Origins of Life Debate Commemorates 150th Anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species

With the anniversary of Darwin’s opus nearly upon us, a question that keeps coming up is whether the scientific community is any closer to figuring out the origins of life now than when Darwin published his theory 150 years ago? To mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, advocates for intelligent design and Darwinian evolution will be squaring off at the end of the month to debate the origins of life, the challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution and the alternative theory of intelligent design. The American Freedom Alliance is sponsoring this debate as a part of their series of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origins this month. The debate will Read More ›

Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2 (This Article): Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7: Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? At the Dover trial, Ken Miller asserted under oath that intelligent design is merely Read More ›

Darwin and the Mathematicians

ENV: In the past, you’ve remarked about mathematicians and their opinions of Darwin’s theory of evolution. They were skeptical, you said; very skeptical. John Von Neumann was an example. How do you know that about him and about other mathematicians? DB: How do I know? Here’s how: I have been close to a number of mathematicians, and friends with others: Daniel Gallin (who died before he could begin his career), M.P. Schutzenberger (my great friend), René Thom (a friend as well), Gian-Carlo Rota (another friend), Lipman Bers (who taught me complex analysis and with whom I briefly shared a hospital room, he leaving as I was coming), Paul Halmos (a colleagues in California), and Irving Segal (a friend by correspondence, Read More ›

Truth or Dare with Dr. Ken Miller: A Lecture Guide to the Anti-Intelligent Design Claims by Dr. Kenneth Miller

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1 (This Article): Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7: Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Introduction Brown University biologist Dr. Kenneth Miller is the kind of person you naturally Read More ›

David Berlinski on The Deniable Darwin and Commentary

Q: Many of the most important and lengthiest essays in The Deniable Darwin were originally published in Commentary magazine. How did that fruitful partnership, or patronship, come about? Did you encounter any resistance from the Commentary readership? DB: My association with Commentary was a stroke of good luck. I wanted a wider readership. Who doesn’t? So I wrote [editor] Neal Kozodoy a letter. It was 1994. Neal, for reasons of his own, thought it important to broaden Commentary‘s intellectual horizons. We had been struck by the fact that science as an institution lacks for critics. To a very surprising extent, it gets a free pass. So our association began. I’ve never known a better editor. “The Deniable Darwin” provoked a Read More ›