological information that directs the production of proteins and other cell components. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick famously described its Read More ›

In case you missed your chance to listen live last week, you can now listen to Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s interview on the nationally syndicated Michael Medved Show here. Meyer and Medved discuss the information revolution and the challenge it presents for Darwinism, as well as the argument for intelligent design from information.

In a recent ENV post, Stephen Meyer critiqued a May 2009 Nature paper co-authored by John D. Sutherland titled, “Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions.” The paper claimed to have produced RNA nucleobases under prebiotic conditions, but Meyer observed that it utterly failed to address the most crucial question in the origin of life (OOL): the origin of information, a topic Meyer addresses extensively in his new book Signature in the Cell. Other scientists agree with Meyer. Organic chemist Dr. Charles Garner recently noted in private correspondence that “while this work helps one imagine how RNA might form, it does nothing to address the information content of RNA. So, yes, there was a lot of guidance by Read More ›

Update: An earlier version of this release mistakenly attributed a quote from lecturer James Williams to the Daily Telegraph to Archbishop Rowan Williams, also cited in the article as critical of intelligent design. SEATTLE–Earlier this week, The Daily Telegraph reported attacks on the inclusion of intelligent design in a British science exam, provoking a sharp response from the intelligent design research community, led by Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge University-trained philosopher of science whose just-released book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) is already drawing praise from leading U.K. scientists. Lecturer James Williams of Sussex University complained to The Telegraph, “This gives an unwarranted high profile to creationism and intelligent design as ideas of Read More ›

[Note: For a more comprehensive rebuttal to “Expelled Exposed,” please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] We’re often told that the evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution — where unguided natural selection acting on random mutations is the driving force generating the complexity and diversity of life — is “overwhelming.” But hints of dissent from this position can be found throughout the mainstream scientific literature. One article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution last year acknowledged that there exists a “healthy debate concerning the sufficiency of neo-Darwinian theory to explain macroevolution”.[1] Likewise, Günter Theißen of the Department of Genetics at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany recently wrote earlier this year in the journal Theory in Biosciences: while we already have a quite Read More ›

ID the Future podcast has a special edition worth checking out today: Founding Father Thomas Jefferson on Intelligent DesignClick here to listen. Critics of intelligent design sometimes claim they are defending the principles of American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in trying to ban discussions of intelligent design. In the words of one writer, “Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution… to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design.” But would Thomas Jefferson himself agree? In this special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West explores the real views of Jefferson on intelligent design.

Those textbook diagrams showing the supposed evolution of vision reveal a real blind spot. There are at least three big problems with this evolutionary narrative. First, the biochemistry, even in primitive eyes is numbingly complex. The notion that it evolved is nowhere motivated by the scientific evidence.

Second, if a new vision capability did just happen magically to arise, it would be worthless since there would be no interpretation of the new signals in the brain. And third, speaking of signals, the signal processing that goes on between the initial signal transduction and the brain is profound. The signal transduction, as phenomenally complex as that is, is only the beginning.