In Evolution Debate Intelligent Design Passes the Richard Dawkins Test, says Discovery Institute

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May 15, 2023, 15:06 ET

SEATTLE, May 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Biologist and famed atheist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly described a test that he predicted would prove evolution, but now, mounting scientific evidence shows that the same test instead proves intelligent design (ID), says Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture.

"On its own terms, the Dawkins test for evolution has come up for ID," said geologist Casey Luskin, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture. "Dawkins set up a test for Darwinian evolution versus ID, and now needs to live with his own repeated statements."

Dawkins has claimed that evolution predicts "perfect" congruency among different representations of the tree of life — evidence that is so "powerful" he believes it "proves that evolution is true." On the other hand, he says incongruency or conflicts among different gene-based trees would be a prediction of the "alternative" to evolution, namely intelligent design.

Evolution News & Science Today published a paper by Luskin detailing the growing number of published peer reviewed papers that repeatedly show the incongruency among trees of life, from such leading science journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Bioinformatics, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Systematic Biology and more. Luskin's article, Intelligent Design Passes the Dawkins Test, is available online at www.evolutionnews.org.

According to Luskin, scientists have sequenced a great number of whole genomes and they know that Dawkins was wrong. Every gene does not deliver "approximately the same tree of life."

"Will Richard Dawkins admit that his prediction has failed for evolution but succeeded for intelligent design?" asks Luskin.

Casey Luskin is a geologist and attorney with a PhD in geology from the University of Johannesburg, and BS and MS degrees in Earth Sciences from the University of California, San Diego. His law degree is from the University of San Diego, where he focused his studies on First Amendment, education, and environmental law.

Discovery Institute is a non-profit educational and research organization whose mission is to advance a culture of purpose, creativity, and innovation with programs in areas such as economics, education, technology, bioethics, and artificial intelligence. It's Center for Science & Culture is the intellectual home of the modern intelligent design movement and the scientists and scholars challenging Darwin's theory of evolution on the basis of science.

SOURCE Discovery Institute