Intelligent Design

The Center for Science and Culture

Minnesota Becomes Third State to Require Critical Analysis of Evolution

Minnesota has become the third state to require students to know about scientific evidence critical of Darwinian evolution in its newly adopted science standards. On May 15, the Minnesota legislature adopted new science standards that include a benchmark requiring students to be able to explain how new evidence can challenge existing scientific theories, including the theory of evolution. Read More ›
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Photo by Steven Ramon on Unsplash

Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research

Intelligent Design theory (ID) can contribute to science on at least two levels. On one level, ID is concerned with inferring from the evidence whether a given feature of the world is designed. This is the level on which William Dembski's explanatory filter and Michael Behe's concept of irreducible complexity operate. On another level, ID could function as a "metatheory," providing a conceptual framework for scientific research. By suggesting testable hypotheses about features of the world that have been systematically neglected by older metatheories (such as Darwin's), and by leading to the discovery of new features, ID could indirectly demonstrate its scientific fruitfulness. Read More ›

Alabama House Committee Adopts Revised Academic Freedom Bill on Evolution

FOR RELEASE MAY 10, 2004 SEATTLE, MAY 10 –  The Education Committee of the Alabama House of Representatives recently adopted a substitute version of the Academic Freedom Act on evolution that previously passed the Alabama Senate. The substitute bill limits its protection to teachers who wish to cover “scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views concerning biological Read More ›

Transcortin, an alpha-globulin protein with corticosteroid-bindi
Transcortin, an alpha-globulin protein with corticosteroid-binding properties. Major transport protein for glucocorticoids and progestins in the blood of most vertebrates. 3d rendering.

Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues

Abstract: Gene duplication is thought to be a major source of evolutionary innovation because it allows one copy of a gene to mutate and explore genetic space while the other copy continues to fulfill the original function. Models of the process often implicitly assume that a single mutation to the duplicated gene can confer a new selectable property. Yet some protein features, such as disulfide bonds or ligand binding sites, require the participation of two or more amino acid residues, which could require several mutations. Here we model the evolution of such protein features by what we consider to be the conceptually simplest route—point mutation in duplicated genes. We show that for very large population sizes N, where at steady state in the absence of selection the population would be expected to contain one or more duplicated alleles coding for the feature, the time to fixation in the population hovers near the inverse of the point mutation rate, and varies sluggishly with the λth root of 1/N, where λ is the number of nucleotide positions that must be mutated to produce the feature. At smaller population sizes, the time to fixation varies linearly with 1/Nand exceeds the inverse of the point mutation rate. We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 108generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 109. Read More ›

Californians Say Teach Scientific Evidence Both For and Against Darwinian Evolution, Show New Polls

For Immediate Release SEATTLE, MAY 3 – Recent California voters overwhelmingly support teaching the scientific evidence both for and against Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to two new surveys conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates. The surveys address the issue of how best to teach evolution, which increasingly is under deliberation by state and local school districts in California and Read More ›

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Rough rocky mars landscape from above.
Licensed from Adobe Stock

Are We Alone?

The American taxpayers recently footed the bill for a risky $800 million NASA mission. The good news? It worked. In January, two NASA landers bounced to their destinations and released their rovers Spirit and Opportunity to prowl the Martian landscape. These remarkable little robots were not searching for archaeological ruins or strange, black monoliths but something much less exotic — Read More ›

Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?

[Note: This article first appeared in The Human Life Review 30, 2 (Spring 2004): 29-37.] A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn’t evil? How could Read More ›

A Response to Some Objections by Kyler Kuehn to The Privileged Planet

In August 2003, Kyler Kuehn provided a critical response to our presentation on The Privileged Planet at the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation. At the time, Kuehn was at a disadvantage, since the book had not yet been published and his response was based on an incomplete manuscript of our book. In our opinion, the objections resulted almost Read More ›