From Rebecca Boyle at PopSci.com, we learn, “Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves: Like Schrödinger’s cat, teleported light is both dead and alive” (04.15.2011) In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost.The team employed a mind-boggling set of quantum manipulation techniques to achieve this, including squeezing, photon subtraction, entanglement and homodyne detection. The photo above depicts their device, nicknamed the Teleporter, in the lab of Akira Read More ›

In “Pope: Humanity isn’t random product of evolution” (Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, Sat Apr 23), we learn: VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn’t a random product of evolution. Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.” “If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no Read More ›

From Fox News LiveScience, we learn: World’s Largest Atom Smasher May Have Detected ‘God Particle’ (April 22, 2011): A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle.” The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking. And announced on Good Friday, no less … It’s more seasonal, maybe, than Read More ›

Jerry “No, Uncommon Descent did NOT invent him*” Coyne asks:

When is The Chronicle of Higher Education going to put the kibosh on the irrelevant and incoherent tirades of Gnu-Bashers [new atheist bashers – ed.] like Michael Ruse and Jacques Berlinerblau, whose continual attacks on atheists don’t do the journal any good? But in the meantime, one person still mans the Gnu Barricades: David Barash. Barash, a biologist at the University of Washington, has posted his latest on Tuesday, “The emperor’s new nakedness.” Taking his fellow Chronicle “bloggers” to task, he points out what’s really new in New Atheists: their popularity and their unwillingness to respect religious claims (on a related note, read Jason Rosenhouse’s epic new post on atheist “incivility”) …

Anyway, it is an argument that materialist atheists should just be rude.

Okay, so go ahead, new atheists: Be rude.

Some people are so unrude, they won’t even tell you it suits you.

* Can we quell this rumour for once and for all? Read More ›

“I want Muslims to question creationism, says the physicist and imam who has had death threats for supporting evolution“

Here , New Scientist interviews physicist imam Usama Hasan, who says that belief in evolution is compatible with belief in the Koran (Michael Bond, 19 April 2011):

Recently you retracted your views because of the outrage they caused. Could you explain?My retraction was saying that I misjudged how to go about explaining these things. Sooner or later someone will have to address the issue of evolution – it’s a no-go area, especially with the clerics – but I’m abandoning my attempt to reconcile it with the Koran until things settle down. I am not willing to risk my life over this issue.

A belief supported only by death threats against unbelievers is poorly supported indeed. It amounts to saying: We can’t convince; we just scare.

Christians like to say: “Test everything. Hold onto what is good.”

And precisely therein lies the problem: What are Muslims signing on to when they are told, “believe evolution”? Three things to know – and understand their implications clearly: Read More ›

From New Scientist we learn, “Shamed Harvard scientist is barred from the classroom” (Peter Aldhous, 21 April 2011):

Marc Hauser, the prominent animal cognition researcher found guilty of scientific misconduct by Harvard University last year, is to receive no rapid rehabilitation by his closest colleagues.

He’s the one who made Discover’s Top Ten Retractions list (# 3) fr unsubstantiable claims about monkey minds.

According to The Boston Globe, members of the university’s psychology faculty voted in February not to allow Hauser to teach in the department in the 2011-2012 academic year. Following the vote, Michael Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, decided that he shouldn’t be allowed to teach in other departments, either. Could his upcoming book Evilicious have helped tip the applecart?  Read More ›

Or a storm of worse substance …

Further to Sal Cordova’s earlier post, “Matzke is a Liar”: If Matzke is what those who know him claim, perhaps Barbara Forrest could usefully thank him and ask him to cease his efforts on her behalf. Read More ›

O’Leary: What, specifically, do you recommend that people do, to recover art from the fact/value split? We all know about it, but in my experience, one of the effects of such a split is to render such subjects undiscussable. There was a time when, for example, poetry was public to the point that technical or science ideas were advanced therein (cf Hesiod’s Works and Days or Dante’s Paradiso ). Today, it is a purely private affair and almost all evaluation of works of art, literature, or music is experienced as an exercise in prejudice. It must be experienced that way, of course, when all norms are rejected in principle.

For the arts, is there actually a way out of this mess?

Pearcey: The way out is to recognize where those ideas come from. The subjective view you describe so well arose from Romanticism. The key thinker was Hegel, who taught a kind of pantheism—an Absolute Spirit or Mind unfolding dialectically over history. What was important was not the outer realm of physical nature, but the inner realm of the spirit or consciousness. Art was redefined as the expression of the artist’s inner experience.

This was a historical novelty. Read More ›

Now, it wouldn’t surprise the Uncommon Descent news desk, but it certainly surprised Canadian blogging queen Five Feet of Fury when Yesterday he told Dennis Miller we need to “redistribute the wealth.” (FREE audio). But here, here, here, here, here, and here, anti-Expelled types have painted Stein as a conservative. Comments? (Note: Five Feet of (“I’m with the banned”) Fury, an unintimidated target of A Guy Named Sue and fearless opponent of politically correct anti-Semites, is not to all tastes – definitely not for PC consumption. But she doesn’t call a straight shot crooked.)

In “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science” (Mother Jones, April 18, 2011), Chris Mooney offers to explain “How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.” For example, Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. “They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs,” says Taber, “and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what Read More ›

Over on the website of Centre for Intelligent Design (C4ID) UK, director Alastair Noble has posted some remarks concerning the Edinburgh Science Festival held this week just ending. An associated evening event, organised by the Humanist Society of Scotland, addressed “The Threat of Creeping Creationism In Schools In Scotland”. Alastair Noble responds, I recently attended an evening event (21 April 2011) at the prestigious Edinburgh Science Festival.  Organised by the Humanist Society of Scotland, it addressed “The Threat of Creeping Creationism in Scottish Schools”.  As a proponent of the debate around Intelligent Design (ID), I thought our Centre might feature.  I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t the creeping creationism that worried me.  In fact one of the speakers from Aberdeen University Read More ›

Nick Matzke is the famous former employee of the National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE). For many years, he has been on the frontlines on the war on ID. His finest hour was at the Dover Trial where he provided a lot of technical support to the ACLU lawyers. Matzke’s attacks on ID are fundamentally based on misrepresentation, strawman arguments, equivocation, distortions, etc. Well, it seems his way of doing business has finally caught up with him. There is poetic justice in his public humiliation at the hands of fellow Darwinists. 🙂 [Matzke is] a nasty piece of work … Matzke has apparently made stuff up Jerry Coyne Another Tom Johnson Coyne refers to the words of Matzke and friends Read More ›

Apparently, the Beckwith/Synthese controversy has snowballed:

A friend writes to say, “Now one of the most distinguished philosophers of science (of the past 40 years), Larry Laudan, has weighed in … ” (Against a guy who trashed him (Robert Pennock), and is otherwise best known for his “dark side” stories about the intelligent design folk.)

Laudan has now weighed in about the “anti-ID issue” of Synthese (in which supposed ID expert Barbara Forrest wrongly broomsticked Baylor’s Frank Beckwith as if he were an ID supporter -when everyone else knows he isn’t. But now her supporters are whining up a storm and hinting at “dark”  ID forces).  Laudan says:

I know nothing directly about such pressure, if any, as the ID forces brought to bear on the editors of Synthese. I have, however, read portions of several papers in the Synthese issue in question and, in my judgment, the statement from the editors dissociating themselves from some of the injudicious and scandalous statements made by some of the authors in the pertinent issue of the journal was not only in order but essential as a matter of professional ethics. Read More ›

O’Leary: Okay, you wrote a book, Saving Leonardo, about that Renaissance arts/engineering/Mona Lisa dude. Why? Isn’t it too late for books?

Look at this: “Neuroscience mugs abstract art”:  Squawking gull chicks “explain” art, according to some:

“We are going to go forward into the unknown in the quest to make art fully knowable and we’ll deal with the consequences when we’ve arrived, joyful in our accomplishments and sad, too, at the inevitable loss of all that has been left behind.

Left behind? I suppose he means Leonardo, not the pop novel apocalypse.

Surely, the irreversible loss has already occurred. By the time one finds the “gull chick” story above terribly informative about the complex experience of art, one has already dipped below the horizon of understanding art. One is then in the position of a person armed with tools from the BestDeal – who can take a computer apart, but could never design or build one.

Comment?

Pearcey: Saving Leonardo is about how the arts reflect ideas. It’s not about art theory, but about how secular worldviews are communicated through art and literature. After all, this is how most people’s worldview is shaped. Ideas do not typically come neatly packaged with a warning label attached. Instead there is a kind of “stealth” secularism that permeates society through books, music, movies, and television.

Saving Leonardo shows how the arts “channel” secular worldviews deeply into people’s minds and emotions. As a result, people are often co-opted by secular worldviews without even knowing it. Read More ›

“What is the difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design” I asked Stephen Meyer in 2009. He answered that what distinguished Creationism from Intelligent Design is that Creationism outlined a chronology whereas ID did not.

I will add my own thoughts on the matter. What I say in this post is my answer to the same question I posed to Dr. Meyer.

As a scholarly discipline Intelligent Design is described elegantly by Bill Dembski:

Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence.

Bill Dembski
10 Questions

Frankly, I’ve been mortified that so much theological discussion is to conflated with this simple and elegant description of ID! I’m appalled to hear that some claim “the science that studies signs of intelligence” conflicts with theological ideas and is therefore a futile endeavor.

Theology may proceed from the idea that there is intelligent design in the universe, but at its root, Bill’s definition of ID isn’t inherently theological and would fit well with engineering and the forensic sciences. ID is not theological in itself, but it can serve as bridge a between science and theology.

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
Bill Dembski

Combining the above two ideas, I came up with:
Read More ›