Logic & first principles: Analogy, Induction and the power of the principle of identity (with application to the genetic code)
| November 13, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Design inference, Epistemology (the study of knowledge and its conditions), Logic and First Principles of right reason, The Design of Life |
One of the commonest objections we meet when we discuss design inferences — especially concerning the genetic code, is that a claim is “just an analogy” (with implied conclusion that analogies are weak or fallacious). This then extends to inductive arguments used. This common error must be corrected and (as will be shown) the principle […]
BBC: Chimpanzees show empathy and altruism just like humans
| November 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind |
The BBC has also thought that chimpanzees were entering the Stone Age. And now: Eminent anthropologist Frans de Waal explains that politicians have a lot to learn from how chimpanzees show empathy. “How chimpanzees reveal the roots of human behaviour” at BBC Reality: Chimpanzees don’t seek humans out the way dogs do. In many ways, […]
Making epigenetics (non-Darwinian evolution) instead of genetics destiny
| November 13, 2018 | Epigenetics, Intelligent Design |
It had to happen: Someone making epigenetics stand in for the selfish gene, an all-purpose gene-splain: If epigenetic research utilizing these new technologies will successfully shed some light in disease prevention, diagnosis, and therapy, then the research can expand to study epigenetics related to human behavior and moods. Aggression, violence, adultery, sexual preferences, risk-taking, happiness, […]
Neanderthals walked normally, upright, say researchers
| November 12, 2018 | Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
The skeleton was of a 32-year-old man: Neanderthals walked upright, had spines straighter than those of modern man, would have been strong and sturdy, and breathed deeply from their bell-, not barrel-shaped ribcages, according to a recently published article written by an international team of scientists. Busting open the myth of the arm-dragging, hunched-over caveman, […]
Three new studies “shake up” study of human migrants to North America
| November 12, 2018 | Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
We used to think the picture was pretty simple but not any more: By sequencing and analyzing 15 ancient genomes found throughout the Americas—six of which were older than 10,000 years—these researchers determined that, around 8,000 years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans were still on the move, migrating away from Mesoamerica (what is today […]
Life forms are not machines and neurons are not neural networks
| November 12, 2018 | Artificial Intelligence, Mind |
From Mind Matters: Much popular literature leaves the impression that living organisms are machines or even billions of them linked together. For example, at Medium, we learn, Brains receive input from the outside world, their neurons do something to that input, and create an output. That output may be a thought (I want curry for […]
Is the human mind best seen as a halting oracle?
| November 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Mind |
Eric Holloway explains Jonathan Bartlett’s account of the human mind as a halting oracle: In his paper, “Using Turing oracles in cognitive models of problem-solving” Jonathan Bartlett proposes to model the human mind as a halting oracle. A brief explanation: Computer science pioneer Alan Turing (1912–1954) imagined a universal machine that can copy any other […]
No, life cannot have meaning in a random universe. Next question?
| November 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Intelligent Design, Science, theism |
In an excerpt from his recent book, Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If the Universe Doesn’t, a psychiatrist explains how we can have meaning even though we don’t: People assume that our human sense of purpose is dependent on the universe having a purpose, and without such purpose they assume […]
Science-based morality: 400 years of failure?
| November 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Ethics, Intelligent Design, Science |
From a review of James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky’s Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality Can science tell us how we ought to behave? In Science and the Good, a book that crosses the boundaries of history, philosophy, and psychology, sociologist James Davison Hunter and philosopher Paul Nedelisky […]
Atheist historian combats claim that the Church persecuted classical learning
| November 11, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Atheism, Culture, Education, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
A historian draws our attention this post from late 2016, a reflection on the survival of classical learning during the Christian era, in response to “Skep,” an energetic atheist blogger: But the usual way that those who are forced to admit that there were, in fact, many medieval natural philosophers studying all kinds of proto-scientific […]
Moshe Averick: When does a “gap” point beyond conventional science?
| November 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, theism, theistic evolution |
Rabbi Moshe Averick, author of The Confused World of Modern Atheism (Mosaica Press, 2016) addresses the “God of the Gaps” – the claim that the intersections between the material and the immaterial in nature are just “gaps” waiting to be filled in (with special reference to the origin of life): The first thing I would bring […]
Historian: Human evolution theorists were attempting to be moral teachers
| November 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
Post World War II, scientists studying origins, sensed a moral mission to tell the story in order to encourage us to be better people. The close-knit hunter-gatherer clans that represented all humanity co-operated for survival and were chock full of moral lessons for us all. But was it true?: Readers and reviewers lumped Morris, Ardrey […]
Do we really live longer because of “longevity genes”? Researchers cast doubt
| November 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
It’s now suggested that people likely to live long tend to find each other (assortative mating). How else to explain this?Researchers found that siblings’ and first cousins’ lifespans were well correlated but also: But spouses’ lifespans were correlated, too. That could be easily explained by spouses sharing the same household and lifestyle: eating the same […]
Stress: Scientist to be sentenced for trying to poison labmate
| November 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Peer review, Science |
We run this story as a public service. Sometimes the pressure might get to you but it is almost never entirely that person’s fault and this is not the way to go about dealing with it: Graduate student Zijie Wang has pleaded guilty to poisoning a co-worker in the chemistry labs at Queen’s University in […]
Cats played a unique role in the space program
| November 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Biomimicry, Just For Fun |
Back in the 1960s, space scientists needed to know if it is true that a cat always lands on its feet: NASA contributed funding to the paper “A Dynamical Explanation of the Falling Cat Phenomenon,” published in the International Journal of Solids and Structures, by Stanford’s T.R. Kane and M.P. Scher. What was so significant […]
Software pioneer: The nature of intelligence forbids general artificial intelligence
| November 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design |
This post went viral yesterday at Mind Matters: The 2014 science fiction film Transcendence featured a scientist who uploaded his consciousness into an AI program. Many people talk as though things like that are just around the corner. But industry pros say it isn’t really possible. Why not? François Chollet, author of Keras, a framework […]
Suzan Mazur asks: How far have we gotten in understanding the mechanome?
| November 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Biomimicry, Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
The mechanome is the underresearched “ the set of proteins or molecular entities that sense or respond to forces” within the cell (Allen Liu). Our earlier stab at the subject here at UD garnered 354 comments, so there’s no shortage of interest. The mechanome (and mechanobiology in general) plays a key role in research into artificial […]
Can culture explain why brains have become bigger?
| November 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From ScienceDaily: Humans have extraordinarily large brains, which have tripled in size in the last few million years. Other animals also experienced a significant, though smaller, increase in brain size. These increases are puzzling, because brain tissue is energetically expensive: that is, a smaller brain is easier to maintain in terms of calories. Building on […]
Theorists debate: How “neutral” is evolution, really?
| November 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Neutral evolution, intended to cover for the failures of Darwinian evolution (natural selection), is now being challenged by selectionists: Selection isn’t in doubt, but many scientists have argued that most evolutionary changes appear at the level of the genome and are essentially random and neutral. Adaptive changes groomed by natural selection might indeed sculpt a fin […]
Materialist Reaches New Low
| November 8, 2018 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Barry: Can we know with absolute certainty that it is evil to torture a baby for pleasure? JDK: “There is no possible answer to the question: it’s a meaningless question.” UPDATE: JDK has accused me of being intellectually dishonest for quoting him as saying (1) there is no possible answer to the question; and (2) […]
