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Plato’s Revenge

David Klinghoffer
April 28, 2025
First there was the genetic revolution — the discovery that physical structures in the cell, including DNA and RNA, shape every organism. Now, says evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, we are overdue for another and more profound revolution. Recent findings reveal that genetic and even epigenetic sources alone cannot account for the rich dynamism of life — not even close. Some other informational source is required.

Stockholm Syndrome Christianity

John G. West
February 3, 2025
What if American culture isn’t collapsing because of crusading secularists? What if it’s failing because leading Christians identify more with secular elites than with their fellow believers? Those are the provocative questions posed by Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, which exposes how influential Christian leaders are siding with their anti-Christian cultural captors on everything from biblical authority and science to sex, race, and religious liberty.

Biology’s Big Bang: The Cambrian Explosion

Paul Chien
August 15, 2024
Darwinian evolution predicts the gradual emergence of new life forms in the history of life. But the fossil record tells a different story. Journey with Professor Paul K. Chien to Chengjiang, China, and the world’s most extraordinary Cambrian fossil site. As he shows, this fossil site (along with many others around the world) points not to gradual evolution but to the sudden appearance of entirely new animal body plans. The best explanation? Intelligent design. About the In a Nutshell Series This series of booklets was created to help Discovery Society members educate themselves about the basic arguments for intelligent design and the critiques of Darwinian evolution. Each booklet presents the content of one chapter of Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. To help you …

Evolution’s Irreducible Complexity Problem

Robert P. Waltzer
August 15, 2024
Join professor of biology Robert Waltzer as he shows how some evolutionists play a bait-and-switch game. They give examples of microevolution, such as changes in the average beak size of Galapagos finches, and then act as if this proves macroevolution—that is, the evolution of entirely new body plans in the history of life. Not so fast, Waltzer says. An insurmountable obstacle stands in the way of large-scale evolutionary change: irreducible complexity. What’s more, your own body is actually an irreducibly complex system of irreducibly complex systems, pointing strongly to intelligent design. About the In a Nutshell Series This series of booklets was created to help Discovery Society members educate themselves about the basic arguments for intelligent design and the …

Factories that Build Factories

Eric H. Anderson
August 15, 2024
Evolutionists acknowledge that without a self-replicating entity, the Darwinian process has nothing to work with. So how could mindless chemicals have built the first self-replicating entity to kickstart Darwinian evolution? As design theorist Eric Anderson explains, evolutionists suggest that something simple—like a self-replicating molecule—kickstarted the origin of life on Earth. But is that idea realistic? As it turns out, engineers are trying to build a self-replicating machine, and while they are nowhere close to succeeding, their efforts reveal that even the simplest self-replicating system must be unimaginably sophisticated. Mindless processes aren’t up to the task. What’s required is a most intelligent designer.  About the In a Nutshell Series This series of …

The Origin of Life and the Information Problem

Eric H. Anderson
August 15, 2024
The realization in the twentieth century that even the simplest cells are packed with software tells us something profound about the origin of life. Design theorist and computer programmer Eric Anderson relates the exciting history of the discovery of DNA and shows how the dance of this digital information in each of our cells points insistently away from blind evolution. About the In a Nutshell Series This series of booklets was created to help Discovery Society members educate themselves about the basic arguments for intelligent design and the critiques of Darwinian evolution. Each booklet presents the content of one chapter of Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. To help you delve deeper into each subject, we have included in each book a list of recommended resources …

The Big Bang and the Fine-tuned Universe

Robert A. Alston
August 15, 2024
In easy-to-understand language, former NASA special projects engineer Robert Alston tackles cosmology’s profoundest questions: Where did the universe come from, and how were its laws and constants finely tuned to allow for life? From Albert Einstein’s biggest blunder to the perfect parameters that allow fragile life to persevere, this mini-book explores how astronomy and physics point to a cosmic architect. About the In a Nutshell Series This series of booklets was created to help Discovery Society members educate themselves about the basic arguments for intelligent design and the critiques of Darwinian evolution. Each booklet presents the content of one chapter of Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell. To help you delve deeper into each subject, we have included in …

The Farm at the Center of the Universe

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jonathan Witt
May 21, 2024
Why did Isaac’s father have to die so young? Isaac’s older cousin Charlie — a science teacher — says he knows why. Nature is pitiless. There’s no God. No afterlife. Just atoms in the void and the struggle for survival. Charlie says a week at their grandparents’ farm, seeing animals get killed and eaten, will prove it. But at the farm, both of them get more than they bargained for. And soon Isaac finds himself caught in a battle of wits between two men, and facing a choice he alone can make. …

The Big Bang Revolutionaries

Jean-Pierre Luminet
April 23, 2024
Hubble and Einsten are often credited, but the real heroes of the Big Bang revolution are the Russian Alexander Friedmann and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître. The Big Bang Revolutionaries amends the record, telling the remarkable story of how these two men, joined by the mischievous George Gamow and in the face of conventional scientific wisdom, offered a compelling view of a singular creation of the universe in what Lemaître termed a “primeval atom.”

Darwin’s Bluff

Robert Shedinger
February 12, 2024
In this fascinating piece of historical detective work, Robert Shedinger draws on Darwin’s letters, private notebooks, and an unfinished manuscript to piece together a puzzle and reveal an embarrassing truth: Darwin never finished his sequel to The Origin of Species because in the end he could not deliver the empirical evidence he promised would validate his theory.

The Design Inference

William A. Dembski and Winston Ewert
November 16, 2023
A landmark of the intelligent design movement, The Design Inference revolutionized our understanding of how we detect intelligent causation. Originally published twenty-five years ago, it has now been revised and expanded into a second edition that greatly sharpens its exploration of design inferences.

Minding the Brain

Angus J. L. Menuge, Brian Krouse, and Robert J. Marks II
September 19, 2023
Is your mind the same thing as your brain, or are there aspects of mind beyond the brain’s biology? This is the mind-body problem, and it has captivated curious minds since the dawn of human contemplation. Today many insist that the mind is completely reducible to the brain. But is that claim justified? In this stimulating anthology, twenty-five philosophers and scientists offer fresh insights into the mind-brain debate, drawing on psychology, neurology, philosophy, computer science, and neurosurgery. Their provocative conclusion? The mind is indeed more than the brain. Online Content Introduction and Table of Contents Chapter 11—In What Sense Is Consciousness a Property? Chapter 20—Consciousness and Quantum Information Chapter 24—Can Consciousness Be Explained By …

Science After Babel

David Berlinski
June 5, 2023
Polymath and raconteur David Berlinski is at it again, challenging the shibboleths of contemporary science with his inimitable blend of deep learning, close reasoning, and rapier wit. In Science After Babel he reflects on everything from Newton, Einstein, and Gödel to catastrophe theory, information theory, and the morass that is modern Darwinism. The scientific enterprise is unarguably impressive, but it shows no sign of reaching the empyrean heights it seemed to promise a century ago. “It resembles Bruegel’s Tower of Babel,” Berlinski says, “and if it suggests anything at all, it suggests that its original plans have somehow been lost.” Science endures. Scientism, it would seem, is guttering out. Plaudits Many will read this book for the close, elegant …

Darwin Comes to Africa

Olufemi Oluniyi
February 21, 2023
Charles Darwin fathered not just a scientific theory, but a toxic social ideology that fueled racist colonial policies in Africa. In this sobering book, African scholar Olufemi Oluniyi traces the insidious impact of Darwinian ideas on British imperial policies in Northern Nigeria. Drawing on official documents, public statements, and well-attested historical events, Oluniyi documents how concepts such as evolutionary racism and survival of the fittest were systematically used to demean black Africans, consigning some people to a status of permanent inferiority. Rejecting Social Darwinism, Oluniyi makes a compelling argument for the equality of all human beings, and for recognizing Africa’s many seminal contributions to the history of human civilization. Praise Ideas rule the …

Your Designed Body

Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman
November 22, 2022
Consider your body. Every day it must solve hundreds of hard engineering problems simultaneously, or else you’ll die. While you’re going about your daily business, your body stores, retrieves, translates, and manages software for thousands of proteins, switches, setpoints, thresholds, feedback loops, coordinate systems, counters, and timers. It disassembles thousands of different complex molecules, converts them into their building blocks, absorbs the building blocks, then reassembles them into the legions of chemicals and proteins that keep you going. Your body also safely transports hazardous chemicals to where they’re needed, without spilling them in places where they’d do harm, and employs them as it orchestrates thousands of complex processes and movements, some nearly …

Non-Computable You

Robert J. Marks II
June 20, 2022
Will machines someday replace attorneys, physicians, computer programmers, and world leaders? What about composers, painters, and novelists? Will tomorrow’s supercomputers duplicate and exceed humans? Are we just wetware, natural computers doomed to obsolescence by tomorrow’s ultra-powerful artificial intelligence? In Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will, Robert J. Marks II answers these and other fascinating questions with his trademark blend of whimsy and expertise. Catch a glimpse of the geniuses behind today’s AI — their foibles, follies, and friendships — as told by someone on the inside. Under the author’s steady and winsome guidance, learn about the exciting possibilities for artificial intelligence, but also hear how many of the …