Category: Faith & Science
DNA: The Alphabet of Life
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 ›
Leading Advocate of Intelligent Design Challenges Criticism of Science Exam in Britain
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 ›
Materialist Science Fiction on Human Evolution Promoted to Kids at Local Public Libraries
Last December, I wrote a post about a book titled Life on Other Planets, aimed at junior-high-aged kids. I found it at a local library. The book promoted materialist science fiction about the origin of life on earth. More recently, the Seattle Public Library system had its annual booksale, and I loaded up. One now-former library book I bought was Journey from the Dawn: Life with the World’s First Family, by Donald Johansen and Kevin O’Farrell (Villard, 1990). I liked this book far better than Life on Other Planets, but instead of promoting materialist science fiction to kids on the origin of life, this one promoted science fiction to kids regarding paleoanthropology and the origin of humans. The book starts Read More ›
Eugenie Scott Claims Evolution Is Threatening to Certain Christian Traditions
In March, I blogged about how the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) usually tries to project a religion-friendly image, but somehow their “talking points” they released for Texas State Board of Education meeting in January advocated that activists press the SBOE to adopt scientism as the state’s official ideology and expressly deny the existence of the supernatural as a matter of state education policy. As the NCSE’s talking points argued: “Science posits that there are no forces outside of nature. Science cannot be neutral on this issue…. All educated people understand there are no forces outside of nature.” Yet in a recent radio interview with the Minnesota Atheists, Eugenie Scott claims that the NCSE “doesn’t take a stand on Read More ›
How Evolution’s Co-Discoverer Discovered Intelligent Design, Part II
Yesterday, ENV spoke with Michael A. Flannery about his new book Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism (Erasmus Press). While credited as evolution’s co-discoverer, Wallace fell away from the Darwinian faith and came to espouse a view remarkably suggestive of intelligent design. Now, the rest of the interview. ENV: Scientifically, how does Wallace’s culminating work, World of Life, stand up today as compared to Darwin’s Origin of Species? MAF: That’s a complex question. Darwin’s Origin is really a metaphysical treatise supported by some biological speculations and those speculations give it the appearance of science. The thing that makes this question so difficult to answer is that for a variety of reasons, not Read More ›