We’re used to seeing all sorts of silliness at the Discovery Institute’s website “Science & Culture Today” (formerly called Evolution News). A staple of the site is an article describing how wonderfully well-adapted some feature of an organism is, with the implied conclusion that this could only have come from Design Intervention.

Recent posts there have continued their tradition of being even more astonishing than that. Here are three examples:

1. An expert on German literature, Neil Thomas, wrote on “The Monster in the Sky”: Revisiting Atheism’s Creation Myth, in which he said:

My hope in this endeavor is to throw additional light on the subject of Victorians’ reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species, asking specifically what factors might explain our ancestors’ acquiescence in accepting a theory bereft of empirical documentation.”

Yes, he really means that. See my earlier discussion of his views here

1. Emily Reeves, trained in nutritional biochemistry, discovered a remarkable feature of evolutionary change. In her post Merry Christmas! No. 8 Story for 2025: Optimization and “Evolution Before Our Eyes” she reported on studies on evolutionary tradeoffs in Darwin’s Finches, using the studies of Peter and Rosemary Grant and others. She finds the fatal flaw!

We see that, in the most classic example of “evolution happening before our eyes,” genetic variation was present before the adaptive radiation. Whether this is truly “evolution” is, then, a question worth discussing.

1. And just to round off a trifecta, Granville Sewell shows up, for the n-th time, summarizing his surpassingly silly old argument that there is something-like-a-Second-Law preventing chaotic physical processes from leading to adaptations, human achievements, and technology. This latest effusion will be found here

But occasionally there is a post that argues an important case for common sense. On January 7 of this year, their house bioethicist Wesley J. Smith made this agonized plea:

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According to the National Center for Science Education, International Darwin Day, which is technically Darwin’s birthday on February 12, actually begins today in Denver. You may find a worldwide schedule here. A plurality of celebrations occurs on February 12, but you may find other events into April.

Additionally, NCSE reminds us, Religion and Science Weekend is February 13-15 and approximately coincides with Darwin Day.

For further details, see NCSE’s article Darwin Day 2026 approaches.

Photograph by Ole Lundin.

Photography Contest, Honorable Mention.

According to my monthly Kentucky Open Records Act (KORA) request, December Ark ticket sales were the lowest ever (with the exception of 2020 – during the Covid pandemic). In December, 2025, the Ark sold 35,223 tickets, about 4,000 less than December, 2024. Of course, these ticket sales numbers don’t include lifetime pass members or children under 10.

The December ticket sales number means that the Ark sold 652,342 tickets in 2025. These numbers indicate that the Ark will never come close to the 1.4 to 2.2 million attendees per year projected when the Ark was begging/shaking down Grant County, Williamstown, and Kentucky Tourism for perks including 100 acres of land for $2, $200K cash, reduced taxes, a $62 million bond, and $1.825 million/year in sales tax rebates.

Because of massive donations, AIG and its shell companies are not in danger of collapse. They, are not, however, doing as well as in previous years.

According to AIG opponent, Evangelical Christian, and biologist Dr. Joel Duff, there have been layoffs recently at AIG and the Ark. See his analysis here: apparently, there have been numerous layoffs, retirements, and other departures from AIG.

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This is just a short note, with no comment, to alert our readers to a splendid article, Killing the Golden Goose: Evangelicals, Trump, and the War on Science, by Rodney Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy is a writer and was formerly pastor at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, an American Baptist Church, and several other churches. His article is hosted by Righting America, which is a forum for scholarly conversation run by William Trollinger and Susan Trollinger.

In brief, Kennedy argues that science is the goose that laid the golden eggs and made America prosperous. Evangelicals, he says, have targeted science for over a century. But now something has changed, and conservative evangelicals allied with Donald Trump have taken direct aim at the entire scientific enterprise.

Kennedy outlines “only a few of [Robert F.] Kennedy’s devastating moves,” “Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic,” and how “[s]cience before MAGA [made America] the greatest scientific nation in the world.” As a result, he says, scientists are desperate to find jobs in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere.

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