Science and Culture Today | Page 1403 | Discovering Design in Nature

In Part I, I discussed how Carl Zimmer’s recent article, “From Fins to Wings,” in National Geographic quoted a biologist in a fashion that sounded like an advertisement for evolution. While the article obviously was not pro-ID, it ironically discussed much evidence which ID-proponents often contend supports intelligent design. This segment of the 3-part response will discuss evidence for design from “conservation” in developmental genes. Evolutionarily Conserved Genes or Common Design? “From Fins to Wings” discusses many examples of similar genes controlling similar developmental processes in widely different organisms. ID-proponents have taken this re-usage of genetic coding components as indicative of common design. Pro-ID scientist Mike Gene has noted that we have to be careful when advancing arguments about common Read More ›

Since 1998, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells, William Dembski, and Paul Nelson have all spoken at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Now UCSD is striking back. Tonight, anti-ID philosopher of science Robert Pennock is being paid by UCSD’s Council of Provosts and the Division of Biological Sciences to speak against intelligent design in a lecture that is free and open to the public in UCSD’s RIMAC Arena (which holds about 5000 people). Of course, these groups are all taxpayer-supported. Not only is this free event open to anyone, but TritonLink, the UCSD student website, on its main home-page, reports that Professor Pennock’s lecture is mandatory attendance for all freshmen: “All first-quarter freshmen are required to attend Read More ›

If you have not seen it already, you will enjoy playing with this random mutation generator. You will see how wonderful the Darwinian process is at taking your text and moving on to ever-greater levels of complexity.

CSC Senior Fellow John West is featured in Human Events this week, offering a reality check and a history lesson on the debate over Darwinian evolution. The debate over Darwinian evolution is typically framed by the news media as a clash between “right” and “left.” Conservatives are presumed to be critical of Darwin’s theory, while liberals are presumed to be supportive of it. As in most cases, reality is more complicated. There always have been liberal critics of Darwin. In the early 20th Century, progressive reformer William Jennings Bryan fought for women’s suffrage, world peace–and against Darwinism. More recently, left-wing novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a self-described “secular humanist,” has called our human bodies “miracles of design” and faulted scientists for “pretending Read More ›

Over at her new blog, Mindful Hack, journalist Denyse O’Leary is presenting different views of how Darwinism interacts with morality. Michael Shermer thinks Darwinian evolution easily accounts for “Christian morality.” John West, author of the recently published Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest, claims that Darwinism really implies moral relativism. Given how natural selection is invoked by Darwinists to explain behaviors ranging from rape to marital fidelity to selfishness to the Golden Rule, one is reminded of the maxim that “the theory that explains anything actually explains nothing.”

Recently Francis Collins, the renowned scientist and harmonizer of Darwin and faith, lectured before a packed auditorium at George Mason University in Virginia. One attendee and avid ENV reader, unimpressed with the harmonization, sent me this report:

SEATTLE — While conservatives are presumed to be critical of Darwin’s theory, many on the right, such as George Will, James Q. Wilson, and Larry Arnhart, have mounted a vigorous defense of Darwinism. As Discovery Institute’s John West explains in his new book, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest (Discovery Institute Press, 2006), their attempts to reconcile conservatism and Darwinian biology misunderstand both.

National Geographic‘s pro-evolution articles sometimes come off like advertisements for Darwin (for an analysis of a prior ad, see here). Its November, 2006 issue has an article, “From Fins to Wings,” by Carl Zimmer which quotes Harvard microbiologist Howard Berg saying “The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple.” With such a ringing endorsement, I expected the article to urge me to buy evolution at the local grocery store! Zimmer’s article, however, was better than many past evolution-endorsements in National Geographic. Past articles used icons like Haeckel’s false “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” concept and antibiotic resistance to sell evolution. While Zimmer’s present article retains the fallacious “the human eye was poorly designed” icon, it improves the treatment Read More ›

Discovery Institute senior fellow and nationally acclaimed bioethicist Wesley J Smith is having it out with NRO’s John Derbyshire over human exceptionalism.

In the wake of US elections, which largely focused on international issues such as terrorism and the war in Iraq, there have been some who think that this somehow means that scientists should ignore evidence for intelligent design, such as the fact that digital code in DNA and molecular machines in cells exist. Canadian science writer Denyse O’Leary (first of Post-Darwinist, now of Mindful Hack fame) commented on our tendency in the US to think that elections here set the pace for everything else in the world. I hope no one will mind me saying this but many American intelligentsias are very, very parochial. Do they think they have a patent on the ID controversy? Do they think everyone knows Read More ›