Science and Culture Today | Page 1353 | Discovering Design in Nature

In this excerpt from “Molecular Machines and the Death of Darwinism,” CSC senior fellow and mathmatician William Dembski explains how Darwinists use complex living systems like the mammalian eye to support Darwinian evolution without supplying adequate sequential evidence. In response, Dembski says, ID proponents focus on molecular machines such as the bacterial flagellum to understand their complexity and directly address Darwinist claims. This DVD is available from Access Research Network.

I’ve already commented on the paper by Eugene Koonin and the Darwinists’ concern that it might show that there is a serious controversy over the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life at all, let alone in a gradual step-by-step process over eons of time.

Koonin challenges the standard Darwinian view of the tree of life. His research shows that it lacks the ability to explain life’s complexity, but he hasn’t been fired from the National Center for Biotechnology or lost his funding from the National Institute’s of Health (yet).

Like Koonin, Michael Behe in his latest book The Edge of Evolution shows what evolution can do and what it can’t. Professor Robert Marks at Baylor uses the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Lab to showcase some of the limits of Darwinian evolution. Both have suffered serious repercussions. But not Koonin (yet).

A professor at London’s Institute of Education, Michael Reiss, suggests that teachers respond vigorously to the apparently growing “creationist” tendencies of their students. He attributes some of the alarming trend to the influence of Muslim students in the UK.

The mistake here is in thinking that you can defend Darwinian theory by attacking “creationism” and by broad-brush associating intelligent design with the image of creationism. That approach will merely create a wall between teachers and students, however, and most teachers won’t want to take part in that.

I’m grateful to Dr. Alan Packer, Senior Editor of Nature Genetics, for his thoughtful comments on my recent post Spit-Brain Research, in which I addressed claims made by Perry et al. about their paper “Diet and the Evolution of Human Amylase Gene Copy Number Variation.” Dr. Packer makes some good points with which I agree, and some points with which I disagree.

Modern Darwinists like Richard Dawkins notwithstanding, there is nothing new in the effort to offer completely materialistic explanations of human beings and human culture. For more than two millennia various thinkers have been trying to reduce human beings to mere meat in motion. Many of these thinkers figure prominently in my new book Darwin Day in America, and over the next several weeks, I will be describing some of them here.

I start today with Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and self-proclaimed “evolution evangelist.”

A senior research scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information has published a paper that claims: “The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin’s original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution.”

The author is Eugene Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, and National Institutes of Health, and the paper is entitled: “The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution.”

It’s now available on-line.

Koonin is widely regarded and is certainly at the center of the scientific establishment. So it is no surprise that the orthodox Darwinian priesthood were careful in denouncing his heresy.

Dr. Alan Packer, Senior Editor of Nature Genetics, contacted me recently and asked to publicly comment on my recent post on Evolution News and Views entitled Spit-Brain Research. My post was critical of a press release about an article published in Nature Genetics . I am grateful for his observations. My reply follows in my next post.

Michael Egnor has been kind enough to allow me to contribute a comment on his recent post ‘Spit-Brain Research’. The post discussed work by George Perry, Nathaniel Dominy and colleagues, published in a paper entitled “Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number”. As one of the editors at Nature Genetics, where the paper was published, I was pleased to see the paper receive so much attention. I was concerned, however, by what in my view was the highly misleading nature of Dr. Egnor’s post. I would like to make three general points, so that readers of this site will have a fuller picture of what was in the paper, and what was not:

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] As Rob Crowther discussed, Cornelia Dean and the New York Times are once-again pushing Darwinism in an article titled “Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin.” The article is regarding the documentary film Expelled, starring Ben Stein, that exposes the distressing nationwide pattern of persecution against scientists that question Darwin. The producers apparently interviewed various pro-Darwin scientists for the film, such as Richard Dawkins. Cornelia Dean now reports that “Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in ‘Crossroads’ but in a Read More ›

In this video clip, Richard Weikart delivers a presentation based on his book From Darwin to Hitler. Weikart explains that Darwin’s ideas about species competition not only inspired eugenics movements in Germany and the United States, but also influenced intellectuals like Friedrich Hellwald to view brutal human conflicts as a natural part of the human struggle to survive. In short, Darwinian principles greatly undermined notions about the value of human life. This DVD is available from Access Research Network.

When it comes to teaching intelligent design in social studies classes, not science classes, mind you, but social studies, ID critics were for it before they were against it. Their strategy of attack has been simple: equate ID with creationism because creationism isn’t allowed in science classes. Thus, for years we’ve heard things like: “it may be appropriate to discuss these beliefs in a comparative religion or social studies classroom”; and “to present it as a valid alternative to evolution in a science class (as opposed to teaching about it in a social studies class) is unconstitutional.” The Darwin only lobby group National Center for Science Education published a piece advocating exactly this approach in 2004: Elementary teachers have backbones, Read More ›