Johnnyb has already posted on this here at UD, but I thought it might be good to have the full disclaimer at the new Map of Life website up for your consideration here: The message? First, that evolution is true. Forms of life change over time, or evolve, as successive generations inherit genetic, epigenetic or cultural information that is modified relative to their ancestors. Features of the changing environment in which organisms live favour differential survival of individuals with the most suitable (or ‘adapted’) modifications for living there. This leads to change in species over time, or their extinction if the environment changes too fast for ecologically well-adapted variants to become established. Of note, the science of evolutionary biology is Read More ›

Our good friend and fellow UD commentator Denyse O’Leary recently wrote about John Farrel’s recent musings on Forbes on what evidence for God might look like…or least what sort of evidence might make him sit up and take notice. Here I want to go a step further than Denyse did, and look at this question of evidence a bit more in depth.

Of course, the question of what might constitute evidence for the existence of God is nothing new in the never ending atheism/theism debate. The more outspoken atheists such as those of the so-called “new” atheist variety (i.e. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett et.al.) make quite a fuss about saying that there is no evidence for any sort of God or gods at all. Indeed, Dawkins now well-known diatribe against theism, The God Delusion, is a tour de force of proclaiming the lack of any sort of scientific evidence for the existence of God. Hence anyone still clinging to such a belief is doing so sans evidence and is thus suffering a ‘delusion’. But is that really the case? Read More ›

The Templeton Foundation has sponsored a new site called Map of Life. This site is coordinated by Simon Conway Morris, author of the book Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.

While Conway Morris is not a professed ID’er, his views are very closely aligned with that of Intelligent Design. Morris believes that by looking at evolutionary convergences, we can see the design of life. Morris thinks that there is a lot of life that is contingent, but that the massive convergences show that the contingencies are not the ruling factor, but rather that life’s plan (which Morris believes to have been designed by God) simply cannot be beat by any contingency.
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Before the hard ID guys get here …

John Farrell, at Forbes (Mar. 15 2011), wonders, “What Would “Evidence” for God Look Like?”, observing that Jerry (thank heaven he exists, so I don’t have to invent him*) Coyne has got himself inspired. Yup.

University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne was inspired by a recent discussion between Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling to defend the notion that there could be scientific evidence that might persuade him to believe in God. Coyne has tangled in the past with other atheists among the science bloggers who on a-priori grounds dismiss any such possible evidence.

Maybe I’m foolish or credulous, but I continue to claim that there is some evidence that would provisionally—and I emphasize that last word—make me believe in a god. (One can always retract one’s belief if the god evidence proves to be the work of aliens, or of Penn and Teller). I agree, of course, that alternative explanations have to be ruled out in a case like this, but remember that many scientists have accepted hypotheses as provisionally true without having absolutely dismissed every single alternative hypothesis. If a violation of the laws of physics is observed, that would be telling, for neither aliens nor human magicians can circumvent those laws.

While I agree with Coyne, there are good philosophical reasons traditional theists would offer for not expecting to be able to find scientific evidence either. But that’s opening up a can of worms.

The big problem, here as elsewhere, is: What would people accept as evidence? Read More ›

Coffee!! Intelligent design and evidence I note where the folks at ENV have been talking about Mike Behe’s still-spun flagellum = a bacterial motor assembly that cannot have been the result of chance. Read the discussion by all means, but first, pause a moment, and ask: So? So what? What kind of agenda does one need to have, that a big problem arises if the flagellum is not the result of chance? What kind of science – I use the word loosely here – is at stake? What would design stop us from doing that we should otherwise do? Now, as for evidence, this much I know is true: Few people actually pay any attention to it. The Darwinist has Read More ›

Gosh, if you go with the history … But this is now. Templeton award winner Francisco Ayala graces Baylor March 24/25 7:30 PM, Thursday 24 March, “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion,” public lecture.  1:30 PM, Friday 25 March, “The Molecular Clock of Evolution,” technical lecture. Prof. Ayala is a world renown geneticist, a former Catholic priest, and a high profile advocate for the compatibility of science and religion. In a series of books he has eloquently laid out the arguments for evolution, and particularly for natural selection, and detailed the history of the resulting debates that ensued from Darwin’s first publication of “On the Origin of Species”, which will be the subject of his talk on Thurs night. Dr. Read More ›

In response to my profile of Cap’n “I don’t read the stuff I review” Zen, whoever he may be, a friend – with some experience dealing with these types  – kindly writes to say, … many members of the militant atheist set will often write “canned” reviews of a book with either minimal reading or no reading whatsoever. Most actual users of Amazon will give such “reviews” a negative vote. However, the goal of these writers is not so much to provide their particular slant on the book as it is to try to crowd out serious or thoughtful reviews on a topic they dislike. To further this end, they post a link to their reviews on various “science” (read Read More ›

Some guy here not convinced: In “Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?”(March 24, 2011), Colin McGinn notices materialist neuroscientist V.S. Ramachadran’s A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, Tell-Tale Brain: Neurology is gripping in proportion as it is foreign. It has all the fascination of a horror story—the Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain. All those exotic Latin names for the brain’s parts echo the strangeness of our predicament as brain-based conscious beings: the language of the brain is not the language of the mind, and only a shaky translation manual links the two. There is something uncanny and creepy about the way the brain intrudes on the mind, as if the Read More ›

I just couldn’t resist including these two quotes from a new posting on PhysOrg. It has to do with lateral gene transfer, and the study as to what kind of information is swapped between microbes. The bottom line, apparently, is that “lone” genes—rather than metabolic apparatus or interacting genes—are what is swapped most commonly between bacteria. But as the scientists describe their work, it’s really a wonder to listen to the imagery they invoke. Sit back and enjoy! Genes whose protein products rely on many partners to do their job are less likely to work properly in a new host, Gophna said. Transferring a highly connected gene into a new host is like importing a fax machine into a remote Read More ›

Massively. In “Fire did not spark human colonisation of cold Europe”, we learn that one particular treasured Darwin myth – humans accidentally discovered fire, and then everything happens – might not be so. “The European evidence strongly suggests that the habitual and controlled use of fire was a late phenomenon,” Villa and Roebroeks conclude.  The findings controversially suggest that people migrated from Africa to the below-freezing winter temperatures of Europe without fire. These early hominins might have combined a high-protein diet with a highly active lifestyle to survive, the researchers speculate. The conclusion also questions Wrangham’s hypothesis that an increase in human brain size was tied to the invention of cooking. Wrangham remains to be convinced. He points out that Read More ›

Just recently Dr. Dembski posted a conference on the origins of life. Craig Venter was asked how old he thought life was. He responded: “3.5 billion years old.” This was based on what was previously considered to be organic fossils dating from formations of that age. But now comes research showing that all the scientists were looking at were minerals. It would have been nice for the Darwinists to have the 1.5 billion years between what may have been extremely primitive “life” and the full-fledged appearance of bacteria 2 billion years ago—a whole 1.5 billion years for the complexity of bacterial life to have emerged (evolved). Poor Darwinists. Another day; another bad day for Darwinists! Here’s the link to the Read More ›

In a recent UD thread, several UD members have taken issue with the ID concept of frontloading. Frontloading is a question which certainly merits more discussion than it usually gets, and here I want to clear up a few things regarding frontloading that are usually missed.

I am a big fan of frontloading even though I don’t believe it is entirely true. The reason for this is that, first of all, I think that there are many theoretical systems which are good in a limited scope, but bad in a larger scope. However, it takes the people dedicated to fleshing out the widest scope of their theories in order for the rest of us to see where exactly the theory succeeds and fails, and what its limitations are. I take the approach to watch the frontloaders cook up their most grand of theories, and for myself to take the practical step of eating the meat and spitting out the bone. And, because I find value in their work, I am also willing to help them a little in the kitchen.
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Sure you are. Someone in your household won’t rest until they find bocconcini cheese for a recipe for guests. Here Michael Marshall, (New Scientist 10 March 2011) tells us, “Fluid societies powered human evolution”: Human hunter-gatherer societies swap members more flexibly than groups of other animals do. That could help explain why humans developed such powerful brains and advanced technology, while chimpanzees didn’t.People have been hunter-gatherers for almost all our 200,000-year history, so modern hunter-gatherer societies are a window on our past, argues Kim Hill of Arizona State University in Tempe. Hill and colleagues gathered census information on 32 hunter-gatherer societies around the world. In all of them, both males and females could leave the group into which they were Read More ›

I’ve toyed with the idea of front-loading, but it seems to me that there are major problems with it. The front-loading of the universe with the laws of physics to eventually make a life-hospitable planet seems like a reasonable hypothesis and logical conclusion. But the front-loading of living systems presents major problems. There is no evidence that the front-loading of the information in living systems can in any way be compared to the front-loading of the laws of physics in the universe for the eventual creation of a life-permitting planet. This seems to me to be an unwarranted extrapolation, comparing apples to oranges. Of course, this raises the question of interventionism. It seems logical that the laws of physics that Read More ›

Kathryn Applegate writes a long post at Biologos purporting to refute a short observation of mine here at UD, namely, my post about Craig Venter challenging Richard Dawkins over common descent. Most of her post does not merit response, but I will note the following: (1) Yes, I did carefully view the video in question. (2) To talk about a “bush of life” is to deny, or at least question, common descent: the geometry of a bush is fundamentally different from the geometry of a tree, which has one main trunk; a bush, by contrast suggests multiple “origins.” (3) In line with the last point, Venter agrees that life on earth is all of the same genetically based type (we’re Read More ›