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It's a no-holds-barred attack on Christianity to advance the opposing worldview, and if that means smearing as racist a — *checks notes* — time-tested historical account in which a divine Middle Eastern man is the central figure, so be it.“Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy” is Scientific American’s not-so-subtle way of saying this synonymous phrase: “The Bible is racist.”It would be easy to dismiss the whole article as record-setting idiocy or editorial catfishing. After all, what editor at a magazine with “scientific” in the name green-lights an article arguing that the religion that worships a man born...

Science Newsfrom research organizations Breeding humans: Utopias from the early modern period Date: March 29, 2016 Source: Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum Summary: The idea to improve humans and to optimise procreation emerged long before genetic engineering. As far back as the 18th century, concepts did exist that appear unthinkable from the modern perspective. Share: FULL STORY The idea to improve humans and to optimise procreation emerged long before genetic engineering. As far back as the 18th century, concepts did exist that appear unthinkable from the modern perspective. In the wake of the Enlightenment, medical sciences rose to power, and economists and administrative scientists...

<p>“The commonly cited case for intelligent design appeals to: (a) the irreducible complexity of (b) some aspects of life. But complex arguments invite complex refutations (valid or otherwise), and the claim that only some aspects of life are irreducibly complex implies that others are not, and so the average person remains unconvinced. Here I use another principle—autopoiesis (self-making)—to show that all aspects of life lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. Autopoiesis provides a compelling case for intelligent design in three stages: (i) autopoiesis is universal in all living things, which makes it a pre-requisite for life, not an end product of natural selection; (ii) the inversely-causal, information-driven, structured hierarchy of autopoiesis is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry; and (iii) there is an unbridgeable abyss between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environmental and the perfectly-pure, single-molecule precision of biochemistry.”</p>

SEATTLE — "The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work," said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation's leading think tank researching the scientific theory known as intelligent design. “He has conflated Discovery Institute’s position with that of the Dover school board, and he totally misrepresents intelligent design and the motivations of the scientists who research it.” “A legal ruling...

An international group of scientists have filed a "friend of the court" brief with federal Judge John E. Jones III advising him that "the identification of intelligent causes is a well-established scientific practice" and asking him to allow "the freedom of scientists to pursue scientific evidence wherever it may lead." Jones is presiding over the Dover intelligent design trial. The 24-page brief — carrying the names of 85 scientists in fields including chemistry, molecular biology, mathematics, neurological surgery and environmental science — states "the definition of science and the boundaries of science should be left to scientists to debate." "Any...

A paleontologist testified in the Dover school board trial about how fossils connect species.The ancestor of the whale and its first cousin the hippopotamus walked the Earth for 40 million years, munching on plants, before dying out in the ice ages. Known as the anthracotheres, it became extinct 50 to 60 million years ago, but not before its evolutionary tree diverged — the whale forging into the oceans, the hippopotamus to the African swamps. Kevin Padian, a University of California-Berkeley paleontologist, told the story of the whale’s journey, along with the travels of its closest living relative, in U.S....

All biological organisms compete for limited resources. The successful ones reproduce, and their species survive to another generation. And when species are in direct competition, the one that wins is the one that reproduces fastest -- according to the traditional rules of population genetics. But recent research indicates that rapid reproduction may not always be the winning evolutionary ticket. When mutation rates are low, says Chris Adami of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the standard rule applies. But when mutation rates are high, a different principle applies, which Adami and his colleagues call "survival of the flattest." Adami hasn't...