Discovery Institute

The Latest

Michael D. Aeschliman on C. S. Lewis and Scientism: Peter Biles; March 28, 2023; 5

Robert J. Mark on AI’s Glaring Errors: Evolution News; March 28, 2023; 2

One Governor Gets Out of the Gate with Guts, Grit & Grace: Keri D. Ingraham; March 22, 2023; 1

The Greatest Risk to Americans Is the Federal Government, Not Bank Failures: Scott S. Powell; March 20, 2023; 1

Union Leaders & Bureaucrats Have Long Ignored Parents’ Concerns: Keri D. Ingraham; March 16, 2023; 1

More of the Latest …

Terri Schiavo Case Was a Culture-of-Death Tipping Point

_{Wesley J. Smith
March 28, 2023
1}

The court-ordered death of Terri Schiavo was an ominous cultural tipping point. The legal case began when Terri’s husband Michael Schiavo applied to remove the feeding tube from his profoundly cognitively disabled wife so that she would die by dehydration. When Terri’s parents Bob and Mary Schindler, joined by her siblings Bobby and Suzanne, fought the plan in court, profoundly important cultural and legal battle lines were drawn that were destined to change the country.

Video

How Hard Are You Willing to Work to Avoid the Obvious

Jonathan Choe Discusses Seattle's Drug Crisis with Jesse Watters: Jonathan Choe; February 23, 2023

A Theory of Biological Design: Steve Laufmann; February 21, 2023

Darwin Comes to Africa: Editor; February 21, 2023

The New Nanocosm: The Bradley Center; February 16, 2023

← To stay informed about COSM 2022 and get access to The Great China Debate, sign up here.

Podcast

Aeschliman on Three Great Authors Critiquing Scientism

_{Andrew McDiarmid
March 24, 2023}

On this episode of ID the Future from the vault, Andrew McDiarmid concludes a two-part conversation with Michael Aeschliman, author of the recently revised and expanded The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism. Here Aeschliman places Lewis among a strong line of thinkers critiquing scientism. These include the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who showed that scientific knowledge on its own could never be sufficient for being fully human, as well as the theologian and physicist Stanley L. Jaki, who brilliantly integrated science and theology. Aeschliman’s list also includes the great English author Jonathan Swift, whose satirical work skewered the illusions of scientific reductionism. …

Blake Lemoine and the LaMDA Question

_{Robert J. Marks II
March 9, 2023}

In this continuation of last week’s conversation, ex-Googler Blake Lemoine tells Robert J. Marks what originally got him interested in AI: reading the science fiction of Isaac Asimov as a boy in rural Louisiana. The two go on to discuss and debate sentience in AI, non-computable traits of human beings, and the question of the soul. Additional Resources Robert J. Marks at Discovery.org Blake Lemoine at Twitter Full audio performance of the conversation between Blake Lemoine and LaMDA Full audio performance of the conversation between Blake Lemoine and LaMDA-Transcript LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications Computing Machinery And Intelligence By A. M. Turing Video on LaMDA 2 Thomas Ray Tierra: The Character of Adaptation “Join us in the AI Test Kitchen” Test …

Jonathan Bartlett on the Growing Evidence of Designed Mutations

_{Jonathan McLatchie
March 6, 2023}

On today’s ID the Future, host and evolutionary biologist Jonathan McLatchie sits down with software R&D engineer Jonathan Bartlett to discuss Bartlett’s work on the question of when genetic mutations are random versus directed. Bartlett explains that the issue isn’t an all-or-nothing affair. Often a given biological system dramatically limits the search space of possible mutations in useful ways, and then within that much more limited set of possible mutations, random processes are at play. He gives the example of antibody mutations. He argues that many biological systems show considerable evidence of having been beneficially designed for directed mutations. Why, then, are many mutations deleterious? He also has an answer for that. Tune in to learn more. Bartlett’s two …

Events

^{Date
April
04
Apr
4
04
2023}

Digital Payment Innovations at the Curbside

_{Cascadia Center
Date
April
04
Apr
4
04
2023
INRIX
Kirkland, WA}

Seminar Series Join us on Tuesday, April 4, 2023, beginning at 3 p.m. for coffee and cookies and plan to stay after our 3:30 p.m. event for the quarterly ACES Connect reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Promoting a simple and seamless experience is the goal for the world’s leading mobility providers. App-driven services that provide choices in price and predict arrival times within just a minute or two are popular with mobility consumers in part because the entire experience is managed on the screen and by the mobile device, including payments. The action all happens at the curbside, another data-rich environment for mobility and logistics payments. But happens when consumers switch between mobility services? How can users avoid the complexity of a farecard and the …

^{Date
April
04
Apr
28
28
2023}

Socrates in the City with Michael Medved

_{John Felts
Date
April
04
Apr
28
28
2023
Arctic Club Hotel
Seattle, WA}

Michael Medved, Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center for Wealth & Poverty, will be interviewed on Socrates in the City, a conversational forum that engages with the big questions in life. Hosted by Eric Metaxas, a longtime friend of the Center for Science & Culture, Socrates in the City has interviewed many renowned thinkers of our time, including Stephen C. Meyer, John Lennox, David Berlinski, and many more. Continue on for a description provided by the conference organizers: SITC host Eric Metaxas welcomes special guest Michael Medved for an interview on The American Miracle. The event will take place at the Arctic Club in Seattle, Washington. Born in Philadelphia, Michael attended public schools in San Diego and Los Angeles before starting Yale …

^{Date
June
06
Jun
1
01
2023}

Conference on Engineering in Living Systems

_{John Felts
Date
June
06
Jun
1
01
2023
Camp Copass
Denton, TX}

We are pleased to announce that the Conference on Engineering in Living Systems (CELS) is set for 2023 and will again be held in Denton, Texas. CELS brings together leading engineers and biologists in order to: (1) apply engineering principles to better understand biological systems, (2) craft a design-based theoretical framework that explains and predicts the behaviors of living systems, and (3) develop research programs that demonstrate the engineering principles at work in living systems. This year’s conference will follow a workshop-like format of discussion-oriented sessions in a collegial setting, with a goal of fostering active participation and establishing concrete results and action items. Join us as we build a theoretical framework and research programs …

More Events …

^{Date
May
05
May
4
04
2023}

Superabundance: Combatting the Ideology of Scarcity

_{Center on Wealth & Poverty
Date
May
05
May
4
04
2023
Mercer Island Community and Event Center
Mercer Island, WA}

Conventional wisdom has long posited that population growth leads to scarcer resources. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, “The world’s rapidly growing population is consuming the planet’s natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . . could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true? Join us on Thursday, May 4 for a reception and lecture as Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Gale Pooley discusses his new book Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Contrary to the anti-human theory of overpopulation, Pooley and his coauthor Marian Tupy found that resources actually became more …