This article, published by the Vancouver Sun, provides an in-depth look at the Cascadia region, and quotes Bruce Agnew, Co-director of Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center For Regional Development: I think at long last the idea of Cascadia is beginning to get some real traction,” said Bruce Agnew, who heads the Cascadia Center For Regional Development, a Seattle-based think-tank that counts Read More ›
The 10-year war mounted by EU bureaucrats and Europe’s communications giants against America’s leading wireless technology innovator, Qualcomm, is now reaching a climax. On Monday, Nokia refused to renew licenses on next generation technology following EU ally Broadcom’s suit at the International Trade Commission to bar import of cellphones containing Qualcomm chips from factories in Taiwan. A decade ago, with Read More ›
If politicians tell you they favor “tax reform” and “tax simplification,” what do you think they mean? The fact is most politicians, including the current presidential candidates, say they will give us tax reform and simplification, but what they mean differs widely. Each candidate will strive to try to define those words in such a way that will attract more Read More ›
Nowhere is the free exchange of ideas supposed to be more robust or uninhibited than on college campuses. Thus, it is disheartening that certain professors and even some journalists are seeking to prevent scientists and philosophers who support the theory of intelligent design from explaining their views at the Darwin v. Design conference on the Southern Methodist University campus Friday Read More ›
Brave New Bioethics Brave New Bioethics is a series of podcasts recorded by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith exploring the many policies and proposals in bioethics, bioscience, and animal liberation that threaten the belief that human life has worth merely and simply because it is human. Episodes are listed below. Cloning Double Talk Hospice Association Refuses to Denounce Read More ›
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 ›