When David Brooks’ Man: The Social Animal appeared, it was reviled by people as far apart otherwise as O’Leary and P.Z. Myers, for its Gadarene (and utterly tone deaf) slide into the fever swamps of evolutionary psychology.

These fetid bogs are usually inhabited by the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, the Darwinian brand marketer and the advocates of neurolaw (“your neurons fail, you’re in jail”). However, a review in thinkmag The Catholic Thing (“a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary”) not only heaps praise on the failed materialist novel but grabs it for Roman Catholicism.

Reviewer George J. Marlin offers Thomas Aquinas (complete with halo) to provide support for the descent, and offers

Although Brooks surveys the latest research on the human mind, he doesn’t teach Catholics anything all that new. What he does is confirm a lot of what generations of undergraduates were once taught about the human person at Catholic universities in their Thomistic philosophical psychology and ethics courses (it would be interesting to know how much this is still the case).

[ … ]

Brooks basically agrees that we have an intuitive moral sense and effectively explains how people can be taught to control irascible passions. It’s good that a columnist for The Times has surveyed recent scientific studies and reached that conclusion. But it’s best to recognize that his solid work, which some see as opening previously unexplored territory, is really a clearing of the way for a return to some of the oldest traditional truths.

Here’s a curious fact about Christian Darwinists: Read More ›

Overheard, on the “supernatural” and design in nature:

… the supernatural is not necessarily a religious idea.

Metaphysics was founded by Greek ancient philosophers and it has nothing to do with religion in the sense that it does not deal with concepts born out of Revelation but out of pure rationlity. Antony Flew ended up embracing rationality and intelligence in Nature but remained agnostic. Read More ›

This is a post about complex specified information (CSI). But first, I’d like to begin with a true story, going back to the mid-1960s. A Cambridge astronomer named Anthony Hewish had designed a large radio telescope, covering more than four acres, in order to pick out a special group of objects in the sky: compact, scintillating radio sources called quasars, which are now known to be the very active and energetic cores of distant galaxies. Professor Hewish and his students were finally able to start operating their telescope by July 1967, although it was not completely finished until later on. At the time, Hewish had a Ph.D. student named Jocelyn Bell. Bell had sole responsibility for operating the telescope and analyzing the data, under Hewish’s supervision.

Six or eight weeks after starting the survey, Jocelyn Bell noticed that a bit of “scruff” was occasionally appearing in the data records. However, it wasn’t one of the scintillating sources that Professor Hewish was searching for. Further observations revealed that it was a series of pulses, spaced 1.3373 seconds apart. The pulses could not be man-made, as they kept to sidereal time (the time-keeping system used by astronomers to track stars in the night sky). Subsequent measurements of the dispersion of the pulse signal established that the source was well outside the solar system but inside the galaxy. Yet at that time, a pulse rate of 1.3373 seconds seemed far too fast for a star, and on top of that, the signal was uncannily regular. Bell and her Ph.D supervisor were forced to consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life. As Bell put it in her recollections of the event (after-dinner speech, published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 302, pp. 685-689, 1977):

We did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission.

The observation was half-humorously designated Little green men 1 until a famous astronomer, Thomas Gold, identified these signals as rapidly rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, in 1968. The existence of these stars had been postulated as far back as 1934, by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky, but no-one had yet confirmed their existence when Bell made her observations in 1967, and only a few astronomers knew much about them.

Here’s a question for readers: was Bell wrong to consider the possibility that the signals might be from aliens? Here’s another one: if you were searching for an extra-terrestrial intelligence, what criteria would you use to decide whether a signal came from aliens? As we’ll see, SETI’s criterion for identifying alien signals makes use of one form of complex specified information. The criterion – narrow band-width – looks very simple, but it involves picking out a sequence of events which is highly surprising, and therefore very complex.

My previous post, entitled Why there’s no such thing as a CSI Scanner, or: Reasonable and Unreasonable Demands Relating to Complex Specified Information, dealt with complex specified information (CSI), as defined in Professor William Dembski’s paper, Specification: The Pattern that Signifies Intelligence. It was intended to answer some common criticisms of complex specified information, and also to explain why CSI, although defined in a mathematically rigorous manner, is not a physically computable quantity. Briefly, the reason is that Professor Dembski’s formula for CSI contains not only the physically computable term P(T|H), but also the semiotic term Phi_s(T). Specifically, Dembski defines the specified complexity Chi of a pattern T given chance hypothesis H, minus the tilde and context sensitivity, as:

Chi=-log2[10^120.Phi_s(T).P(T|H)],

where Chi is the specified complexity (or CSI) of a system,
Phi_s(T) is the number of patterns whose semiotic description by speaker S is at least as simple as S’s semiotic description of T,
P(T|H) is the probability of a pattern T with respect to the most plausible chance hypothesis H, and
10^120 is the maximal number of bit operations that the known, observable universe could have performed throughout its entire multi-billion year history, as calculated by theoretical computer scientist Seth Lloyd (“Computational Capacity of the Universe,” Physical Review Letters 88(23) (2002): 7901–4).

Some of the more thoughtful skeptics who regularly post comments on Uncommon Descent were not happy with this formula, so I’ve come up with a simpler one – call it CSI-lite, if you will – which I hope will be more to their liking. This post is therefore intended for people who are still puzzled about, or skeptical of, the concept of complex specified information. Read More ›

In “Chimp, Bonobo Study Sheds Light on the Social Brain”, ScienceDaily reports (Apr. 5, 2011) It’s been a puzzle why our two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have widely different social traits, despite belonging to the same genus. Now, a comparative analysis of their brains shows neuroanatomical differences that may be responsible for these behaviors, from the aggression more typical of chimpanzees to the social tolerance of bonobos.”What’s remarkable is that the data appears to match what we know about the human brain and behavior,” says Emory anthropologist James Rilling, who led the analysis. “The neural circuitry that mediates anxiety, empathy and the inhibition of aggression in humans is better developed in bonobos than in chimpanzees.” [ … Read More ›

British physicist David Tyler, who posts here, has a comment in Nature on “Laird of physics” James Clerk Maxwell, particularly the Laird’s disquiet with materialism, a fact not noted in the article on maxwell: As the Victorian age matured, science leaders became increasingly materialistic. At a meeting of the British Association in 1874, President John Tyndall took the opportunity to advance his worldview (of materialism). In the audience was James Clerk Maxwell, who crafted this poem to express his disquiet: For poem, go here.

From AAAS’s ScienceInsider we learn: “Bill Allowing Teachers to Challenge Evolution Passes Tennessee House” (Sara Reardon, 7 April 2011): If the bill passes, Tennessee would join Louisiana as the second state to have specific “protection” for the teaching of evolution in the classroom. The effects of the Louisiana law, which passed in 2008, are still unclear. The bill allows teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught,” namely, “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” Mediocrats are appalled: “Asserting that there are significant scientific controversies about the overall nature of these concepts when there Read More ›

In “Jules Evans on Neuroscience and Polytheism”, psychologist Evansoffers that we can make too much of claims that humans are ruled by unconscious motives (April 6, 2011). Such a claim forms a basis for “neurolaw” and “neuromarketing” ( also here (law and marketing as if you didn’t really exist). He notes,

The ancients’ idea that we can become ‘captains of our soul’ would seem to be up the creek without a paddle. And yet…We should remind ourselves that ancient philosophers didn’t say we were all born free, rational, moral and unified selves. They said we might perhaps become so, but only after years and years of training in mindfulness, self-examination, deliberative reasoning and impulse control. Most of us won’t put ourselves through this training, and will remain in a state of “civil war”, as Plato put it, with the multiple parts of our psyche constantly competing for power.I think this nuanced conception of human freedom, morality and rationality – as a latent capacity that can be developed through training – still holds up to scientific scrutiny.

For example, if we’re completely determined by our unconscious, automatic impulses, then how come Read More ›

A guy was involved with a push poll in a publically funded medium in Canada (currently heading to the polls), by which just about everyone comes out a “Liberal”: Here’s the first experiment. It only takes a minute. Go through the survey and answer every question with “no opinion” as your answer. Of course, skip the part where it asks you to choose parties or leaders (that would be taking an opinion). Surprise! The CBC push-poll says you’re a Liberal. Even though you gave absolutely no legitimate reason to be pegged as a Liberal. Like I say; Loewen and friends rigged the system. Now try a completely different approach. Go through the survey again and simply alternate clicking “strongly agree” Read More ›

Just recently, I saw a video clip where an obviously self-important Christian history professor was explaining that “evolution” is the fundamental assumption of all biology. I remember thinking, yes, but sciences can and do make progress even when their fundamental assumptions about how things happen are wrong. In fact, that’s quite common, because evidence is what usually leads to progress. And theory only sometimes. The current Darwin toxin in biology’s system makes it very difficult, in my experience, to have any reasonable discussion of evolution as a fact. It’s all about how Darwin was right. On any find, immediately the Darwinist blunders forward and – dismissing where the evidence in any given case – insists “It’s Darwin”. Or, when that Read More ›

Here: No book of this sort can cover every important topic, perspective, and challenge. But we were surprised that there was no discussion of why evolution remains controversial at a societal level. Why, for example, do many in the U.S. remain skeptical of evolution? In this sense, evolution is unique among the sciences (with the possible exception of climate change research) in that the majority of the public do not even believe it is real! Clearly, this situation is not desirable, given that it is largely this same public that, through their taxes, provides the financial support for teaching and research in evolutionary science. How can this challenge be addressed, in the US and elsewhere? On a related vein, we Read More ›

Of course not. Consider what the biologists at war with language are trying to do: Replace “to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z” with “ ‘in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z”. It won’t work because it is not fluent, not even fluid, just stodgy and inconvenient. Historically, such newspeak strategies seldom work because they call attention to the very thing they seek to extinguish: In this case, awareness of design For example, what happens when our local “human picket sign” insists that we all acknowledge global warming? Sure, I acknowledged it. In fact, as I pointed out to her, “A huge dump of global warming fell last night, and now someone Read More ›

David Tyler reports on the beautifully preserved Cretaceous “ buttercup”: Many portrayals of habitats purporting to represent the Age of Dinosaurs have conifer trees and ferns, but very little ground cover. As palaeontologists continue their research, they are coming to recognise that the ecosystems were much more diverse. The earliest flowering plants are represented by pollen grains and considered to be about 130 Ma years old. However, diversity after this was rapid (see here). Recently, a strikingly beautiful fossil has been reported from China, in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. [ … ] ome questions deserve to be asked about the phrase “slower diversification of many families of eudicots”: if the evolution of the angiosperms was an “abominable mystery” to Read More ›

UD commenter markf offers the following: Is there a bright side if you are an atheist?” Oh yes. For example, – no pressure to sit through hour long rambles or harangues once a week in a building with minimal heating and hard seats – easier to enjoy satires on religion – no need to repeat “I was once an atheist but now I know better” every week. In our church there is no pressure to do anything; it’s all voluntary. The seats are soft and the heating is comfortable. The sermons are not rambles or harangues, but insightful messages (often convicting, but necessarily and constructively so) given by a pastor with a Ph.D. in ethics who has been a professor Read More ›

Topic: Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? (Thursday, April 7 – 7:00pm – 9:00pm Eastern time) Facebook page Live webcast: www.ndtv.net One viewer commented … the atheist damage control machine is going full throttle! Craig absolutely wiped the floor with Krauss. It might be the worst debate performance ever versus Craig, adding Check out the “damage control” comments from Lawrence Krauss that Richard Dawkins posted on his website! Krauss on Dawkins’s site PZ Myers added his usual shower of roses too… Other views of the Krauss-Craig debate: Wintery Knight’s summary Possible Worlds Always have a reason Letters to Nature

A theory that attempts to account for the fine tuning of the universe for life may be “deeply flawed,” we learn in Paul J. Steinhardt’s “The Inflation Debate.” Steinhardt is one of the theory’s creators, nevertheless asks, “Abstract: Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?

Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact. The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established during an intense early growth spurt.

But some of the theory’s creators, including the author, are having second thoughts. As the original theory has developed, cracks have appeared in its logical foundations.

Highly improbable conditions are required to start inflation. Worse, inflation goes on eternally, producing infinitely many outcomes, so the theory makes no firm observational predictions.

Scientists debate among (and within) themselves whether these troubles are teething pains or signs of a deeper rot. Various proposals are circulating for ways to fix inflation or replace it.
– Scientific American (April 2011), 304, 36-43 | doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0411-36 (Paywall)

Rob Sheldon notes,

Inflation adds a whole bunch of really unlikely metaphysical assumptions — Read More ›