science

Is your mind the same thing as your brain, or are there aspects of mind beyond the brain’s biology? This is the mind-body problem, and it has captivated curious minds since the dawn of human contemplation. Today many insist that the mind is completely reducible to the brain. But is that claim justified? In this stimulating anthology, twenty-five philosophers and Read More ›

Polymath and raconteur David Berlinski is at it again, challenging the shibboleths of contemporary science with his inimitable blend of deep learning, close reasoning, and rapier wit. In Science After Babel he reflects on everything from Newton, Einstein, and Gödel to catastrophe theory, information theory, and the morass that is modern Darwinism. The scientific enterprise is unarguably impressive, but it shows no Read More ›

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science’s credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, Read More ›

Charles Darwin fathered not just a scientific theory, but a toxic social ideology that fueled racist colonial policies in Africa. In this sobering book, African scholar Olufemi Oluniyi traces the insidious impact of Darwinian ideas on British imperial policies in Northern Nigeria. Drawing on official documents, public statements, and well-attested historical events, Oluniyi documents how concepts such as evolutionary racism Read More ›

Consider your body. Every day it must solve hundreds of hard engineering problems simultaneously, or else you’ll die. While you’re going about your daily business, your body stores, retrieves, translates, and manages software for thousands of proteins, switches, setpoints, thresholds, feedback loops, coordinate systems, counters, and timers. It disassembles thousands of different complex molecules, converts them into their building blocks, Read More ›

Darwin’s Black Box thrust Michael Behe to the forefront of the intelligent design movement. The Lehigh University biochemist has haunted the dreams of Darwinists ever since. Each of his three books sparked a firestorm of criticism, in everything from the New York Times and the journal Science to the private blogs of professional atheists. Over the years, Behe has had a delightful time rebutting each attack, and Read More ›

The Miracle of the Cell provides compelling evidence that long before life emerged on our planet, the design of the carbon-based cell was foreshadowed in the order of nature, in the exquisite fitness of the laws of nature for this foundational unit of all life on Earth. Nowhere is this fitness more apparent than in the properties of the key atomic Read More ›

Are life and the universe a mindless accident — the blind outworking of laws governing cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution? That’s the official story many of us were taught somewhere along the way. But what does the science actually say? Drawing on recent discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, biology, and paleontology, Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell shows how the latest Read More ›

Conventional wisdom holds that the murder rate has plummeted since the Middle Ages; humankind is growing more peaceful and enlightened; man is shortly to be much improved — better genes, better neural circuits, better biochemistry; and we are approaching a technological singularity that well may usher in utopia. Human Nature eviscerates these and other doctrines of a contemporary nihilism masquerading as science. Read More ›

In Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, learn about jumping insects with real gears, and the ingenious technology behind a power-punching shrimp. Enter the strange world of carnivorous plants. And check out a microscopic protein machine in a bird’s eye that may work as a GPS device by harnessing quantum entanglement. Join renowned Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin as Read More ›

What happens when an up-and-coming European bioscientist flips from Darwin disciple to Darwin defector? Sparks fly. Just ask biotechnologist Matti Leisola. It all started when a student loaned the Finnish scientist a book criticizing evolutionary theory. Leisola reacted angrily, and set out to defend evolution, but found his efforts raised more questions than they answered. He soon morphed into a full-on Darwin skeptic, Read More ›

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.

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 ›

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 ›

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 ›