Discovery Institute Senior Fellows William Dembski and Jay Richards launch a scathing attack on naturalistic philosophy in this anthology aimed at a Christian audience, with various chapters explaining why naturalism is failing as a philosophical paradigm.

Richards notes that naturalism as a philosophy is impossible to establish, for it relies upon proof of the negative claim that there is no supernatural. Richards further argues that naturalism bows too strongly before Ockham's razor, in that it is not appropriate to rule out the supernatural as an explanation if the supernatural may indeed exist. Finally, Richards recognizes that scholars sometimes make...

Biophysicist and Discovery Fellow Cornelius Hunter scrutinizes the evidence used to support Darwinian theory. Not only does Hunter find that the scientific evidence for Neo-Darwinism is weak, but he exposes that much of evolutionary theory has historically been built upon dysteleological arguments against design. In other words, evolution grew in popularity because it argued against a particular theological position, not because of its overwhelmingly powerful evidence.

Darwin argued that the best way he could explain suffering in the natural world was through natural selection. Darwin's theological motivations behind evolution are revealed when he asks "what advantage can there be...

In law, one who sells a product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user is held strictly liable for the physical harm to the injured party. One way for the injured party to win a case is to successfully argue that there is a design defect in the product. Put another way, the plaintiff is entitled to damages because there is something wrong with the blueprints for the product. At this point, expert witnesses are found to testify to the design's integrity or its defectiveness.

Perhaps the most common blind spot that inhibits the proper functioning...

In his earlier book, Darwin on Trial, UC Berkeley law professor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk Phillip Johnson took on the scientific establishment. In Reason in the Balance, Johnson spars with those of his own kind, and exposes how the legal establishment has adopted naturalistic assumptions in its thinking to exclude any mention of a creative intelligence.

Johnson, who is also Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, begins by asking the question, "Is God Unconstitutional?" By this question, Johnson really means that our culture behaves as if beliefs about God, religion, or morality...

This volume contains a debate between design advocate Phillip E. Johnson and evolutionary biologist Denis Lamoureux, with commentary from other scholars in this debate. Though differing in opinion over evolution, all contributors are Christians who conduct the discussion in a civil manner.

Dr. Lamoureux asks challenging questions of Johnson, asserting that Johnson's position is based upon "God-of-the-gaps" type arguments. Lamoureax also challenges Johnson's arguments on the fossil record, claiming that there are examples of transitional forms. Lamoureax ends by pressing Johnson to list "how many university-level courses you have successfully completed in biology, and could you be specific...

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 a stark contradiction in the law: creationism has been banned by the courts because it is "religion," yet evolution is permitted despite the fact that evolutionary literature is full of anti-religious arguments. Johnson might be willing to tolerate this...

Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds is directed at a lay audience who is trying to understand how to open up serious dialogue over evolution. UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson and program advisor for the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, explains that the core question in the creation/evolution debate is not about the age of the earth, but about whether life is the result of purely unguided processes or some intelligent design. Johnson advises Christian readers not to assume that God played no role in the creation process, nor to concede that faith is merely subjective while science...

Objections Sustained is a collection of essays by UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson, also the Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. In the first half of the book, Johnson presents nine short chapters about Darwinists and Darwinism. Johnson first takes aim at the myth that science and religion occupy completely separate realms. This myth, formally approved for public consumption by the National Academy of Sciences, is refuted by famous proponents of Darwinism like Thomas H. Huxley, who viewed Darwinism as the antidote to letting the "Divine foot in the door."

Johnson also recounts other...

The Right Questions is the product of an accomplished scholar who is reflecting upon culture and society in light of his other books which provided an extensive scientific critique of naturalistic theories of origins. In this book, Phillip Johnson, Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, asks, "What are the right questions" in topics such as logic, the meaning of life, Genesis, and biological origins? It is only by asking the right questions that we will find the appropriate solutions to problems faced by society.

Johnson opens this book with a frank discussion of how...

Many Darwinists gloat over having supposedly exposed the allegedly secretive "Wedge project." What they never acknowledge (or realize) is that Phillip Johnson openly discussed the full meaning of the "Wedge" in this book years before the widespread internet circulation of the supposedly super secret "Wedge document," which summarized many of the points in this book in order to clarify for our supporters the important cultural implications of the battle over intelligent design, and explain the importance of forging ahead by calling attention to the growing body of scientific evidence for design in nature.

In this book, Johnson, also...

Recent discoveries in physics, cosmology, and biochemistry have reinvigorated the argument for design. This accessible and serious volume collects leading scholars from many sides over the debate on intelligent design to assess the concept from philosophical, theological, and scientific standpoints.

Discovery Fellow William Lane Craig applies William Dembski's explanatory filter to the question of cosmic design. Craig first observes that the universe is, against very high odds, fine-tuned to permit the existence of advanced life. Under William Dembski's explanatory filter, Craig argues that law cannot account for the state of the universe, the claim that the universe must...

For Christians, the issues raised by the different views on creation and evolution can be challenging. Can a "young earth" be reconciled with a universe that appears to be billions of years old? Does scientific evidence point to a God who designed the universe and life in all its complexity?

Three Views on Creation and Evolution deals with these and similar concerns as it looks at three dominant schools of Christian thought. Proponents of young earth creationism, old earth creationism, and theistic evolution each present their different views, tell why the controversy is important, and describe the interplay...

Feeling primitive? Unevolved? Inorganic? Then try a bowl of Primordial Soup! What's Darwin Got To Do With It? is an illustrated friendly conversation about evolution and what science can explain about life. Aimed at younger students, this comic-book style work helps students understand if finch beaks really prove Darwinism is true or if the encoded message in DNA implies an intelligent designer.

The book opens by helping students to understand important terminology. What does evolution mean? Some people say evolution just means change through time. But simple evidence of change does not necessarily mean that new phyla can emerge...

In this award-winning book, Nancy Pearcey, a Fellow of the Discovery Institute, presents an analysis of the impact that Darwinism has had upon our culture. Pearcey starts by observing that our culture has separated "truth" into two categories. In the "upper story" is noncognitive experience. This is the realm of private truth which ranges from favorite ice-cream flavors to one's preferred religious denomination. Our culture believes this realm is purely subjective and unverifiable. But in the "lower story" is what our culture considers to be verifiable: hard, factual, scientific knowledge.

If Darwinism is true, Pearcey observes, religion and...

The concept of altruism, or disinterested concern for another's welfare, is a common human characteristic, and has been discussed by everyone from theologians to biologists. This volume brings together renowned researchers from various disciplines to examine the evolutionary, neurological, developmental, psychological, social, cultural, and religious aspects of altruistic behavior.

Altruism is most famously recognized as occurring within a biological family, often called kin-altruism. However in human societies altruism goes well beyond mere familial relations and is "widely lauded and is commonly considered the foundation for a moral life." (pg. 3) Altruism is recognized as affirmation and care for...

In the closing session of the 1998 Telecosm conference, hosted by Gilder Publishing and Forbes at Lake Tahoe, inventor and author Ray Kurzweil engaged a number of critics. He advocated "Strong Artificial Intelligence" (AI), the claim that a computational process sufficiently capable of altering or organizing itself can produce "consciousness. The session had an unexpectedly profound impact, not least because a number of important issues from technology to philosophy converge on this one issue. This volume reproduces and expands upon that initial discussion.

Esteemed AI advocate Ray Kurzweil opens the volume arguing that by 2019, a personal computer will rival...

According to philosopher Jay Richards, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, the essential tenets of classical theism on the doctrine of God can be stated simply. First, God exists. Second, He created the world - meaning, everything other than God - in such a way that the world owes its existence and individual features to him. Thirdly, God created the world freely - that is, nothing external or internal to God compelled him to create this or any other world. Theists also believe that God is maximally perfect His qualities like knowledge, power, goodness, love, freedom, existence, holiness, and justice. As...

Discovery Institute Fellow Henry F. (Fritz) Schaefer is one of the most distinguished physical scientists in the world. This book describes how Dr. Schaefer became a Christian as a young professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.

Schaefer sees design in the universe reigning from the cosmic level to life's history as revealed in the fossil record, and down to the microscopic cell. He argues that Big Bang cosmology provides compelling evidence for the notion of creation out of nothing. Moreover, the rapid origin of the phyla in the Cambrian explosion provides a powerful challenge...

In Why Is a Fly Not a Horse?, published by Discovery Institute Press, editor of the prestigious Italian biology journal Rivista di Biologia, Giuseppe Sermonti, explains why evolution resembles a "paradigm" more than it does an explanation. Scientists assume that the theory and its implications (such as universal common descent) are true, but no one can ever explain the details of precisely why it is. According to Sermonti, naturalistic theories of biological origins are science-stoppers.

Sermonti explains that biology has advanced greatly when naturalistic theories of biological origins have been disproved. For example, in 1688 Francesco Redi performed an...

In Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow, attorney, and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith asks the simple but difficult question, "should the importance of human life be sacrificed for the potential advancement of human technology?" So provocative are Smith's ideas, that his writings have led to a quote on Starbucks coffee cups!

Cloning researchers claim to have created an embryo that is mostly human, but also part animal. Biotech companies brag about manufacturing human embryos as "product" for use in medical treatments. Echoing long-discredited master-race thinking, James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize for discovering...

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith takes aim at the arguments permeating our culture that devalue human life. Smith makes readers aware of the historic roots of the modern euthanasia movement, which today repeats arguments made by Nazis and proponents of eugenics tied back to 19th century social Darwinism.

Smith, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, is extremely sensitive to the plight of the suffering and the dying. One of Smith's primary points is that while death comes to us all, those suffering through terminal diseases can make use of painkillers to ease their difficulties:

"Assisted suicide...

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A seminal work for the theory of intelligent design, this book provides a scientific critique of the prevailing paradigmatic theories of chemical evolution. The authors include Discovery fellows Charles Thaxton and Walter Bradley, and they conclude that the prebiotic soup from which the first cell supposedly arose is a myth. The Miller-Urey experiments employed an unrealistic gas mixture, and there is no geological evidence for its existence in Earth's distant past. The "soup" faces a myriad of other problems, such as inevitable rapid destruction at the hands of radiation.

The authors also take aim at the dominant paradigm...

Authored by developmental biologist and Senior Discovery Fellow Jonathan Wells, this book takes aim at 10 common "icons" used to bolster Darwin's theory in widely used biology textbooks. The "icons" commonly cited to support evolution in textbooks turn out to be scientific urban legends, long-refuted fakes, or misrepresentations of the scientific data.

One of the most famous "icons" discussed is the famous drawings of vertebrate embryos, used in many textbooks to claim that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (that is, the development of an embryo replays its evolutionary history). There's only one problem with these popular drawings: they were based...

The debate over evolution is usually framed by the media as a political fight of left versus right. But a small cadre of conservative commentators and scholars, such as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, John Derbyshire, and Larry Arnhart, have become defenders of Darwinism. Darwin's Conservatives: The Misguided Quest asks whether conservatives-traditionally known as the champions of personal responsibility, family values, theism, and limited government-are wise to embrace Darwin. In this short but compelling book, John West, political scientist and Discovery Institute's Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs, gives many reasons why conservatives should think twice before promoting Darwinism.

Nearly 30 years ago physicist Steven Weinberg wrote that "[t]he more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." But is our universe really just a meaningless accident? A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, co-authored by Discovery Institute senior fellows Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, makes the philosophical argument that the more we learn about our universe, the more it seems laden with meaning.

Wiker and Witt's examples of design and beauty in nature are striking and varied, pointing to examples from many familiar subjects. Using a famous analogy...