Monthly Archives: April 2011
Why one scientist checked out of Darwinism
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intellectual freedom |
Because Darwinism requires “fantastic leaps of faith” The Darwinist troll bawling up a storm in his cave about this recent defection may not have heard about the one below: The author worked for ten years as a Senior Research Scientist in the medical and scientific instrument field. The complexity of life came to the forefront […]
Coffee!!: Non-materialist neuroscientist offers Skeptiko his theological views
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by News under Spirituality |
From PR Underground, neurotheology researcher, physician and author, Andy Newburg explains, how fundamentalists Christians and Atheists share a minority view of God. (PRUnderground, April 27th, 2011) Join Skeptiko guest host Steve Volk for an interview with Dr. Andy Newburg. A distinguished researcher at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College, and professor in Religious Studies at the […]
Intelligent design is antievolution … or maybe not …
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Here is a current debate on the subject from Cassandra’s Tears and here at Intelligent Reasoning is a comment, if you’d like to weigh in. Many sources think that intelligent design is concerned principally with the plausibility of proposed mechanisms for evolution, not with denying that it occurs. Most ID theorists are skeptical – based […]
Darwinism’s Eroding Monopoly In Academia
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
Evolution News & Views is reporting on a rather revealing study of Scottish first year students at Glasgow University who doubt Darwinian evolution. In fact, the Times Education Supplement (TES) article reports that “One in 20 first-year biology students at Glasgow University don’t believe in the theory of evolution, according to new research.” The article further […]
Saturday afternoon science show: Pigs love mud because we all evolved from fish
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism |
“Pigs have ‘evolved to love mud’”, Victoria Gill explains (BBC News, 29 April 2011). Dutch researcher Marc Bracke from Wageningen University and Research Centre theorizes that … the behaviour could have evolved in pigs’ most ancient relatives.”We all evolved from fish, so it could be that this motivation to be in water could be something […]
Coffee!!: Thoughts on SETI’s past and future: Merge with ID?
| April 30, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Interesting discussion at “Don’t defund SETI, science broadcaster pleads.” Could SETI just merge with ID and study evidence of intelligence in signals along those lines? Otherwise, it could merge with astrobiology units at various universities and restrict itself to looking for evidence of bacterial life in outer space. SETI has always been handicapped by the […]
Brown bag: Darwinists trade broomsticks for calendars in effort to vindicate “no homework” prof
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under academic freedom, Philosophy |
Yes, really. Recently, in a guest edited issue of philosophy journal Synthese, anti-ID Louisiana U prof Barbara Forrest broomsticked – of all people – Baylor prof Frank Beckwith, framed as an ID supporter. And anyone who keeps up with the issues knows he isn’t. The scandal here is that Forrest is supposed to be a […]
Time out: He invented it, he disowned it, but we’re supposed to go on believing it?
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology |
A friend of Uncommon Descent writes to say that E. O. Wilson abandoning his kin selection theory (group Darwinism vs. the selfish gene) due to lack of evidence has caused quite the little uproar in Britain. He adds, The gist of the responses in Nature seemed to be that Nowak and Wilson did not understand […]
Directions for perpetrating a science hoax
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Popular culture, Science |
Here, Adam Ruben, – “Experimental Error: Forging a Head” Science (April 22, 2011), reflects on how to construct a science hoax and have free publicity coming out of your ears: Attach the bones of something to the bones of something else. You have just created the missing link between those two species. “It’s amazing!” you […]
Remember the telephone game?
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Mind |
Yes, we all do, but that’s not the whole story … Some findings in the field of collaborative memory research have been counter intuitive. For one, collaboration can hurt memory. Some studies have compared the recall of items on lists by “collaborative groups,” or those who study together, and “nominal groups,” in which individuals work […]
Coffee!! For the lone reader in Downadashack, New Brunswick, who isn’t …
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology |
… plenty sick of the Royal Wedding, here’s New Scientist’s evolutionary psychology take on Kate’s “ruthless mating intelligence”: AH, THE eugenic thrill of it! Status weds beauty: a promising start. Royalty weds a good-genes commoner: excellent progress. A 6-foot, 3-inch prince who flies rescue helicopters and shows self-deprecating humour weds a 5-foot, 10-inch Amazon with […]
More Signs of Design: Bacteria on the Radio
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
Wired Science is reporting on a forthcoming paper which has been posted on the pre-print website, ArXiv. The authors propose that chromosomes might act in a manner synonymous with a radio antennae, involving electrons travelling around DNA loops to produce species-specific wavelengths. Read More>>>
Awesome powers of common shrew or weakening powers of current classification?
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under speciation |
This New Scientist article (Michael Marshall, 28 April 2011) on the interbreeding of shrews despite the fact that their chromosomes have been rearranged does not use the “biological species concept” (it’s hard to know how to do so under the circumstances). Stuck for a term, Marshall calls the differently arranged groups “races” instead. Anyway, Searle […]
Don’t defund SETI, science broadcaster pleads
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Bob McDonald, the science guy at Canada’s government broadcaster, CBC, critiques (April 28, 2011) the spending on the Royal Wedding, contrasting it with the small amount required to keep the recently defunded, 50-year-old Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program going: … Until recently, their efforts had been hampered by the fact that they had to […]
Something to get up for tomorrow morning …
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design |
Hey hey, ho ho Six planets in a row here, April 30 (and maybe eight planets if you have binoculars).
From the “science is about concise, simple explanations that work” file …
| April 29, 2011 | Posted by News under Philosophy, Science |
Shimon Malin explains, Nature Loves to Hide (Oxford University Press, p. 6), why you don’t need science for that: One role of science is to explain phenomena, anf an explanation is different from “economy of thought.” Consider the example of tides. People made accurate tables of the times of high and low tides in many […]
He said it: Why doesn’t Christian Darwinist Francis Collins accept “evolutionary psychology” as ultimately explaining away religion?
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by News under Christian Darwinism |
Here’s Warwick U’s Steve Fuller, author of Dissent over Descent (2008) on Francis Collins’s curious affection for C.S. Lewis and other thinkers who assumed the reality of the mind, while believing just about anything else that Darwinism throws through the mailbox: Theistic evolutionists … Simply take what Collins calls “the existence of the moral law […]
Mummy wars: DNA experts now hold separate conferences about ancient Egyptians
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by News under Human evolution |
This one’s for DNA buffs: Enter the world of ancient Egyptian DNA and you are asked to choose between two alternate realities: one in which DNA analysis is routine, and the other in which it is impossible. “The ancient-DNA field is split absolutely in half,” says Tom Gilbert, who heads two research groups at the […]
He said it: On the origin of the universe, life, and humanity
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From best known early twentieth century Catholic writer and apologist [take this, current Pontifical Institute!] G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (book text here: Now what is needed for these problems of primitive existence is something more like a primitive spirit. In calling up this vision of the first things, I would ask the reader […]
Human evolution: Agriculture may have spurred innovation
| April 28, 2011 | Posted by News under Human evolution |
An apparently reasonable thesis re the origin of human societies is offer by an archaeology team that argues (Science 22 April 2011), Early Farmers Went Heavy on the StarchRecent evidence shows that agriculture began in fits and starts in the Near East, more than 10,000 years ago. Now a U.S.-German team is gathering the first […]
