Proponent of the multiverse and the universe as simulation wins this year’s Templeton Prize
The Prize has been awarded to Martin Rees. As Daniel Cressey tells it in Nature (6 April 2011),

Controversial ‘spirituality’ award goes to a scientist for fourth year in a row.

Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and former head of the Royal Society in London, today received the 2011 prize, worth £1 million (US$1.62 million), which rewards “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

The prize and the foundation have both attracted attacks from high-profile atheist scientists, who accuse them of attempting to insert religion needlessly into science. Rees says that he has no problem with accepting the prize, and he refuses to be drawn on the controversy, saying, “I have no comment on the views other people have.”

He also says he has no religious beliefs but sometimes attends Church of England services.

In 2004 Rees speculated controversially that we are living in a giant computer simulation: Read More ›

A fine tuning and multiverse advocate, Martin J. Rees, today won the 2011 Templeton Prize. The astrophysicist with no religion won the Prize originally “for Progress in Religion.”
The 2011 Templeton Prize was announced today.

LONDON, APRIL 6 – Martin J. Rees, a theoretical astrophysicist whose profound insights on the cosmos have provoked vital questions that speak to humanity’s highest hopes and worst fears, has won the 2011 Templeton Prize.
Rees, Master of Trinity College, one of Cambridge University’s top academic posts, and former president of the Royal Society, the highest leadership position within British science, has spent decades investigating the implications of the big bang, the nature of black holes, events during the so-called ‘dark age’ of the early universe, and the mysterious explosions from galaxy centers known as gamma ray bursters. Read More ›

In “The “Newspeak” of Evolutionary Biology Hopes to Banish the term “Design,” by Design”, Evolution News & Views (April 6, 2011) Casey Luskin tells us The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Now some ID critics today are so fearful of lending any credence towards intelligent design that they are recommending that biologists stop using the word “design” entirely.A recent article in the journal Bioessays by its editor Andrew Moore, titled “We need a new language for evolution. . . everywhere,” suggests that biologists should stop using the term “design.” According to Moore, under “Evolution old-speak” we would say, “Structure X is Read More ›

Here Brent Bozell notes, On NPR, evening anchor Michele Norris mourned that “when you reach back to the era of Rather and Jennings and Brokaw, it seemed like getting an anchor job in the past was much like a lifetime appointment, much like a Supreme Court justice.” Media reporter David Folkenflik answered that “holding one of these jobs is no longer being one of the highest priests of journalism because the notion of authoritativeness has been undermined. Even the New York Times does not command, in some ways, as absolute a voice about what is news and what isn’t anymore.”It is refreshing that Americans today reject the notion that we should bow before the network TV anchormen as the most Read More ›

Paul Feyerabend’s latest book has finally been published in English. The Tyranny of Science, Polity Press (2011) although it was written in 1993. The Tyranny of Science “In this wide–ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are Read More ›

In “Stone Tools Influenced Hand Evolution in Human Ancestors, Anthropologists Say,” (ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011), we learn (repeated twice more in a single short piece), that

New research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has confirmed Charles Darwin’s speculation that the evolution of unique features in the human hand was influenced by increased tool use in our ancestors.

The fact that Darwin speculated this adds greatly to the idea’s credibility, in a way that evidence wouldn’t.

Research over the last century has certainly confirmed the existence of a suite of features in the bones and musculature of the human hand and wrist associated with specific gripping and manipulatory capabilities that are different from those of other extant great apes. These features have fuelled suggestions that, at some point since humans split from the last common ancestor of living apes, the human hand evolved away from features adapted for locomotion toward alternative functions.

The release does not feature the routine searching question format of science stories: Read More ›

I saw this on XKCD this morning, and thought it was hilarious.

“Our understanding of the way the brain works could help us create a better legal system, says Baylor College of Medicine’sneuroscientist David Eagleman,” in “The human brain: turning our minds to the law” (Telegraph 05 Apr 2011): The problem, he says,

is that the law rests on two assumptions that are charitable, but demonstrably false. The first is that people are “practical reasoners”, which is the law’s way of saying that they are capable of acting in alignment with their best interests, and capable of rational foresight about their actions. The second is that all brains are created equal. Everyone who is of legal age and above an IQ of 70 is assumed, in the eyes of the law, to have the same capacity for decision-making, understanding, impulse control and reasoning. But these ideas simply don’t match up with the facts of neuroscience.

Isn’t equality in the eyes of the law somewhat like “We hold these truths to be self-evident … ”? where the equality claimed by the American founders was not based on assumptions about nature at all but on assumption’s about nature’s Author?

———————————————————————————————————

This article, based on Eagleman’s book Incognito, follows the usual pattern of tracts favouring materialist law reform: Asserting, with no evidence, that traditional beliefs about justice are merely a “desire for revenge.”

—————————————————————————

If the argument is that Crazy Jake is not as generously endowed with intellect as Richard Feynman, who doubts it? But – on the traditional assumption that Feynman’s intellect is a gift to him, and not proof of ultimate Darwinian superiority – they are indeed equal in the eyes of the law, though one is considerably better endowed in that way than the other. Rich and poor appear in the same court.

We also learn, Read More ›

Here, well-known physicist author Paul Davies acknowledges that we have no idea how life began. However, the TalkOrigins forces of certainty are ever at work, stomping on reasonable doubt. Of course, rubes doubt the TalkOrigins “donut hole” explanations. But that just proves they are rubes. Rubes never realize that the hole is the very best part of the donut, full of nutritional value. They keep wanting the stuff on the outside of the hole, for no good reason.

A woman who has had a normal mammogram shortly afterward develops an aggressive tumour? In “Cancer Can Develop in Catastrophic Burst”, Nicholas Wade ( New York Times, January 10, 2011) reports The finding marks a striking exception to the current theory of how cancer develops. Cells are thought to become cancerous over many years as they collect, one by one, the mutations required to override the many genetic restraints on a cell’s growth. It now seems that a cell can gain all or most of these cancerous mutations in a single event. Darwinists might well contain their hopes, however. It is a single destructive event. Not a single creative event. Usually a cell that suffers this much damage will destroy Read More ›

“So if someone is mentally ill, is it the mind (spiritual, demonic, etc.) or the translating organ of the brain (age, MS, injury, other disease, etc.) that is the cause, (or perhaps both)?  How does one distinguish the causes?” Read More ›

Here’s a question about ID I’ve had for a long time, and I hope some ID proponents are able to help me sort it out. I’ll get right to the point before starting in with the commentary.

When an intelligent agent demonstrates the ability to directly and purposefully modify the genes of a given creature, is that evidence for intelligent design?

When intelligent agents use selection and variation to produce particular desired results, is that evidence for intelligent design?

When intelligent agents use selection and variation to produce a ‘better’ antenna is that evidence for intelligent design?

More on this and some commentary below.

Read More ›

Interesting article in PLoS Medicine (source): Why Most Published Research Findings Are False By John P. A. Ioannidis Abstract: There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and Read More ›

Steve Martin performed the following on Letterman a few weeks back:

Well, the problem in Washington, DC schools was roughly this drama in three acts:

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes’ students scored “proficient” or “advanced” in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.[ … ]

Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes’ staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

[ … ]

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

– from Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, “When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?” (USA Today , March 28, 2011)

Like most human beings, I am implicitly a non-materialist, so I would think, the important question is, who made the extra erasures and when? Read More ›