Escapes trampling by troll competitors – Tells reporters: “Real thinkers don’t read books” Here, at Amazon, the indispensable Nature of Nature (a compendium of the pro- and anti-ID writings of many of the world’s best champions on either side), has attracted a “review” by one, Colonel Zen, who allows us to know that he actually has not read the book. Well, I haven’t read this … and at their vanity press price am unlikely to, but I’d take bets. I say “review”, not review because if the Colonel has not read the book, it is not a review, by definition. If you would like to go to the linked site and join the commenters by pointing out that fact, please Read More ›

Earth systems science is concerned with the relationships between the various components that comprise the Earth as a system, notably environmental and biosphere interactions. Over the years, a wide spectrum of views has been expressed by scholars. At one extreme, the environment is the dominant influence, driving evolution within the biosphere (which is interpreted as being largely moulded by environmental forces). As an example, many have considered that changes in seawater chemistry and atmospheric oxygen levels triggered the Cambrian Explosion. At the other extreme, the Earth’s environment can be perceived as the product of the biosphere. This is the position of Nicholas Butterfield, who has written a paradigm-shifting essay saying: “it is clear that animals figure disproportionately in the maintenance Read More ›

Dimmer switch here: NASA’s Hubble Rules out One Alternative to Dark Energy ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011) — Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have ruled out an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy.Some believe that is because the universe is filled with a dark energy that works in the opposite way of gravity. One alternative to that hypothesis is that an enormous bubble of relatively empty space eight billion light-years across surrounds our galactic neighborhood. If we lived near the center of this void, observations of galaxies being pushed away from each other at accelerating speeds would be an illusion. This hypothesis has been invalidated because astronomers Read More ›

In the Early Edition of PNAS, there’s an article about the fly’s evolutionary tree. While not having access to the article, the supplemental information is available online.

In the abstract the authors note that:

. . . we use micro-RNAs to resolve a node with implications for the evolution of embryonic development in Diptera. We demonstrate that flies experienced three episodes of rapid radiation—lower Diptera (220 Ma), lower Brachycera (180 Ma), and Schizophora (65 Ma)—and a number of life history transitions to hematophagy, phytophagy, and parasitism in the history of fly evolution over 260 million y.

If you connect to the link below, and then scroll to the last page (p. 8), you’ll see the graph which compares the actual species diversity (clade size) versus the age of the fly grouping, and which includes dark lines indicating the “expected” relationship between “clade size” and “age”. The dark line is at a 45-degree angle, in conformity with the notion of Darwinian gradualism: that is, as organisms slowly evolve (a radiation outward from the major form), they slowly diverge morphologically, one from the other. So, the greater amount of time, the greater amount of diversity in a particular family of flies.

Clade Size vs. Age for Diptera Families pnas Mar 14 2011

But what the graph demonstrates is that the diversification happened suddenly, and over a short period of time.

Read More ›

Here’s a clip from an old (1998) debate between William Lane Craig and atheist Peter Atkins. Atkins, after touting scientism, is lectured by Craig on five things that cannot be justified by science but are nonetheless rational to believe: Beautiful! Here’s the YouTube link: click here.

Recently, Bantay, a commenter on a post addressing the origin of language, quoted

…because Darwinists need to chase their tails by denying precisely what language itself affirms (meaning, order, and purpose)”

and asked

Does that mean that when Dawkins speaks, it is meaningless, orderless and purposeless?

Well, let me try to unpack that a bit.

Conversation with friend

Recently, I was on a road trip with a friend who wanted me to listen to this wow! CD by a dynamite Catholic preacher, who was into Thomism. (Thomism, sometimes neo-Thomism, is an attempt to use the teachings of medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas to counter materialism, Darwinism, etc.)

He made clear he was not talking about (nonsense like) intelligent design or creationism when he offered “proofs for God” going back to ancient times. I listened carefully, and then my friend asked me what I thought.

I sensed I’d better not just make social noise (= Isn’t he wonderful! Isn’t he profound! Take that,atheists!). So I thought about it, then said,

He is a good preacher, but I believe his arguments will have no impact whatever today, and at present are merely a distraction. Here is what I learned, writing The Spiritual Brain:

The Darwinist does not believe in the reality of the mind, and as a result, arguments from reason and logic are dismissible, because they are simply the natural selection of your successful genes operating on your neurons to produce delusions that cause you to pass on your genes. Tht is why people continue, through the generations, to find them persuasive. As materialist cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, has said, “Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth.”

To get some sense of how this plays out, Read More ›

I recently promised that I would discuss the latter half of chapter 4 of Daniel Fairbanks’ 2010 book, Relics of Eden, in which Fairbanks attempts to demonstrate common ancestry based on considerations of maternally-inherited mitochondrial and paternally-inherited Y-chromosomal DNA sequences. Or, put more accurately, Fairbanks attempts to demonstrate that humans and chimpanzees are more closely related than either is to gorillas. Fairbanks’ methodology here, however, presupposes (and does not demonstrate) that indeed there is such a hereditary relationship linking humans, chimpanzees and gorillas. If one chooses to interpret mere genetic similarities as evidence for common descent then, indeed, within the framework of that paradigm, Fairbanks’ conclusions may be allowed to stand. But given that modern Darwinians are not even close to articulating a plausible — or even viable — naturalistic mechanism which can account for such evolution from a common ancestor, are we not justified in, at the very least, reserving our judgment until such a mechanistic basis is forthcoming?

The majority of Fairbanks’ arguments for common ancestry (such as shared mobile element or intron inserts, and shared “mistakes”) can be readily accounted for in terms of a common mechanism (i.e. constraints on integration, or similar genetic instabilities or mutation “hotspots”). And there is no decisive way to distinguish common ancestry from common design with regards to unqualified appeals to “similarity”. Does it not stand to reason that a designer might use similar genes and tools to perform similar functions in different organisms?

In fact, if we are going to let all the evidence speak, then why not take into account the evidence against common ancestry? Since we’re on the topic of the Y-chromosome, what about this study published in Nature just last year, which yielded evidence that the male-specific portions of the human and chimp Y chromosome “differ radically in sequence structure and gene content,” suggesting “wholesale renovation,”? The Nature News report noted that,

The common chimp (Pan troglodytes) and human Y chromosomes are “horrendously different from each other”, says David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. “It looks like there’s been a dramatic renovation or reinvention of the Y chromosome in the chimpanzee and human lineages.”

Read More ›

The mechanisms of living systems are based on the most sophisticated computer program ever written. Attempts to deny this obvious fact relegate those who support materialism to the lowest level of illogical speculation. This is the antithesis of true science — the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Arguing with people who cannot perceive obvious truth is an exercise in futility. They will go to their graves, hopelessly lost, and their lives will not only have been meaningless, they will have been less than meaningless, even toxic, because the anti-scientific lie they propagated most assuredly must have poisoned many lives, as mine once was. My qualifications in making these assertions are impeccable, because I was once a victim of the nihilism Read More ›

Since self-organization theory, the Darwin lobby, and the Texas science standards have all been in the Inbox lately, it’s only fair that we have a look at the Texas Darwin  lobby’s view of self-organization or self-replicating life (standard proposed in 2009):

(9) Science concepts. The student knows the significance of various molecules involved in metabolic processes and energy conversions that occur in living organisms. The student is expected to:

(D) analyze and evaluate the evidence regarding formation of simple organic molecules and their organization into long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life.

The response from the Darwin lobby’s house expert John Wise is

This is a clear example of the incorporation of intelligent design/creationist language into student expectations and parallels the “complexity of the cell” language found in the new TEKS (7)(G). The problematic assertion here stems mainly from the writings of Discovery Institute Fellow William Dembski. Dembski asserts that an intelligent designer must be involved in the creation of meaningful information whenever “specific complexity” is found because his own “Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information” prevents natural selection from increasing the amount of information in a genome (see reference 1 and citations within). Dembski’s argument requires that information be complex (have a very low probability of being produced by random processes) and that it be “meaningful.” Meaningful information in the case of genetic sequences such as in DNA can be inferred to be those that increase the fitness of an organism (make it well adapted or better adapted to its environment).

Gosh, whatta reason. A lot of us here are Bill Dembski fans/friends/friendly critics/people he lets park in his back yard for free. So far as I know, Dembski was never a self-organization of life fan and has nothing to do with the development of the theory. Indeed, the self-organization guys have been known to critique his theories too.

The skinny: Read More ›

Here’s an introduction to Henk Rijkers’ review/profile/interview with me about The Spiritual Brain (Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary) in a Dutch Catholic newspaper. The book covers the failure of materialism to fulfil its promises and offers a look at a non-materialist approach to neuroscience, hence the controversy.

Update: Here’s the complete text.

You’ll need Google Translate (just below Navbar) to follow that, so I thought I’d post a few English language comments I made: Read More ›

Okay, it’s not Stephen King, but no scholar ever is. Recently, the journal Synthese had to put a disclaimer on an article written by a Darwin lobbyist about Baylor scholar Frank Beckwith (philosophy and church-state studies*). I am happy to say that, as of this date, his has become the most downloaded article. That is a positive sign for academic life in general, just when we thought they’d fall clear down to China, and out into space. But there is, after all, a bottom somewhere. here is the first story on the subject (what happened), here is a backgrounder, and here are some reflections. * In previous posts, I had assumed he was a law prof, and will correct that Read More ›

Reading further into Suzan Mazur’s Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry, I learned something interesting: Scientists and philosophers who explore self-organization in evolution  also battle the armies of Fortress Tenure (trolls commanded by tax burdens). Mazur notes that zoologist and natural philosopher Stan Salthe, visiting scholar at Binghamton University says “his skepticism about natural selection has made him “poison” in some science circles.” He’s not by any means the only one whose name comes up. Materialist atheist philosopher Jerry Fodor (MIT) joked that he was in the Witness Protection Program for his skepticism of evolutionary psychology.[!] Meanwhile, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College warns, Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the Read More ›

Here tragic mishap says something I could not quite understand, and maybe Phaedros did: In discussing speech controls , as here, I said, Anyone who doubts the story should consider that, in the modern world, huge empires imprisoning billions of people and killing tens of millions, have been based on speech control (implicitly, thought control) backed by violence. Usually, the empires’ theories were wrong, their projects useless or destructive, and their end welcome. The pity is that no one was able to shut them down quickly by making everyone mutually incomprehensible about everything. he thought I sounded “like Jared Loughner” (the alleged perpetrator of the recent Tucson, Arizona, shootings at a handshaker where the Congresswoman was seriously wounded, and many Read More ›

While preparing a lecture, paleoanthropologist John Hawks considers the following division of opinion on the origin of language, grammar, etc: Whether language evolved as an accidental by-product of tool use, etc. or how the rules of grammar evolved, and the way in which language originated as a byproduct of tool use and how the rules of grammar evolved by natural selection (discussing Chomsky, Pinker, and Ramachandran. He is not satisfied with what he hears:

I still don’t believe it. Some archaeologists fetishize stone tools in this way, making them the end-all of human cognitive evolution. But let’s face it: chimpanzees and even capuchin monkeys perform multistep tool operations using the brains they have. Hafting a point on a stick seems like the pinnacle of progress only when points are all the ground yields up.Consider how many times a child will witness tools being crafted. Now consider how many times the same child hears spoken communication. The second is at least two or three orders of magnitude greater than the first. It’s not statistically credible for toolmaking to provide a cognitive basis for language. The opposite is vastly more likely.

Ironically, my current view is that much of language cognition really may be a spandrel – at least, in the broad sense promoted by Gould. (March 11, 2011)

Essentially, the spandrel is a supposed accidental byproduct of evolution by natural selection.

Now, in the face of a subject as momentous as language, just what project engages Hawks and his lecture subjects: Not to discover the origin of language but to develop a theory that follows with utter regularity from Darwinian evolution. That, of course, is precisely where the trouble begins.

As a lifetime professional communicator, I would say we know a few truths about human language: Read More ›

Lots of people think David Brooks’s evolutionary psychology romance (The Social Animal) flopped. That surprised me. Who knows, it may signal a wholesome change in the wind: Not every stale idea or exhibition of poor taste can be rescued by throwing the word “evolution” about or invoking “neuroscience.” Consider “Mean Street: What David Brooks Got Wrong and Montaigne Got Right” by Evan Newmark (The Wall Street JournalMarch 11, 2011): …sorry, but I won’t be reading the entire book. The magazine piece was enough for me. It just didn’t ring true – and for good reason. It isn’t. To make his case, Brooks invents “Harold” and “Erica”, two imaginary 21st century overachievers, and tells how their lives and fates are determined Read More ›