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Articles by Jonathan Witt
Of Bee Brains, ChatGPT, and Fists of Ham
A Friday article at Science Daily caught my eye: “Scientists are Seriously Asking if Bees and ChatGPT Are Conscious.” Either the writer has been fuddled by an unholy amalgam of Cartesianism and materialism, or the framing is a sneaky rhetorical move to get the reader to think, “Wait, scientists don’t think a bee is conscious, but they are now open to the possibility? And ditto future AI?
Extraordinary: Stephen Meyer and Phil Halper Debate the God Hypothesis
I just finished watching a thoroughly absorbing and delightful debate between Stephen Meyer and Phil Halper over the evidence for God in cosmology. The YouTube conversation, hosted by Justin Brierley, was collegial while remaining energetic and occasionally feisty. Meyer, a leading proponent of the theory of intelligent design, is a first-rate thinker and debater, but you cannot tell just how thoughtful and well-prepared he is until he faces a worthy opponent.
Dispatch from Dallas: Documentary Premieres Where It All Started
When New York Times bestseller Stephen Meyer’s 2021 book Return of the God Hypothesis appeared on the scene, there was hope of an eventual documentary that would distill the work’s three scientific arguments for the creator of life and the universe. Last night’s nationwide theatrical premiere of The Story of Everything, now in theaters through May 6, delivered on that hope. Indeed, it overdelivered. Photo: Bijan Nemati, Stephen Meyer, and William Dembski, by Chris Morgan.
The Story of Everything Dazzled Me: I Wasn’t Prepared
I was not prepared for what I experienced in The Story of Everything: The Science That Reveals a Mind Behind the Universe. I’m a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, which partnered in the film. So as I sat down to watch a prerelease screener, I knew the film was based on Cambridge-trained philosopher Stephen Meyer’s bestselling book Return of the God Hypothesis. I also knew the film had a big budget and Hollywood talent behind it, so I expected it to look good.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Vision of Just War
Might certainly does not make right, but it does not make wrong either. There are times to reject the allure of power, especially when it involves dominating others, and there are times when the right course is to take up arms and fight unreservedly against the forces of darkness. Indeed, Tolkien suggests, there are times when we must do both. Too many pundits, politicians, and priests nowadays treat war as a relic of a barbaric past.
Gulf Between Ape-Like and Human Grows Wider
As Casey Luskin reported earlier today: “Paper Defends Spoken Language in Homo erectus.” I love the analysis by Casey. If the paper he writes about is correct, it strengthens the case that Homo erectus were simply human beings, albeit very early ones. The problem is that the next closest species to Homo erectus going back in the geological column is extremely ape-like. Where does this leave us?
Darwin’s Island of Misfit Toys
A Tour of Evolutionary Biology’s Has-Been Hall of Fame You know about the island Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer discovered, right? The Island of Misfit Toys, an Arctic refuge populated by toys that didn’t make the cut at Santa’s workshop? In the stop-motion Christmas classic, our eponymous hero (snubbed from any and all reindeer games) saves a very foggy Christmas with his radiantly rubicund nose. Then he urges Santa to gather up the misfit toys and place them with grateful children.
Dover Days: A Fatuous Decision Is About to Turn 20 Years Old
This year marks both the centennial of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, immortalized in the Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind, and the 20th anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design trial, which I attended and reported on. The Dover trial, decided December 20, 2005, was a modest affair. The judge in the case, John E.
Darwin’s Orphan Foe: A Gene Army Comes for Darwinism
In recent years a great host of orphans has descended on the camp of the Darwinists — not a human army but an army of genetic code known colloquially as orphan genes, or more technically as taxonomically restricted genes (TRGs).1 Evolutionary theory led evolutionists to expect such genes to be rare. As it turns out, they aren’t. Genes are strings of DNA, many of which code for different kinds of proteins.
The Rising Case For ESOPs: A Powerful And Time-Tested Succession Alternative With Growing Support In Washington And The Private Sector
FL Foley & Lardner More Foley & Lardner LLP looks beyond the law to focus on the constantly evolving demands facing our clients and their industries. With over 1,100 lawyers in 24 offices across the United States, Mexico, Europe and Asia, Foley approaches client service by first understanding our clients’ priorities, objectives and challenges.
The Rising Case for ESOPs: A Powerful and Time-Tested Succession Alternative with Growing Support in Washington and the Private Sector | JD Supra
If you are a business owner, you may be overlooking one of the most powerful and time-tested succession and ownership transition tools available: the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). ESOPs have long been attractive for their unique tax advantages and ability to reward employees, while preserving a company’s legacy. For example, in certain structures, such as a 100% ESOP-owned S corporation, companies can operate largely free of federal income tax, creating a powerful cash-flow advantage.
Fantastic Voyage
A Scientific Odyssey Did mind make matter, or matter mind? Are the things of nature the product of mindless forces alone, or did creative reason play a role? Theologians have grappled with the question but so have philosophers and scientists stretching from ancient Athens to modern Nobel Prize winners. In 1859, Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution to argue that blind nature had produced all the species of plants and animals around us.
Avoiding M&A Post-Closing Pitfalls: A Buyer's Guide To ESOP Wind-Downs
FL Foley & Lardner More Foley & Lardner LLP looks beyond the law to focus on the constantly evolving demands facing our clients and their industries. With over 1,100 lawyers in 24 offices across the United States, Mexico, Europe and Asia, Foley approaches client service by first understanding our clients’ priorities, objectives and challenges.
A Parade of Darwinian Errors
Judge Jones & the Dover ID Trial This year marks both the centennial of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, immortalized in the Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind, and the 20th anniversary of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design trial, which I attended and reported on. The Dover trial was a modest affair. The judge in the case, John E.
God and the Odds of ET
Next generation space telescopes from NASA and the European Space Agency are ushering in a golden age of deep space exploration, putting us on the verge of answering an old question: Are there other thinking, speaking creatures living on faraway planets? Taking the question in steps and focusing on our corner of the universe, astrobiologists are asking: Do other stars in our galaxy have rocky, earthlike planets at the right distance from their host stars to nurture life?
Evolutionary Flimflam | Evolution News
I suspect the average person comes to accept modern evolutionary theory, not through a series of careful arguments, but through a near-constant drip of pro-evolution propaganda. The propaganda comes in many forms and from many directions. Here I want to focus on just one source, popular news stories about evolution, and specifically on a couple of parlor tricks often embedded in these articles.
Guillermo Gonzalez
IDTF-1958-Guillermo-Gonzalez-Love-of-Astronomy-Explorers-Podcast-Interview-Post-Graphic Guillermo Gonzalez on His Love For Astronomy landscape-with-milky-way-galaxy-earth-and-aurora-view-from-space-with-milky-way-galaxy-elements-of-this-image-furnished-by-nasa-stockpack-adobe-stock Guillermo Gonzalez on 20th Anniversary Edition of The Privileged Planet In 2004, Dr. Jay Richards and Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez published a bold hypothesis: not only is Planet Earth well-suited for advanced life like...
A Universe Charged with Meaning and Purpose
Episode 1947 With Andrew McDiarmid Guest(s) Jonathan Witt Duration 00:37:43 Download Audio File (51.8 mb) Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flipboard Print https://chrt.fm/track/G42895/idthefuture.com/podcast-player/42457/1947.mp3 Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:37:43 | In 1936, Albert Einstein wrote that “the fact that [the world] is comprehensible is a miracle.” But why is the universe comprehensible to us? And is it an evolutionary fluke or a hallmark of design?
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Vision of Just War
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth novels exemplify the principles of Just War through the action of his noblest characters. Too many pundits, politicians, and priests nowadays treat war as a relic of a barbaric past. In foreign affairs, American presidents appear more interested in the short-term need to be seen “doing something” than in pursuing and articulating a coherent strategy for victory. Such ambivalence about war is very much the spirit of the age in the industrialized West.
When Materialism Turns on Its Own
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea 8:7 These are dark days. Ideological campaigns against sanity deny everything from the objectivity of arithmetic and the binary of male and female to, more recently, the moral truth that promoting genocide of the Jews is unambiguously evil. But there is a small silver lining in this dark cloud. First some background.
Darwin’s Racism of the Gaps
In the wake of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), thought leaders in Europe and the United States used his theory of evolution by natural selection to justify violent and dehumanizing treatment of non-whites around the globe.1 This much is well known. Less widely recognized is that Darwin’s case for ape-to-man evolution rested in no small part on his racist view of non-whites.
There Are New Atheists in Foxholes, Part 1
Richard Dawkins has an endearing habit of rewriting history. For almost four decades, from the mid-1970s onward, he wrote of the human genome as mainly junk. It suited his Darwinism to do so, underscoring how evolution cobbles living forms together opportunistically, and that waste and inefficiencies in the genome are simply part of the messy process that is Darwinian evolution, focused as it is on natural selection acting on random variations.
science
farm-at-the-center-cover-scaled Faith & Science, Intelligent Design The Farm at the Center of the Universe Faith & Science, Intelligent Design 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.
science and faith
farm-at-the-center-cover-scaled Faith & Science, Intelligent Design The Farm at the Center of the Universe Faith & Science, Intelligent Design 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.
Learning By Doing Is An Important Part Of Career Development
A recent conversation with a Foley colleague reminded me of a key lesson I learned as a junior attorney from a senior partner in my practice group: Take a position on an issue, be ready to defend it, and learn along the way. It brought back a flood of memories of the times I had approached this senior partner to get their thoughts on certain issues in an agreement markup I was working on.
The Gods Must Be Tidy! by Jonathan Witt
Feature Is the Cosmos a Work of Poor Engineering or the Gift of an Artistic Designer? by Jonathan Witt When as a boy I read “The Scouring of the Shire” near the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I could not understand why Tolkien felt the need to tack on such an anti-climactic and shabby bit of evil.
Practical Considerations For A Private Equity Buyer Contemplating An Acquisition Of An ESOP-Owned Company
Are you a private equity buyer presented with an opportunity to acquire a business owned by an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)? Be prepared for a unique transaction process. Transactions involving an ESOP shareholder and, more importantly, an ESOP trustee serving as a fiduciary for the ESOP's participants, can create additional complexity and will likely find the private equity buyer agreeing to terms and encountering issues unique to non-ESOP-related transactions.
Practical Considerations for a Private Equity Buyer Contemplating an Acquisition of an ESOP-Owned Company
Skip to main content February 21, 2024 Volume XIV, Number 52 Legal Analysis. Expertly Written. Quickly Found. Trending News Practical Considerations for a Private Equity Buyer Contemplating an Acquisition of an ESOP-Owned Company Print Mail Download i Are you a private equity buyer presented with an opportunity to acquire a business owned by an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)? Be prepared for a unique transaction process.
For Darwin Day, Robert Shedinger Calls Darwin’s Bluff
By Jonathan Witt Published on February 12, 2024 It’s Darwin Day 2024, the birthday of Charles Darwin, and Discovery Institute Press has a new truth bomb for the occasion — Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. The book, by Robert Shedinger, Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, drags from Charles Darwin’s closet a long overlooked skeleton devastating to the Darwinian mythology.
For Darwin Day, Shedinger Calls Darwin’s Bluff
It’s Darwin Day 2024, the birthday of Charles Darwin, and Discovery Institute Press has a new truth bomb for the occasion — Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished. The book, by Robert Shedinger, Professor of Religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, drags from Charles Darwin’s closet a long overlooked skeleton devastating to the Darwinian mythology.
How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature Part 2
Is the universe meaningful or meaningless? Purposeful or pointless? On this ID The Future, enjoy the second half of an interview with Dr. Jonathan Witt about the evidence of purpose and meaning built into the universe. Dr. Witt is co-author of the book A Meaningful World, which argues that the more we learn about the universe, the more it seems laden with meaning. He unpacks this argument in a discussion with host Dr. Mark Turman.
Systems Bio Cracks Life’s Engineered Intricacies
Most academic biologists would sooner parasail into Mordor than admit intelligent design beats blind evolution. Modern Darwinism is very much the reigning paradigm in historical biology. Curiously, however, the hottest branch of experimental biology nowadays actually adopts as a working heuristic the view that biological systems are optimally engineered.
Richard Dawkins
AdobeStock_592413038-scaled How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature Part 2 AdobeStock_592413038-scaled How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature dawkins-test-tree-of-life Intelligent Design In Evolution Debate Intelligent Design Passes the Richard Dawkins Test Intelligent Design Richard Dawkins has described a test that he predicted would prove evolution, but now, mounting scientific evidence shows that the same test instead proves intelligent design.
How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature
Almost 50 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? Or can we detect true genius by studying its workings? On this ID The Future, we are pleased to share the first half of an interview with Dr. Jonathan Witt on the Denison Forum podcast about a cosmos charged with meaning and purpose.
Nothing to See Here!
Inquiring Minds Dare Not Question Dominant Narratives A potential industrial threat to right whales, poor forest management in California, and intelligent design theorist William Dembski’s 1998 Cambridge University Press monograph The Design Inference—what do these three things have in common? Each was found to dilute or challenge a dominant narrative, spurring mainstream gatekeepers to pursue a nothing-to-see-here, just-keep- moving-along strategy. Let’s take each of the three in turn.
Webinar Key Takeaways: Current U.S. Middle-Market M&A Market Update
Foley recently hosted a webinar where Craig Roush and Jonathan Witt broke down the current U.S. Middle-Market M&A ($25 million - $250 million) trends through the third quarter of 2023. Much has been said about the return of M&A in 2023, and while there are deals happening, it is not the boom that many expected – but there remain promising signs heading into 2024. Additionally, in this changing climate, aspects of middle-market M&A that were once uncommon have begun to standardize and vice versa.
The prologue to "A Meaningful World" by Jonathan Witt and Benjamin Wiker
Imagine an alien who visits earth once every thousand years, a sort of intergalactic park ranger making the rounds, filing reports, just doing his job. Call him O. When he arrives at the turn of the third millennium, O is not surprised to find murder, envy, strife, wars and rumors of wars, vanity and vexation of spirit. His previous visits have led him to expect this of the human race. However, something does puzzle him.
Tolkien, Wagner y los anillos del poder
¿Robó Bilbo Bolsón el Anillo Único a Gollum? Los fans de Tolkien siguen debatiendo esta cuestión. Pero hay una pregunta incluso más interesante: ¿Robó el autor J.R.R. Tolkien el anillo al compositor Richard Wagner? Son muchos los que consideran que el paralelismo más llamativo con el anillo de poder de Tolkien es el anillo mágico que está en el centro del magistral ciclo de ópera del siglo XIX de Wagner, El Anillo de los Nibelungos.
The Search for ET Artifacts Misses the Elephant
Skip to content Now that NASA’s freakishly powerful James Webb Space Telescope is fully operational, there is renewed chatter about the possibility of discovering extra-terrestrial life.
Rank Racism by Jonathan Witt
An essay on Bioethics from Salvo #65 in Operation ID Darwin's Deadly Racist Views on Homo Sapiens In the wake of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), thought leaders in Europe and the United States used his theory of evolution by natural selection to justify violent and dehumanizing treatment of non-whites around the globe.1 This much is well known. Less widely recognized is that Darwin’s case for ape-to-man evolution rested in no small part on his racist view of non-whites.
Science & the Wildness of Aslan
Wisdom Counsels Intellectual Humility in the Scientific Enterprise Recently one of my sons gave me a book about Oxford University professor and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, and this set me to rereading Lewis’s classic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. After finishing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was struck by an especially memorable passage. I had been struck by it before, but this time, for the first time, I noticed a connection to the scientific enterprise.
The Dawkins Test Returns an Answer
Skip to content In 2009 atheist biologist Richard Dawkins offered a scientific test to decide between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (ID). The results are in, and as guest Casey Luskin explains on a new episode of ID the Future, the evidence has broken strongly in favor of intelligent design. At the time Dawkins presented the test, he was confident that comparative DNA evidence supported Darwin’s tree of life and its idea of universal common ancestry.
The Unidentified Intelligence Paradox
The Search for ET Artifacts Misses the Elephant Now that NASA’s freakishly powerful James Webb Space Telescope is fully operational, there is renewed chatter about the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life.
Angels and Aliens
Anybody who has seen E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the film Signs, or any number of alien sci-fi movies will have wondered about alien encounters and the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. And certainly last week’s speculation over those mysterious objects the U.S. military shot down raised the topic into the headlines. When the top NORAD general wouldn’t rule out aliens, who’s to blame the public for speculating?
The Giraffe’s Neck
An essay on Intelligent Design from Salvo #62 in Operation ID Its Evolutionary Explanation Is One Long Stretch The giraffe’s neck has long been a beloved icon of evolutionary theory. According to the story, one of the giraffe’s short-necked ancestors had a slightly longer neck, which helped him reach leaves the other animals on the savannah couldn’t. This gave him a survival advantage that he passed on to his offspring.
A Deep-Running Miracle
A Review of "The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence" by Michael Denton As executive editor of Discovery Institute Press, I've had the good fortune over the past few months to edit the final installment of Australian biochemist Michael Denton's Privileged Species series. The book is titled The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. I am, of course, far from an unbiased observer of the book. Fair enough.
Lost in Sequence Space
The Darwinian Mechanism's Problem of Ballooning Improbabilities In April 1966, some leading mathematicians and biologists met in Philadelphia to debate the subject of evolutionary theory. The mathematicians were skeptical of the theory. One of them, MIT professor Murray Eden, compared genetic information to computer software. When you randomly alter lines of computer code over and over, you don't get a flowering of new and better computer programs, he noted. You get a degraded or broken program.
Monkey Business by Jonathan Witt - Salvo Magazine
Intelligent Design in the Hit Show "Community" The theory of intelligent design (ID) is not exotic. You can find ID reasoning in everything from criminal forensics and archaeology to code breaking and the lavishly funded telescope-based explorations collectively termed the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). But set aside all those real-world cases. Consider an example from the hit sitcom Community.
We Regret to Inform You That Christ Is Risen
John Zmirak Interviews Eric Metaxas on "Is Atheism Dead?", Part 2. By John Zmirak Published on October 13, 2021 Like the article? Share it with your friends! And use our social media pages to join or start the conversation! Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, Instagram, MeWe and Gab.
John Zmirak Interviews Eric Metaxas: Is Atheism Really Dead? Or Is It Just Pining for the Fjords?
John Zmirak Interviews Eric Metaxas: Is Atheism Really Dead? Or Is It Just Pining for the Fjords? By John Zmirak Published on October 5, 2021 •
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