origin of life | Page 7 | Discovery Institute

Art Deco ceiling of the National Academy of Sciences by Hildreth Meiere.

^{Casey Luskin
January 15, 2008
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The Facts about Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin
January 15, 2008
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A 1982 poll found that only 9% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes. Two years later, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued its first Science and Creationism booklet, stating that science and religion occupy "separate and mutually exclusive realms." ¹Public skepticism of evolution remained high — a 1993 poll found that only 11% of Americans believed that humans developed through purely natural evolutionary processes.

The Origin of Intelligent Design

_{Jonathan Witt
October 30, 2007
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The idea of intelligent design reaches back to Socrates and Plato, and the term “intelligent design” as an alternative to blind evolution was used as early as 1897. Read More ›

^{William A. Dembski
May 16, 2006
Intelligent Design

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Mere Creation

_{William A. Dembski
May 16, 2006
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This extensive volume contains essays by numerous Discovery Fellows who presented at an early intelligent design conference at Biola University in 1996. As Henry F. Shaefer III explains in the forward, the conference was not a typical “creationist” event, as “virtually none of the conference participants were creationists of the sort one frequently reads about in the popular press” and Read More ›

Edison style light bulb with double helix filament

^{Stephen C. Meyer
April 1, 2000
Intelligent Design

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DNA and Other Designs

_{Stephen C. Meyer
April 1, 2000
Intelligent Design

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For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists — from Plato to Aquinas to Newton — maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe Read More ›

^{Michael J. Behe
June 1, 1999
Intelligent Design

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God … Sort Of

_{Michael J. Behe
June 1, 1999
Intelligent Design

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Paul Davies should need little introduction to readers of First Things. A theoretical physicist and prolific author, he won the 1995 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. As the title of the address he gave in receiving the award indicates (“Physics and the Mind of God” [First Things, August/September 1995]) he does not hesitate to think about the Deeper Meaning Read More ›

^{Michael Denton
July 8, 1998
Intelligent Design

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Nature’s Destiny

_{Michael Denton
July 8, 1998
Intelligent Design

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While others search the skies for extraterrestrial life, Michael Denton has examined the recent discoveries in all the sciences to ask — Could life elsewhere be substantially different from life on Earth? Drawing on a staggering knowledge of physics, biochemistry, geology, and evolution, Denton builds a step-by-step argument for human inevitability. Life requires water, DNA, and protein; it can only Read More ›

^{Charles Thaxton and Stephen C. Meyer
January 1, 1998
Intelligent Design

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Theoretical Clay Feet

_{Charles Thaxton and Stephen C. Meyer
January 1, 1998
Intelligent Design

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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. Read More ›

^{Stephen C. Meyer
April 1, 1996
Intelligent Design

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The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism

_{Stephen C. Meyer
April 1, 1996
Intelligent Design

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Introduction Alfred North Whitehead once said that “when we consider what religion is for mankind and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.” Whitehead spoke early in this century at a time when most elite intellectuals believed that science Read More ›

^{William A. Dembski
March 1, 1996
Intelligent Design

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Alchemy, NK Boolean Style

_{William A. Dembski
March 1, 1996
Intelligent Design

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There’s an old joke about the philosopher Rudolf Carnap and his method of doing philosophy. According to the joke, Carnap’s method was to begin any philosophical investigation with the statement “Consider a formal language L.” As the good logical positivist he was, Carnap desired the precision inherent in formal languages. Unfortunately, precision has its price. Formal languages are not natural languages and the problems expressible in formal languages need not connect to actual problems in the real world. With formal languages the question ever remains whether they adequately capture the subject under investigation.

Appropriately modified, the joke about Rudolf Carnap can be retold about Stuart Kauffman and the scientific method he employs in At Home in the Universe. According to the modified joke, Kauffman’s method is to begin any scientific investigation with the statement “Consider an NK Boolean network.” Indeed, throughout At Home in the Universe just about every real-world problem gets translated into a toy-world problem involving NK Boolean networks. As with Carnap’s formal languages, NK Boolean networks have the advantage of complete logical precision. But they also suffer the disadvantage of losing touch with reality. And it is this disadvantage which ultimately proves the undoing of Kauffman’s project.

Literature Survey March 1996

_{Paul Nelson
March 1, 1996
Intelligent Design

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Charles Darwin on Social Darwinism Richard Weikart, “A Recently Discovered Darwin Letter on Social Darwinism,” Isis 86 (1995): 609-611. For many decades, historians have debated whether Darwin was himself a social Darwinist, i.e., someone who believed that human beings were and should be subject to the same competitive forces acting on all other living things. The debate is sharpened by Read More ›