evolution

Intelligent Design Could Offer Fresh Ideas on Evolution

There is a growing public debate over how best to teach evolution in America’s schools. But contrary to Alan Leshner (” ‘Intelligent design’ theory threatens science classrooms,” Nov. 22), that debate is not focused on requiring students to learn the theory of intelligent design. Neither the Cobb County School Board in Georgia nor the Ohio State Board of Education mentioned Read More ›

Has Darwin Met His Match?

In the December 2002 issue of Commentary, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow, David Berlinski, offered this thoughtful, respectful, mid-course evaluation of intelligent design. David has established some important intellectual milestones that have been passed, as well as setting goal lines yet to be met. For another mid-course evaluation see William Dembski’s Becoming a Disciplined Science For letters & responses to this Read More ›

The Third Mode of Explanation

In our workaday lives we find it important to distinguish between three modes of explanation: necessity, change, and design. More generally, given an event, object, or structure, we want to know: Did it have to happen? Did it happen by accident? Did an intelligent agent cause it to happen? Read More ›
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moth sitting on a piece of wood

Weird Science?

From Christianity Today: “Last week, we posted a letter from scientists Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick in response to a piece by Jonathan Wells in the September/October issue of Books & Culture, dealing with the notorious peppered moth experiments. This week, we have given Wells an opportunity to respond. At stake are fundamental questions about truthfulness in debate — matters Read More ›

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Envelopes

A Scientific Scandal?

Dan-e. Nilsson I appreciate the opportunity to respond to David Berlinski’s essay on the 1994 paper I authored with Susanne Pelger called “A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve” [“A Scientific Scandal,” April]. Because it gives them credibility, I generally do not debate pseudo-scientists, but I have decided to make an exception here. Apart from Read More ›

Transcript-NPR Talk of the Nation / Science Friday

IRA FLATOW, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION/SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m Ira Flatow. Efforts to influence how evolution is taught in the classroom has been picking up steam lately. This month, the nation’s largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, passed a resolution urging policy-makers to oppose teaching what is called the ‘intelligent design’ theory within Read More ›

Alien Ideas

Original We tend to consider speculation about extraterrestrials to be a recent phenomenon, a task forced on us by the scientific knowledge we’ve gained during the last century. It’s rather surprising, perhaps, to find out that the debate about whether there is extraterrestrial life stretches back just shy of two and a half millennia. Given the antiquity of the question, Read More ›