Science

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 …

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.

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 …

The Miracle of Man

_{Michael Denton
May 10, 2022}

According to Michael Denton, the cosmos is stunningly fit not just for cellular life, not just for carbon-based animal life, and not even just for air-breathing animals, but especially for bipedal, land-roving, technology-pursuing creatures of our general physiological design.

A Mousetrap for Darwin

_{Michael J. Behe
November 17, 2020}

Darwin’s Black Box thrust Michael Behe to the forefront of the intelligent design movement. The Lehigh University biochemist has haunted the dreams of Darwinists ever since. Each of his three books sparked a firestorm of criticism, in everything from the New York Times and the journal Science to the private blogs of professional atheists. Over the years, Behe has had a delightful time rebutting each attack, and now his responses are collected in a single volume entitled A Mousetrap for Darwin. The book’s title alludes to Behe’s homey illustration for his idea of irreducible complexity. A mousetrap with a missing part doesn’t work just a little worse. It doesn’t work at all. The same goes for the bacterial flagellum pictured on the …

The Miracle of the Cell

_{Michael Denton
October 1, 2020}

The Miracle of the Cell provides compelling evidence that long before life emerged on our planet, the design of the carbon-based cell was foreshadowed in the order of nature, in the exquisite fitness of the laws of nature for this foundational unit of all life on Earth. Nowhere is this fitness more apparent than in the properties of the key atomic constituents of the cell. Each of the atoms of life — including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as well as several metal elements — features a suite of unique properties fine-tuned to serve highly specific, indispensable roles in the cell. Moreover, some of these properties are specifically fit for essential roles in the cells of advanced aerobic organisms like ourselves. Author Michael Denton is a Senior Fellow with Discovery …

Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell

_{Thomas Y. Lo, Paul Chien, Eric H. Anderson, Robert A. Alston and Robert P. Waltzer
May 20, 2020}

Are life and the universe a mindless accident — the blind outworking of laws governing cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution? That’s the official story many of us were taught somewhere along the way. But what does the science actually say? Drawing on recent discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, biology, and paleontology, Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell shows how the latest scientific evidence suggests a very different story. Journey into the smallest cell, to the farthest reaches of the universe, and to the great flowering of form and energy known as the Big Bang. Learn about the mission to build a self-reproducing 3D printer, and how those efforts shed new light on the origin of the first life on earth. And travel with a marine biologist to …

… More Books in Science, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

Human Nature

_{David Berlinski
November 11, 2019}

Conventional wisdom holds that the murder rate has plummeted since the Middle Ages; humankind is growing more peaceful and enlightened; man is shortly to be much improved — better genes, better neural circuits, better biochemistry; and we are approaching a technological singularity that well may usher in utopia. Human Nature eviscerates these and other doctrines of a contemporary nihilism masquerading as science. In this wide-ranging work polymath David Berlinski draws upon history, mathematics, logic, and literature to retrain our gaze on an old truth many are eager to forget: there is and will be about the human condition beauty, nobility, and moments of sublime insight, yes, but also ignorance and depravity. Men are not about to become like gods. Praise Polymath …

Foresight

_{Marcos Nogueira Eberlin
April 26, 2019}

In Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, learn about jumping insects with real gears, and the ingenious technology behind a power-punching shrimp. Enter the strange world of carnivorous plants. And check out a microscopic protein machine in a bird’s eye that may work as a GPS device by harnessing quantum entanglement. Join renowned Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin as he uncovers a myriad of artful solutions to major engineering challenges in chemistry and biology, solutions that point beyond blind evolution to the workings of an attribute unique to minds — foresight. Plaudits and Endorsements Marcos Eberlin, one of the best chemists in the world today, has written a must-read, superb book for anyone considering what indeed science says …

Heretic

_{Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt
January 15, 2018}

What happens when an up-and-coming European bioscientist flips from Darwin disciple to Darwin defector? Sparks fly. Just ask biotechnologist Matti Leisola. It all started when a student loaned the Finnish scientist a book criticizing evolutionary theory. Leisola reacted angrily, and set out to defend evolution, but found his efforts raised more questions than they answered. He soon morphed into a full-on Darwin skeptic, even as he was on his way to becoming a leading bio-engineer. Heretic is the story of Leisola’s adventures making waves — and many friends and enemies — at major research labs and universities across Europe. Tracing his investigative path, the book draws on Leisola’s expertise in molecular biology to show how the evidence …

Zombie Science

_{Jonathan Wells
March 27, 2017}

About the Book In 2000, biologist Jonathan Wells took the science world by storm with Icons of Evolution, a book showing how biology textbooks routinely promote Darwinism using bogus evidence — icons of evolution like Ernst Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings and peppered moths glued to tree trunks. Critics of the book complained that Wells had merely gathered up a handful of innocent textbook errors and blown them out of proportion. Now, in Zombie Science, Wells asks a simple question: If the icons of evolution were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? Science has enriched our lives and led to countless discoveries. But now, Wells argues, it’s being corrupted. Empirical science is devolving into zombie science, shuffling along unfazed by opposing …

Darwin’s House of Cards

_{Tom Bethell
December 21, 2016}

About the Book In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin’s theory as a nineteenth-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that is all but disintegrating under an onslaught of new scientific discoveries. Bethell presents a concise yet wide-ranging tour of the flash points of modern evolutionary theory, investigating controversies over common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, biogeography, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and the growing intelligent design movement. Bethell’s account is enriched by his own personal encounters with some of our era’s leading evolutionary thinkers, including Harvard …

How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not)

_{William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells
March 16, 2015}

Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows more persuasively than ever before that Dawkins is wrong and that the origin of life continues to pose insurmountable difficulties to unguided material processes. The authors discuss why traditional origin-of-life research has failed and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the breathtaking variety of information-rich structures and high-tech engineering inside the cell. Updated and expanded, this third edition includes nearly 20 pages of new material from the authors. Published under the imprint of FTE …

In the Beginning

_{Granville Sewell
March 11, 2015}

In this revised and expanded collection of essays on origins, mathematician Granville Sewell looks at the big bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, and (especially) the evolution of life. Sewell explains why evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science, and why increasing numbers of scientists are now recognizing what has long been obvious to the layman, that there is no explanation possible without design. This book summarizes many of the traditional arguments for intelligent design, but presents some powerful new arguments as well. Plaudits Calm, thoughtful, and far-ranging. William Dembski, author of The Design Inference Sewell provides delightful and wide-ranging commentary on the origins debate and …

The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos

_{David Klinghoffer
October 14, 2014}

The 2014 reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic 13-part series Cosmos struck a chord with viewers, garnered 12 Emmy Award nominations, and is headed straight into schools as a science teacher’s instructional aid. It’s also an agenda-driven vehicle for scientific materialism, casting religion as arch foe of the search for truth about nature and pressing its message that human beings occupy no special place in the universe. An important new book from Discovery Institute Press, The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Science Series offers an urgently needed critique and response to Dr. Tyson’s propagandizing and distortions. Contributors Douglas Ell A prominent attorney and former atheist, Douglas Ell is author of Counting to …

Darwin’s Dead Idea and the Man Who Helped Kill It

_{William A. Dembski and Linda Montgomery Buell
February 10, 2014}

This book contains a fascinating interview between James Barham, general editor of TheBestSchools.org, and mathematician and philosopher William Dembski, one of the pioneers of the modern intelligent design movement. Follow Dembski’s personal journey from his doubts about Western religion as a young man to his training as a mathematician and a philosopher and his rise to prominence as one of a new generation of thinkers making a rigorous case for intelligent design in nature. Dembski has powerfully challenged academia’s reigning answer to the big questions: Where did we come from? And why is there something rather than nothing? Darwin’s Dead Idea introduces readers to one of the formative thinkers of the growing intelligent design movement. Published under the imprint of FTE …

The Magician’s Twin

_{John G. West
September 1, 2012}

In this wide-ranging book of essays edited by John G. West, contemporary writers probe Lewis’s warnings about the dehumanizing impact of scientism on ethics, politics, faith, reason, and science itself. Issues explored include Lewis’s views on bioethics, eugenics, evolution, intelligent design, and what he called “scientocracy.”

Science and Human Origins

_{Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe and Casey Luskin
August 16, 2012}

Science & Human Origins, the provocative new book from Discovery Institute Press, boldly addresses some of the most popular evolutionary arguments pertaining to controversial claims that humans and apes are related through common ancestry. In Science & Human Origins three scientists challenge the claim that undirected natural selection is capable of building a human being. The authors critically assess fossil and genetic evidence that human beings share a common ancestor with apes, and debunk recent claims that the human race could not have started from an original couple. Multimedia Science and Human Origins …

Alfred Russel Wallace

_{Michael Flannery
March 1, 2011}

For years Alfred Russel Wallace was little more than an obscure adjunct to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Remembered only for prompting Darwin to write On the Origin of Species by sending Darwin his own letter proposing a theory of natural selection, Wallace was rightly dubbed by one biographer “the forgotten naturalist.” A decade of recent interest in Wallace has done much to bring him back from history’s crypt of forgotten figures, but there is still significant disagreement over his legacy. The provocative thesis of this new biography is that Wallace, in developing his unique brand of evolution, presaged the modern theory of intelligent design. This was Wallace’s ultimate heresy, a heresy that exposed the metaphysical underpinnings of the emerging Darwinian …

The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays

_{David Berlinski
February 1, 2010}

In a controversial new book, David Berlinski tears apart the facade of scientific overconfidence. When it comes to some of life’s most profound questions — the origins of life, of matter, of the universe itself — does modern science already have everything all figured out? Many scientists would like us to think they are mere steps away from solving all the deep enigmas of physical existence. Consummate skeptic David Berlinski shows that all such confidence is at best a bluff. In essays about evolution using humor and wit, Berlinski shows how lost today’s scientists really are. His new book The Deniable Darwin frees us from the superstition of preening scientism and illuminates the path to a renewal of real science. Media Plaudits David Berlinski is to …

The Design of Life

_{William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells
September 5, 2008}

About the Book The power of Darwinian evolution on the modern mind lies mainly in its contention that natural selection can account for the appearance of design without a designer. In this comprehensive overview of intelligent design (ID) in biology, mathematician William Dembski and biologist Jonathan Wells make a compelling case that design in biology is real, not an illusion. Dembski and Wells offer clear, direct, and readable discussions drawn from current science research. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the status of the ID versus Darwin debate. This book is published under the imprint of FTE Books. About the Authors William A. Dembski is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and a Senior Research …

Getting the Facts Straight

_{Discovery Institute Press
September 17, 2001}

Accuracy and objectivity are what we should expect in a television documentary – especially in a science documentary on a publicly-funded network. But the PBS Evolution series falls far short of meeting these basic standards. It distorts the scientific evidence, ignores scientific disagreements over Darwin’s theory, and misrepresents the theory’s critics. The series also displays a sharply biased view of religion and seeks to influence the political debate over how evolution should be taught in schools. Evolution presents itself as science journalism, but it is actually a work of one-sided advocacy. The series is intended not only for broadcast on public television, but also for use in public schools. Evolution’s biased content, however, makes it inappropriate …

Science and Culture

Science After Babel

_{David Berlinski
June 5, 2023}

Darwin Comes to Africa

_{Olufemi Oluniyi
February 21, 2023}

Darwinian Racism

_{Richard Weikart
February 1, 2022}

To hear some tell it, Adolf Hitler was a Christian creationist who rejected Darwinian evolution. Award-winning historian Richard Weikart shows otherwise. According to Weikart, Darwinian evolution crucially influenced Hitler and the Nazis, and the Nazis zealously propagated evolutionary theory during the Third Reich. Inspired by arguments from both Darwin and early Darwinists, the Nazis viewed the “Nordic race” as superior to other races and set about advancing human evolution by ridding the world of “inferior” races and individuals. As Weikart also shows, these ideas circulate today among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, who routinely use Darwinian theory in their propaganda to advance a racist agenda. Darwinian Racism is careful history. It is also a wake-up …

Human Nature

_{David Berlinski
November 11, 2019}

The War On Humans

_{Wesley J. Smith
November 10, 2014}

The environmental movement has helped produce significant improvements in the world around us — from cleaner air to the preservation of natural wonders such as Yellowstone. But in recent years, environmental activists have arisen who regard humans as Public Enemy #1. In this provocative book, Wesley J. Smith exposes efforts by radical activists to reduce the human population by up to 90% and to grant legal rights to animals, plants, and Mother Earth. Smith argues that the ultimate victims of this misanthropic crusade will be the poorest and most vulnerable among us, and he urges us to defend both human dignity and the natural environment before it is too late. Named by National Journal as one of America’s leading experts in the area of bioethics, attorney Wesley J. …

The Magician’s Twin

_{John G. West
September 1, 2012}

Darwin’s Conservatives

_{John G. West
November 14, 2006}

Dr. West addresses how Darwin’s theory, contrary to its conservative champions, manifestly does not reinforce the teachings of conservatism. According to West, Darwinism promotes moral relativism rather than traditional morality. It fosters utopianism rather than limited government. It is corrosive, rather than supportive, of both free will and religious belief.

Traipsing Into Evolution

_{David K. DeWolf, John G. West, Casey Luskin and Jonathan Witt
March 7, 2006}

This book offers a detailed critique of federal Judge John E. Jones's decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, the first trial concerning the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools.

Science and Faith

The Farm at the Center of the Universe

_{Guillermo Gonzalez and Jonathan Witt
May 21, 2024}

Canceled Science

_{Eric Hedin
February 27, 2021}

Eric Hedin was enjoying a productive career as a physics professor at Ball State University when the letter from a militant atheist arrived and all hell broke loose. The conflict spilled first onto the pages of the local newspaper, and then into the national news. The atheist attack included threats from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which targeted Hedin after learning his Boundaries of Science course exposed students to an evidence-based case for design and purpose in cosmology, physics, and biochemistry. Canceled Science tells the dramatic story of the atheist campaign to cancel Hedin’s course, reveals the evidence the atheists tried to bury, and explores discoveries that have revolutionized our understanding of the nature and origin of matter, space, and even time …

The Restoration of Man

_{Michael Aeschliman
September 4, 2019}

C. S. Lewis is best known for his Narnia tales and Christian apologetics, works that have sold more than 100 million copies. But Lewis was also a trained philosopher and a professor at Cambridge and Oxford. An intellectual giant, he fiercely and extensively critiqued the fashionable dogma known as scientism — the idea that science is the only path to knowledge, and matter the fundamental reality. Michael Aeschliman’s The Restoration of Man ably surveys Lewis’s eloquent case against this dogma, and situates him among the many other notable thinkers who have entered the fray over this crucial issue. Aeschliman shows why Lewis’s case for the human person as more than matter — as a creature with inherent rationality and worth — is a precious resource for restoring and preserving …

How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not)

_{William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells
March 16, 2015}

In the Beginning

_{Granville Sewell
March 11, 2015}

The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos

_{David Klinghoffer
October 14, 2014}

The Magician’s Twin

_{John G. West
September 1, 2012}

Science and Human Origins

_{Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe and Casey Luskin
August 16, 2012}

God and Evolution

_{Jay W. Richards
October 15, 2010}

Can you believe in God and Darwin at the same time? What is “theistic” evolution, and how consistent is it with traditional theism? What challenges does Darwin’s theory pose for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews? Is it “anti-science” to question Darwinian Theory? Explore these questions and more in the book God and Evolution edited by Jay Richards. God and Evolution is ideal for use in small groups and adult Sunday School classes, and each chapter comes with discussion questions and downloadable video clips to facilitate educational use. A free discussion/study guide is also available for download. Accompanying Video More Information God and Evolution official …

The Devil’s Delusion: A Discussion Guide

_{John G. West and Sonja E. West
October 15, 2009}

This book is designed to facilitate the use of The Devil’s Delusion in small groups, adult Sunday School classes, and book discussion clubs.