29Mar 2020 by Post

An Artist Examines Evolution

Albert Einstein, artists, Asa Gray, Atheism, Charles Darwin, Chris Augusta, Christianity, Creativity, Darwinism, David Berlinski, David Gelernter, Eric Metaxas, Evolution, evolutionary theory, Hannah Arendt, Hoover Institution, Intelligent Design, Jonah Goldberg, Jordan Peterson, materialists, Merion West, Michael Flannery, multiverse, Percy Shelley, Peter Robinson, Stephen Meyer, string theory, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The Return of the God Hypothesis, William Graham
Merion West is an online news source that dubs itself “a journal where all perspectives are welcome.” They tout the fact that they have been rated by Media Bias/Fact Check as a “Least Biased” source.  Generally, their articles seem to have deeper analysis than you will find in much of the mainstream media. For example, recent headlines include, “The Fraught Relationship Between Religion and Epidemiology,” “The Critics of ‘Social Justice,’ from Jonah Goldberg to Jordan Peterson,” and “Hannah Arendt’s Concept of ‘Impotent Bigness.’” They regularly interview newsmakers, and authors often include professors in relevant fields and others well qualified to comment.  Left, Center, or Right Articles are explicitly labeled by viewpoint: left, center, or right. This makes for interesting reading. To date, I haven’t seen much about evolution and intelligent…
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27Mar 2020 by Post

More Hints of Order in the Genome

Abo1, Amir Bitran, ATP, biochemistry, Biozentrum, Caulobacter crescentus, central dogma, Chelsea R. Bulock, chromosomes, cohesin, cotranslational folding, Darwinian mechanism, DNA, E. coli, error catastrophe, genome, GGC, GGU, Intelligent Design, Junk DNA, Lego blocks, misfolding, mRNA, Nature Communications, Patricia Clark, PNAS, polymerase, polypeptides, Polδ, proofreader, proteins, RNA, South Korea, strand breaks, UNIST, University of Basel, University of Notre Dame, University of Seville, William Paley
Genomics has come a long way since the central dogma (the notion that DNA is the master controller that calls all the shots) and junk DNA (the expectation that much of the genome is non-functional). If scientists ditch those old dogmas and approach the genome expecting to find reasons for things, they often do. Synonymous Mutations To-may-to or to-mah-to? The British write flavour; the Americans write flavor, but generally each understands the other without too much difficulty. Genomes, too, have alternate ways of spelling things: GGU and GGC in messenger RNA both spell glycine. No big deal, thought geneticists; these “silent” mutations cause no change in the resulting protein. At the University of Notre Dame, however, biochemists are finding that the differences in spelling are not just background noise; they…
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19Mar 2020 by Post

The Passing of Jon Buell

Alzheimer’s disease, Charles Thaxton, Christian Worldview, Country Inn & Suites, Dallas, Discovery Institute Dallas, Discovery Institute Press, Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Intelligent Design, Kitzmiller v. Dover, Linda Buell, Linda Montgomery, materialist biology, Never Before in History, Of Pandas and People, origin of life, Pam Bailey, Phillip E. Johnson, relativistic ethics, revisionist historicism, Roger Olsen, Sex and Character, The Design of Life, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Walter Bradley
I learned with sadness this week that my good friend and colleague Jon Buell passed away on Saturday, March 14. I had been Jon’s academic editor for the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), a Dallas publisher of books aimed at un-indoctrinating high school and college students. He hired me in 1997 and I stayed on in that position until my family’s move from Texas to Iowa in 2012. We didn’t produce a lot of books at FTE, but it was quality work and it articulated without apology a broadly Christian worldview against a materialist biology, a relativist ethics, and a revisionist historicism. In short, FTE served as an antidote to the PC and progressivist culture. Given how this culture has unfolded and seemingly prospered since FTE’s founding by Jon…
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18Mar 2020 by Post

Unguided Origin of Life: “Completely Impossible but Must Have Happened”

Charles Thaxton, Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Discovery Institute, Evolution News, Faith & Science, Intelligent Design, John West, Jon Buell, origin of life, Robert J. Marks, Robert Shapiro, Roger Olsen, Stephen Meyer, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Walter Bradley, Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence
“It’s completely impossible, but it must have happened.” That’s how philosopher of science Stephen Meyer summarizes most responses from proponents of unguided chemical evolution when challenged on the origin of life. In January, Meyer led a panel discussion with the authors of the foundational intelligent design text The Mystery of Life’s Origin at the Dallas Conference on Science & Faith. You can see the entire interaction now, as Discovery Institute begins launching videos of the presentations from the hugely successful event: The occasion for the panel was the release of a new and greatly expanded 35th-anniversary edition of the book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy. You’ll enjoy the discussion between Meyer and Walter Bradley, Charles Thaxton, and Roger Olsen. It’s introduced by materials scientist Walter Bradley, and…
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17Mar 2020 by Post

Listen: Biochemist Michael Behe Puts Coronavirus in a Helpful Scientific Perspective

Andrew McDiarmid, chimpanzee, Clorox wipes, coronavirus, Evolution News, Facebook, human genome, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Lehigh University, Medicine, Michael Behe, Neil Shubin, Podcast, Social media, virosphere, viruses
What to do during a full-country shutdown? Sit at home and stare at increasingly toxic Facebook and other social media, as I’m sorry to say I did for too long on Sunday? Fortunately there’s an alternative to blithe reassurances and doomsday handwringing: Michael Behe! On a new episode of ID the Future with host Andrew McDiarmid, the Lehigh University biochemist and intelligent design advocate puts coronavirus in an objective scientific perspective. I found that oddly comforting, and I think you will, too. He explains what a virus is, what makes this one special, how viruses originated (no one knows), what he meant in a post at Evolution News about a “storm” in the virosphere, and more. 8 Percent Virus? Meanwhile, as Andrew McDiarmid notes, evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin has a…
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13Mar 2020 by Post

Lesson from a Carnivorous Plant

Aldovanda, aquatic bladderwort, bladder, carnivorous plants, Dionaea, foresight, Genlisea, Granville Sewell, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, John Innes Centre, Life Sciences, Marcos Eberlin, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, mousetrap, The Evolution of Carnivorous Plants, Utricularia, Venus flytrap, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig
I won’t pretend to you that this isn’t a stressful time. In search of distraction, today I’ve been thinking about a rather odd water dweller. It’s the carnivorous plant Utricularia, aka aquatic bladderwort. Granville Sewell wrote about it here recently, citing plant geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig and others, calling it “Michael Behe’s ‘Irreducibly Complex’ Mousetrap in Nature.” Its mechanism is not just complex, but irreducibly so. Like a mousetrap, it requires purpose in its design. Check out these videos: The video from the John Innes Centre in the U.K. concludes, “Plants are seriously smart.” I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be ironic, but the mechanism is indeed ingenious. If your German skills are up for it, you can read Dr. Lönnig’s book on The Evolution of Carnivorous Plants, downloadable here,…
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11Mar 2020 by Post

With a Hopeful Message About Life’s “X Factor,” Episode 5 of Secrets of the Cell Is Well Timed

accidents, Charles Darwin, Culture, Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Michael Behe, philosophers, philosophy, scientists, Secrets of the Cell, theology, X Factor
Michael Behe is a biochemist, leading proponent of intelligent design, and a wise guide to understanding the wonders of life with its mysterious “purposeful arrangement of parts.” The new series from Discovery Institute, Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, concludes today with a last consideration of the “X Factor” that appears to lie behind the wonderful, irreducible complexity of biology. That “X Factor,” he explains, is an intelligence inconceivably beyond our own: Secrets distills the argument for intelligent design in five-to-eight minute episodes, five in all. I’m sure ID has never been presented more accessibly, in a way anyone can easily understand. Share Secrets of the Cell with your family, friends, and social media network! What a remarkable thing that the design of the universe was almost universally appreciated,…
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06Mar 2020 by Post

Hey, Paul Davies — Your ID is Showing

Barbara McClintock, chaos, cosmology, Discovery Institute, engineers, Eva Jablonka, intelligence, Intelligent Design, James Clerk Maxwell, James Shapiro, John Cairns, Maxwell’s demon, molecular machines, motors, nanotechnology, natural genetic engineering, order, origin of information, origin of life, Paul Davies, Physics, Earth & Space, rotors, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Stephen Meyer, The Demon in the Machine
Editor’s note: Dr. Shedinger is a Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He is the author of a recent book critiquing Darwinian triumphalism, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms. No better advertisements for intelligent design exist than works written by establishment scientists that unintentionally make design arguments. I can think of few better examples than well-known cosmologist Paul Davies’s recently published book The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life (2019). With a nod toward James Clerk Maxwell’s entropy-defying demon, Davies argues that the gulf between physics and biology is completely unbridgeable without some fundamentally new concept. Since living organisms consistently resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter are subject to, there must be some non-physical principle allowing living…
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04Mar 2020 by Post

Episode 4 of Secrets of the Cell — Broken Wolves and other Evolutionary Conundrums

biochemistry, biological information, broken wolves, creative power, DNA, Dogs, E. coli, Evolution, Evolution News, genes, genetic function, Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, mutations, polar bears, Richard Lenski, Secrets of the Cell, wolves
On a new episode of Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, the famed biochemist and intelligent design proponent briefly examines several evolutionary icons. These are living species that are considered by Darwinists as slam-dunk evidence of unguided evolution’s creative power, but that turn out to be just the opposite: Dogs, for one, in their great variety descend from wolves. Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and others have pointed to man’s best friend as confirmation that evolution creatively builds new species. Behe explains, though, that when the cell’s secrets are considered — biological information at the DNA level — we discover that dogs are broken wolves. Of course that doesn’t make them any less loveable. They evolved largely by losing genetic functions through mutation. As Dr. Behe explains, “The mutations don’t…
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01Mar 2020 by Post

No Success Without Successors: John Mark Reynolds on the Legacy of Phillip E. Johnson

California, Center for Science & Culture, Constantine School, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Houston, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, John Mark Reynolds, materialism, Pajaro Dunes, Phillip E. Johnson, Podcast, success, successors, Suzanne Nelson, truth
On a new episode of ID the Future we hear John Mark Reynolds’s concluding comments at the November 2019 symposium in honor of the late Phillip E. Johnson. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Reynolds is a Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, president of the Constantine School in Houston, and a longtime friend of Phillip Johnson. Reynolds says he saw in Johnson a mind constant and relentless in the pursuit of truth, a man who refused to distort the truth to fit it into a materialist paradigm, and who passed along that mindset to as many as he could, for he knew there is no success without successors. Photo: John Mark Reynolds and Phil Johnson, Pajaro Dunes, California, June 1998, by Suzanne Nelson. The…
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