There were three kinds of stories that could have developed from the news that Science magazine released a paper by professors at the University of Oregon’s Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology that supposedly falsifies Michael Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity (as an indication of intelligent design). That Science accompanied the paper with an interpretive piece by Christoph Adami of Claremont, underscores the coup Science hoped it had accomplished. What, studying the paper and commentary, should be done with this news? The first possible story was the one that Science hoped: that finally someone in the science world had done actual research to refute Behe’s theory. Hence, intelligent design could be dismissed conclusively as bad science. Trouble was, in preparing Read More ›

“This latest fossil find poses no threat to intelligent design.” So says Discovery Institute senior fellow and leading intelligent design theorist Dr. William Dembski, adding: “Intelligent design does not so much challenge whether evolution occurred but how it occurred. In particular, it questions whether purposeless material processes–as opposed to intelligence–can create biological complexity and diversity.” The journal Nature is making news by publishing a report today that a group of researchers claim to have uncovered the skeleton of a 375-million-year-old fish in the Canadian Arctic that they believe is a missing link in the evolution of some fishes to becoming land walking vertebrates. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, meaning “large shallow water fish.” Even though this find does Read More ›

After several years of claiming that there is no debate about the theory of intelligent design (ID) researchers have published an article bringing the debate to the pages of the latest issue of Science. Three researchers, Jamie Bridgham, Sean Carroll and Joe Thornton claim to have shown how an irreducibly complex system, such as that described by Discovery senior fellow Michael Behe, might have arisen as the result of gene duplication and a few point mutational changes. “This continues the venerable Darwinian tradition of making grandiose claims based on piddling results,” said biochemist Michael Behe, who developed the theory of irreducible complexity in his best-selling book Darwin’s Black Box. “There is nothing in the paper that an ID proponent would Read More ›