Charles Thaxton

Fellow, Center for Science and Culture

Charles Thaxton received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Iowa State University. He completed two post-doctoral programs, one in history of science at Harvard University and the second in the molecular biology laboratories of Brandeis University.

He has specialized in the origin of life and in science’s relationship with Christianity through history.

He is co-author of The Mystery of Life’s Origin and also The Soul of Science. He is Academic Editor of the high school biology book Of Pandas and People. He has contributed significant chapters to the books God and Culture and The Creation Hypothesis.

He has published technical articles in Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, Journal of Scientific Instruments, and Journal of Cell Biology.

He has lectured widely in American universities including Princeton University, Yale University, University of Michigan, University of Delaware, Rice University, Texas Universtiy, Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, and Harvard Law School.

He has lectured outside the country at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science, the Russian Academy of Science, and in various universities in Mongolia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia.

He has held appointments at Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, the Biomathematical Institute in Craiova, Romania, and at Charles University in Prague, where he was a Templeton scholar in the department of natural sciences.

He is a member of American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of American Institute of Chemistry, American Scientific Affiliation, and Discovery Institute.

He and his wife Carole homeschooled two sons, both of whom are college graduates. He is a survivor of two bouts of cancer, which left him with one leg and one lung. He and his wife reside near Atlanta, Georgia, where they teach homeschooled teens at Konos Academy. He also is writing two books, punctuated by speaking stints.

Archives

Walter Bradley on the Mystery of Life’s Origin

Dr. Walter Bradley reflects on his seminal work at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith
The origin of life from non-life remains one of the most enduring mysteries of modern science. Dr. Walter Bradley explains why materialist suppositions fail as science, pointing to the need for an intelligent author of the first life. At the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith his presentation explored the paradox-filled intellectual world of origin-of-life research. According to Bradley, Read More ›

The Mystery of Life’s Origin

The Continuing Controversy
The origin of life from non-life remains one of the most enduring mysteries of modern science. The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy investigates how close scientists are to solving that mystery and explores what we are learning about the origin of life from current research in chemistry, physics, astrobiology, biochemistry, and more. The book includes an updated version of the Read More ›

Theoretical Clay Feet

Have you ever seen a wooden bead in a pocket calculator? Sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? But calculators have not always contained such "high tech" components as silicon and plastic. The primitive abacus relied on racks of wooden beads to perform mathematical calculations. Of course our modern version retains none of the wooden components of its "low tech" precursor.

Human Rights: Blessed by God or Begrudged by Government

Even as the double-helix discovery, the quantum theory and the development of a polio vaccine have manifested some of man's most ennobling capabilities, the gulags and gas chambers have demonstrated with equal force that scientific prowess alone does not confirm the existence of civilization — if civilization is to be measured by a commitment to protecting human rights.

A New Design Argument

Just when scientists thought they understood how natural processes explained the order of the universe, they discovered a very special kind of complexity, called information, in nature. Experience had taught them that, wherever they found information, they could be sure of finding an intelligence behind it. As a result of 20th century discoveries, scientists are learning that the very methods they had used to discover natural causes (reasoning from experience) now point to an intelligent cause.

The Soul of Science

Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy
A metanarrative has become ingrained in our culture which states that science is the means by which we threw off our religious superstitions and entered a brave new world of reason and progress. Does this metanarrative itself need to be overthrown? In this work Discovery Institute Fellows Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton explain how Christian theism has played a vital Read More ›