The Center for Science and Culture
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 ›
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 Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
Last week the Kansas Board of Education voted to remove from state standards references to evolution as the underlying principle of biology. While the vote allows schools the freedom to teach about evolution, the battle is being reported as a simple conflict between scientific ‘evolutionists’ on one side and fundamentalist ‘creationists’ on the other, following the standard trope of the Read More ›
A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin’s theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: Read More ›
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The debate leading the Kansas Board of Education to abolish the requirement for teaching evolution has about the same connection to reality as the play ‘Inherit the Wind’ had to the actual Scopes trial. In both cases complex historical, scientific and philosophical issues gave way to the simplifying demands of the morality play. If the schoolchildren of Read More ›
Evolution has enormous purchase on the public imagination, and it’s easy to understand why. Just peek into the average living room where toddlers everywhere are sitting wide-eyed before videos like The Land Before Time series. This series offers nothing less than an excursion into evolution. Colorful one-celled organisms arise in a blue-green primeval ocean, where they “change again and again,” Read More ›
In this scientific age, it is impossible to quarantine the claims of science. They invariably leak into other cultural domains. So we should attend to what scientists tell us. Sometimes it is quite important. For instance, in The Meaning of Evolution, George Gaylord Simpson repeats what is surely the “official” dogma of the contemporary scientific guild: “Man is the result Read More ›
If mathematics is about finding solutions to well-defined problems, then philosophy is about finding problems in what previously we thought were well-settled solutions. Mark Steiner’s The Applicability of Mathematics As a Philosophical Problem mirrors both sides of this statement, admitting that mathematics is the key to solving problems in the physical sciences, but also asserting that this very applicability of Read More ›