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Transportation Washington February 2006 Newsletter

Central Puget Sound One Step Closer to Joint Highway and Transit Plan When it comes to tackling transportation challenges, we at the Cascadia Center have long advocated regional cooperation. And with its rapidly rising population and worsening congestion, Central Puget Sound is especially in need of a coordinated solution——similar to what has already worked in Vancouver, B.C., Denver, and San Read More ›

Gilder Responds to Wired: The Materialist Superstition

Editors Note: In October Wired magazine proclaimed on its cover “The Plot To Kill Evolution.” Inside readers found a story entitled “The Crusade Against Evolution” portraying work on the theory of intelligent design at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) as a religiously-motivated scheme to smuggle a disguised creationism into the public schools, rather than an evidence-based scientific Read More ›

DNA and the Origin of Life

Abstract: Many origin-of-life researchers now regard the origin of biological information as the central problem facing origin-of-life research. Yet, the term 'information' can designate several theoretically distinct concepts. By distinguishing between specified and unspecified information, this essay seeks to eliminate definitional ambiguity associated with the term 'information' as used in biology. It does this in order to evaluate competing explanations for the origin of biological information. In particular, this essay challenges the causal adequacy of naturalistic chemical evolutionary explanations for the origin of specified biological information, whether based upon "chance," "necessity," or the combination. Instead, it argues that our present knowledge of causal powers suggests intelligent design or agent causation as a better, more causally adequate, explanation for the origin of specified biological information. Read More ›
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The Advent of the Algorithm

Mathematician David Berlinski, a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, explains how the "algorithm" is sure to play a major role in the future of mathematics. An algorithm, Berlinski explains, is essentially a logical, mathematical procedure by which a goal can be accomplished in a finite number of steps. Read More ›
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Darwin’s Black Box

In Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe argues that evidence of evolution’s limits has been right under our noses, but its undoing is evident at such a small scale that we have only recently been able to see it. The field of biochemistry, begun when Watson and Crick discovered the double-helical shape of DNA, has unlocked the secrets of the cell. There, biochemists have unexpectedly discovered a world of Lilliputian complexity. As Behe engagingly demonstrates, using the examples of vision, bloodclotting, cellular transport, and more, the biochemical world comprises an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there must have been a series of mutations, each of which produced its own working machine, that led to the complexity we can now see. The more complex and interdependent each machine’s parts are shown to be, the harder it is to defend Darwin’s gradualistic paths. Behe surveys the professional science literature and shows that it is completely silent on the subject, stymied by the elegance of the foundation of life. Could it be that there is some greater force at work?

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Cover of Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology

Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began billions of years ago with a cataclysmic explosion, the “Big Bang.” But was this explosion created by God? The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received Read More ›

The-Soul-of-Science-Pearcey-Thaxton

The Soul of Science

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 ›

Darwinism-Science-or-Philosoph-scaled

Darwinism: Science or Philosophy

This volume presents papers presented at an early conference at Southern Methodist University in 1992 which was a landmark event in uniting scholars who now make up the intelligent design movement. Phillip Johnson, Program Advisor for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, explains that evolution is based upon assumptions of naturalism, which are often unsupported by the evidence. Johnson Read More ›

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Darwin On Trial

Darwin on Trial was responsible for alerting many among the public and in the scientific community to the deficiencies of Darwinism. UC Berkeley Law Professor and Program Advisor for Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, Phillip E. Johnson applies his skills as an analyzer of evidence to ask if Darwin’s theory holds up to scrutiny. Johnson begins by recognizing Read More ›