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Abstract futuristic concept of spherical algorithm analysis. Big data. Quantum virtual cryptography. Business visualization of artificial intelligence. Blockchain.
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Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate Specified Complexity

While it's true that shaking out random scrabble pieces would render METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL highly improbable (and therefore complex), Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm renders that sequence certain and thereby removes its complexity. Read More ›
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Metaphysics Matters

In his influential book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins asserts that “Like successful Chicago gangsters our genes have survived . . . in a highly competitive world, . . . [and so] a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness.” Therefore, “We are survival machines-robot vehicles programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” Read More ›

Death stars

This article, published by New Scientist, mentions Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture Senior Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez: Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, was intrigued to discover three years ago that 51 Pegasi, the first star other than the Sun that astronomers found to have a planet, had lots of heavy elements in its Read More ›

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Pink Flower Growth Stages: From Seed to Bloom, Representing Business Growth, Career Success, and Life's Journey. Concept Image for Marketing, Investment, and Sustainable Growth.
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Designed for Living

Does God exist? You can answer that question in at least two ways, including, notably, “yes.” But how do you argue for that particular answer?

A new cottage industry among the religiously minded is the re-articulation of the so-called “cosmological argument” for the existence of God. Its proofs work backward. They start with visible creation and reason that it can only be the work of an uncreated First Cause. Such proofs were once compelling to educated people. Now the average college graduate can do without them. He doesn’t know exactly why this is so; he simply believes that Darwin and Stephen Hawking have somehow managed to explain creation without reference to a Creator.

Darwin and Hawking, of course, have done no such thing. Science can never answer the question: Why is there something rather than nothing? The universe is a massive fact that does not account for its existence and — some would say, following Goedel’s incompleteness theorems — cannot do so. This does not stop certain astrophysicists from trying to generate whole universes from mathematical equations. But a mathematical model does not tell us why there is a universe to describe in the first place.

If we cannot so easily dismiss the brute fact of the universe, neither can we ignore its appearance of having been designed. As one staunchly atheistic 20th-century astronomer put it: “A common sense interpretation of the data suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.” How do you get around such a “common sense” interpretation? Darwin supplied the answer: Any “design” in nature is only apparent, the work of blind mechanisms. All you need to produce the bombardier beetle, for example, is random variations directed by natural selection — and a lot of time.

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From Space, the Web Appears as a Swirling Sphere of Light

Imagine gazing at the web from far in space. To you, peering through your spectroscope, mapping the mazes of electromagnetism in its path, the Web appears as a global efflorescence, a resonant sphere of light. It is the physical phase space of the telecosm, the radiant chrysalis from which will spring a new global economy. The luminous ball reflects Maxwell’s Read More ›

Are We Spiritual Machines?

For two hundred years materialist philosophers have argued that man is some sort of machine. The claim began with French materialists of the Enlightenment such as Pierre Cabanis, Julien La Mettrie, and Baron d’Holbach (La Mettrie even wrote a book titled Man the Machine). Likewise contemporary materialists like Marvin Minsky, Daniel Dennett, and Patricia Churchland claim that the motions and Read More ›

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Internet ‘security’ proposal strips away liberty, privacy

THE Justice Department has recently revealed that it is planning to ask Congress for new authority to secretly break into individuals’ home or office computers in order to collect private information, including e-mail. Specifically, the Clinton administration is proposing “The Cyberspace Electronic Security Act of 1999” (CESA). The Justice Department claims that it needs this act, which would violate basic Read More ›

Darwinism Defeated?

This volume contains a debate between design advocate Phillip E. Johnson and evolutionary biologist Denis Lamoureux, with commentary from other scholars in this debate. Though differing in opinion over evolution, all contributors are Christians who conduct the discussion in a civil manner.  Dr. Lamoureux asks challenging questions of Johnson, asserting that Johnson’s position is based upon “God-of-the-gaps” type arguments. Lamoureax Read More ›

Update on the C. S. Lewis Fundraising Foundation

In his July 1999 fundraising letter Stan Mattson reported that he has recently received two foundation grants and several very generous gifts from individuals; but the net financial surplus from Oxbridge ’98 was only $8.80 per person, and it took time away from other fundraising activities. He says that over 800 attended, which means total surplus from tuition was only Read More ›

In the Footsteps of Glass

According to the July/August 1998 issue of Columbia Journalism Review, the Stephen Glass saga may be the biggest hoax in modern journalism. Glass has been described as an unusually affable and likable but insecure person who needs constant affirmation. In 1994 he worked for Heritage Institute’s Policy Review, where he published six articles. He was a bright, prolific young reporter Read More ›