Category: The Design of Life

Excerpt: When a scrap of evidence supports any one of the competing theories of the origin of life, doubts about that theory itself are often not discussed in the article. That practice distorts the overall picture. To see why, suppose for example that the police are trying to determine which of three suspects stole a… more

Recently, some commenters at one of my home blogs, the Post-Darwinist, have urged me to address the question of whether it is true that most Discovery Institute fellows are evangelical Christians. I suppose so, except for the ones who are Catholics, agnostics, or Moonies or something. Go here for reasons why the accusation is basically… more

Never heard of a beefalo? Aw, don’t be shy. It’s what happens when Buffalo bull meets Cow gal or versa vice. You probably don’t hang out in places like that, so to you it’s just a dinner entree. This is a cross between genera, not species.  Fertile hybrids of genus bos and genus bison, separated… more

A producer from one of the national talking heads programs is discussing with FTE’s PR firm whether to interview me or Jonathan Wells regarding our new book THE DESIGN OF LIFE. The producer has some reservations about interviewing us: Hi [snip], As I’m sure you know, one of the main claims any scientific theory can… more

Apparently, it’s not just physics that starts things off with a bang. Life forms have done that too, and with equal drama. Mammals, birds, and flowers have their big bang events. But here’s the difficulty: The science literature, as well as the popular science press, assumes that an adequate fossil record must show a long, gradual… more

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the history of life shows no steady Darwinian march of progress, and the recent discovery about the Avalon explosion is yet another blow to an idea that is kept alive only by ideology, not evidence (and perhaps because the Darwin bicentennial budgets have already been spent?): Excerpts: Because the Ediacaran creatures… more

How much should we believe of what we read about animal number sense? Hype aside, the evidence points away from the assumption that abstract mathematics is simply the outcome of squabbles over bones. There is a gap that is simply not bridged by the studies of animal number sense, nor do available studies shed much… more

Animals suddenly appear … and after that nothing much happens. Why? How? Read the latest post, linked above, at The Design of Life blog and help me think about this. (Currently, I am learning to cope with the fact that Alley Oop has been lying to me for, like, tens of thousands of years, so… more

2006 and 2007 have been years in which a number of key science papers addressed things we know – that ain’t so. One story is the serious challenges to the long contested “molecular clock” theory. [ ... ] In the science literature, many adjustments are offered to make the fossil record and molecular data match.… more

Stephen Jay Gould, the great American paleontologist, liked to say – particularly in A Wonderful Life, that if the tape of evolution were replayed a million times, a species like ours would not necessarily evolve. He made this point in, and a debate rages to this day about whether he meant chance, as Daniel Dennett… more

Tiktaalik, an early fossil fish with sturdy forefins, helps illustrate the difference between the approach of scientists who are convinced Darwinists and that of scientists who view the problems of evolution primarily in terms of information theory (intelligent design). The Darwinist says, There! – we have found a missing link, so now we KNOW! what happened… more

In my last post, I mentioned the prospect that THE DESIGN OF LIFE would, with the help of our Darwinist friends, become a companion volume to Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED (www.expelledthe movie.com — check out also www.getexpelled.com). In the event that THE DESIGN OF LIFE becomes such a companion volume, a colleague sent… more

Bill Dembski has drawn my attention to the Darwinists who vote up negative reviews at Amazon of Design of Life, his textbook supplement with Jonathan Wells, on whose behalf I blog at Design of Life blog. He writes, The Design of Life has 13 five-star reviews and 4 one-star reviews. None of the one-star reviews… more

Here’s my review of Oxford Mathematician John Lennox’s God’s Undertaker: Has science buried God? – a highly recommended riposte to the materialist view of the universe. more

An interesting thing is happening at Amazon.com under the reviews for THE DESIGN OF LIFE (go here). As of this writing, there are nine 5-star reviews and only one 1-star review (from the inimitable John Kwok). Essentially what’s happening is that the Darwinists aren’t even bothering to read the book. If they actually did, then… more