The National Research Council’s report — The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems — is a must read. Not for the science — what there is of it can be summed up simply: we have no clue how life began. No, the report is a must read for the insight it offers into the current state of origin of life research:

Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren today has an interesting piece titled “The Limits of Darwinism,” an obvious nod to Michael Behe’s recent book, which is subtitled, “The Search for the Limits of Darwinism.”Warren starts with an interesting questions: In this case, we must ask ourselves why so many people get so excited about an area of science that should not concern them. He finds that it is likely because atheist materialism treats Darwinian evolution as a sort of holy writ that cannot be criticized. Much of the “star chamber” atmosphere, that has accompanied the public invigilation of microbiologists such as Michael J. Behe, and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in natural systems, can only be explained Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of essential readings we’re highlighting in the evolution-ID debate]The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current TheoriesBy Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. OlsenThe Philosophical Library of New York, 1984, 228 pagesISBN 0-929510-02-8 A seminal work for the theory of intelligent design, this book provides a scientific critique of the prevailing paradigmatic theories of chemical evolution. The authors include Discovery fellows Charles Thaxton and Walter Bradley, and they conclude that the prebiotic soup from which the first cell supposedly arose is a myth. The Miller-Urey experiments employed an unrealistic gas mixture, and there is no geological evidence for its existence in Earth’s distant past. The “soup” faces a myriad of Read More ›

We’ve gotten a couple of e-mails challenging my observation in a recent post that questioning Darwin’s theory in a public school is a federal crime. The reader implied that, because there is no federal statute explicitly censoring criticism of Darwin’s theory in public schools, it wasn’t a federal crime to do so. The issue of censorship in science classes in public schools is worth examining more closely. Is it a federal crime to question Darwin’s theory in a public school? In some public schools it certainly is. It’s a federal crime to violate a federal court ruling, such as the ruling by federal judge John E. Jones banning criticism of Darwin’s theory in the curriculum of biology classes in Dover, Read More ›