Here we go again. For the fourth time in eight years, a bill is moving through the California Legislature to legalize physician-assisted suicide. If history is any guide, assisted-suicide proponents and the media will cast the debate in strictly religious terms — as the Catholic Church versus rational modernists. But the coalition opposing AB374 is a broad and diverse political Read More ›
While the American cultural landscape includes many religions, it’s still fascinating to watch closely when we have the chance to observe a new faith being born. Consider, for example, a religious phenomenon that has been dubbed the “new atheism,” prominently represented by some bestselling books. Can disbelief in God be considered “religious”? Sure. Just ask Zen Buddhists, who worship no Read More ›
Mu süda, ärka üles ja kiida Loojat lauldes,Kes kõik head meile annab ja muret ikka kannab. Kui magama ma heitsin, end Isa sülle peitsin,mind saatan püüdis neelda, kuid Jumal võttis keelda. Wake up, my heart, and sing praise to the CreatorWho gives us all good things and bears all our worries. When I went to sleep, I hid myself in Read More ›
Stephen Meyer remembers the parade of prominent provocative thinkers who traipsed through McFarlin Auditorium in the mid-1980s when he was studying graduate-level mathematics at Southern Methodist University. So he’s bemused by the stance of the university’s science professors, who recently tried to shut down a conference he organized for April 13-14 at McFarlin with co-sponsorship by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society. Dubbed “Darwin Versus Design,” the confab will focus on intelligent design, or the theory that life has its genesis in intelligence rather than Darwinian randomness and natural selection.
“The largest objection began with the title itself,” says Larry Ruben, chair of SMU’s biology department. “This was going to be some kind of a scientific debate, Darwin versus intelligent design.”
Ruben protests the conference is misleading and dishonest—not really a debate about competing origin-of-life theories at all, since there are no Darwinists on the conference panel. It is simply an intelligent design binge. “What really irked the most was it appeared to be a program on science on something that scientists don’t accept as being science.”
Michael Keas, professor of the history and philosophy of science at Biola University in Southern California and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, an I.D.-promoting group that is organizing the conference, makes no apologies for the exclusion of Darwinists. “The other side has traditionally had a monopoly in higher education,” he says. “So this is a good opportunity for design theorists to make their case.”
But Meyer, who as director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is a featured speaker at the conference, says objections such as Ruben’s stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of intelligent design theory emanating from distorted media portrayals and U.S. District Judge John E. Jones’ December 2005 ruling in a Dover, Pennsylvania, lawsuit challenging a school board’s requirement that biology teachers mention I.D. Jones ruled intelligent design is not science because it doesn’t put forward any testable hypotheses.
Read More ›If you knew how to make life better for your fellow Americans, would you? The political class in Washington constantly claims it “cares about you,” but when it comes to policy many do just the opposite. Most people understand the Republicans messed up by allowing nondefense spending to grow faster than the economy. The Democrats ran against the irresponsible Republicans Read More ›
Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Ronald Brownstein writes that the Western U.S. is poised to lead on alternative energy. The "sagebrush rebellion" resource extraction push of decades past has given way to "a renewable revolution" bearing both real promise and all the expected consumer cost caveats, Brownstein posits.
Read More ›This article, published by The Christian Post, mentions Discovery Institute: In response to SMU science professors protests against next weeks Darwin vs. Design conference on campus, Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute, sent a letter to the chairs of three departments at the school. The rest of the article can be found here.
As the congressional debate over embryonic stem cell research reignites after the Easter recess, few will recall the passing anniversary of another great bioethics debate. Only one century ago, eugenics the attempt to improve the human race through better breeding was all the rage in the scientific world. And this spring marks the centenary of the world’s first Read More ›
Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (March 2007). When thousands of furious Muslims rallied in the streets of the West Bank, Pakistan, and Indonesia to protest Benedict XVIs Regensburg address, many commentators spoke with pessimistic alarm about the clash of civilizations that had now become increasingly manifest. The reason for this peril, it was claimed, was religion of any kind. Thus, Read More ›
This article, published by The Christian Post, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay W. Richards: One ID proponent, Jay Richards, research fellow of the Acton Institute and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, recently spoke at a recent “Darwin vs. Design” conference in Knoxville, Tenn. … Apart from his busy schedule, Richards Read More ›