The Religious Implications of Teaching Evolution
Robert E. Hemenway, chancellor of the University of Kansas, declared war on creationism in his essay ("The Evolution of a Controversy in Kansas Shows Why Scientists Must Defend the Search for Truth," Opinion, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 29). He characterized the Kansas Board of Education as wishing to destroy the idea that the public schools should be a source of truth or certainty, and quoted various hyperbolic comments that gave the impression that the board had discarded science in favor of the Book of Genesis. His worries are greatly exaggerated, but there is much to be said for the remedy he proposes. Read More ›
Suicide Unlimited in Oregon
LAST WEEK, Congress took up the issues of pain control and physician-assisted suicide, with the House voting 271-156 to pass the Pain Relief Promotion Act. The legislation, if passed, would improve pain control while deterring physician-assisted suicide. Doctors who prescribe lethal drugs for the purpose of killing their terminally ill patients would be subject to losing their federal licenses to Read More ›
Don’t Kill the Pain Relief Bill
Last week, by a vote of 271-156, the House approved the Pain Relief Promotion Act, designed to promote effective medical treatment of pain while deterring the misuse of narcotics and other controlled substances for assisted suicide. The bill’s passage prompted an outpouring of hyperbole and misinformation from opponents. Here are the facts about the act: It would not outlaw assisted Read More ›
Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate Specified Complexity
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 ›
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 Read More ›
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 ›