Intelligent Design

About the Book In 2000, biologist Jonathan Wells took the science world by storm with Icons of Evolution, a book showing how biology textbooks routinely promote Darwinism using bogus evidence — icons of evolution like Ernst Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings and peppered moths glued to tree trunks. Critics of the book complained that Wells had merely gathered up a handful Read More ›

About the Book

In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin’s theory as a nineteenth-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that is all but disintegrating under an onslaught of new scientific discoveries. Bethell presents a concise yet wide-ranging tour of the flash points of modern evolutionary theory, investigating controversies over common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, biogeography, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and the growing intelligent design movement. Bethell’s account is enriched by his own personal encounters with some of our era’s leading evolutionary thinkers, including Harvard biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin; British paleontologist Colin Patterson; and renowned philosopher of science Karl Popper.

For a man whom history can never forget, Adolf Hitler remains a persistent mystery on one front — his religious faith. Atheists tend to insist Hitler was a devout Christian. Christians counter that he was an atheist. And still others suggest that he was a practicing member of the occult. None of these theories are true, says historian Richard Weikart. Read More ›

Over the last forty years, scientists have uncovered evidence that if the Universe had been forged with even slightly different properties, life as we know it — and life as we can imagine it — would be impossible. Join us on a journey through how we understand the Universe, from its most basic particles and forces, to planets, stars and Read More ›

Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines tells the story of Michael Behe’s transformation from mild-mannered biochemist to orthodoxy-challenging revolutionary through the publication of his path-breaking book challenging Darwinian evolution, Darwin’s Black Box. It also explores the rise of the broader intelligent design movement in biology, the attempt to silence supporters of intelligent design in federal court, and the eventual Read More ›

From computers to airplanes to life-giving medicines, the technological marvels of our world were made possible by the human use of fire. But the use of fire itself was made possible by an array of features built into the human body and the planet. In Fire-Maker, biologist Michael Denton explores the special features of nature that equipped humans to to harness the powers of fire Read More ›

Discovery Institute Fellow Henry F. (Fritz) Schaefer is one of the most distinguished physical scientists in the world. This book describes how Dr. Schaefer became a Christian as a young professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. Schaefer sees design in the universe reigning from the cosmic level to life’s history as revealed in the fossil record, Read More ›

More than thirty years after his landmark book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), biologist Michael Denton revisits his earlier thesis about the inability of Darwinian evolution to explain the history of life. He argues that there remains “an irresistible consilience of evidence for rejecting Darwinian cumulative selection as the major driving force of evolution.” From the origin of life Read More ›

Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows more persuasively than ever before that Dawkins is wrong and that the origin of life continues to pose insurmountable difficulties to unguided material processes. The authors discuss why traditional origin-of-life research has failed and Read More ›

In this revised and expanded collection of essays on origins, mathematician Granville Sewell looks at the big bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, and (especially) the evolution of life. Sewell explains why evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science, and why increasing numbers of scientists are now recognizing what has Read More ›

Are humans the accidental products of a blind and uncaring universe? Or are they the beneficiaries of a cosmic order that was planned beforehand to help them flourish? Privileged Species is a 33-minute documentary by Discovery Institute that explores growing evidence from physics, chemistry, biology, and related fields that our universe was designed for large multi-cellular beings like ourselves. Featuring geneticist and Read More ›

The 2014 reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic 13-part series Cosmos struck a chord with viewers, garnered 12 Emmy Award nominations, and is headed straight into schools as a science teacher’s instructional aid. It’s also an agenda-driven vehicle for scientific materialism, casting religion as arch foe of the search for truth about nature and pressing its message that human beings occupy Read More ›

For a thing to be real, it must be able to communicate with other things. If this is so, then the problem of being receives a straightforward resolution: to be is to be in communion. So the fundamental science, indeed the science that needs to underwrite all other sciences, is a theory of communication. Within such a theory of communication Read More ›

Thomas has been looking forward to this field trip for weeks! His mom is guiding a group tour of the new insect exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science. Thomas and his friend Sophie are awestruck by the displays, but they have questions when one exhibit claims that butterflies evolved the special ability to transform from caterpillars without a pre-determined Read More ›

This impressive volume contains critical essays on naturalism from the perspectives of theology, ethics, cosmology, ontology, and epistemology. Various Discovery Fellows make contributions including Robert C. Koons, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and William Dembski. Koons, a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, begins by noting that there is a simple correlation between existence and the requirement of Read More ›

This book contains a fascinating interview between James Barham, general editor of TheBestSchools.org, and mathematician and philosopher William Dembski, one of the pioneers of the modern intelligent design movement. Follow Dembski’s personal journey from his doubts about Western religion as a young man to his training as a mathematician and a philosopher and his rise to prominence as one of Read More ›

The Magician’s Twin is both a book and a three-part documentary series that explores C.S. Lewis’s views on science, scientism, and society, including such controversial issues as bioengineering, evolution, and intelligent design. Part one of the documentary series, C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, explores Lewis’s prophetic concerns about the misuse of science to “abolish” man and to undermine Read More ›

Acclaimed historian and biographer Paul Johnson turns his keen eye on Charles Darwin, the towering figure whose work continues to spur scientific debate. With his publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin forever changed our concept of the world. While Johnson praises Darwin’s extraordinary skills as a natural scientist and his monumental achievements, he does not sidestep Darwin’s tragic failures Read More ›