July 2011

Which professional communicators always suspected. The guy who worked with Nim Chimpsky, Herbert Terrace, speaks honestly* about his research here.

The language didn’t materialize. A human baby starts out mostly imitating, then begins to string words together. Nim didn’t learn. His three-sign combinations — such as ‘eat me eat’ or ‘play me Nim’ — were redundant. He imitated signs to get rewards. I published the negative results in 1979 in the journal Science, which had a chilling effect on the field. Read More ›

The Centre for Intelligent Design (C4ID) UK recently announced its 2011 conference on intelligent design. This may be just the right opportunity to increase your understanding of the fast moving centre-stage debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design and at the same time enjoy a fabulous conference centre, all en-suite, in the Malvern Hills, Worcestershire.

You’ll be engaging with world-class speakers for up to five sessions over the Friday evening and Saturday as they bring the scientific evidence that is making ID an unstoppable movement, world-wide.

• Dr. Geoff Barnard
• Prof. Chris Shaw
• Dr. Jay Wesley Richards

In “The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes in the light of phylogenomics” (Genome Biology 2010, 11:209 ) Eugene V Koonin argues for endosymbiosis (organisms ingest other organisms, but the latter remain alive and provide a new function for the whole) to explain eukaryotes (complex cells, not bacteria):

Phylogenomics of eukaryote supergroups suggest a highly complex last common ancestor of eukaryotes and a key role of mitochondrial endosymbiosis in the origin of eukaryotes.

Sure but he’s also argued for the multiverse to explain that too. Read More ›

If you have been following UD over the past few days you will know Dr Nick Matzke, formerly Public Information Project Director of the US NCSE,  has intervened in Dr Cudworth’s thread on the question of evolutionary biology qualifications of leading objectors to design theory.

As a result of this, in the end, even Dr Cudworth has commented on the tangential issue — evolution (especially claimed universal common descent)  vs creationism and design theory with the Of Pandas and People book that featured in the Dover Trial as a significant point of contention , most recently here in response to Dr Matzke here.

I think the whole issue is a polarising, distractive side-track.

Why is that? Read More ›

In “Bacteria Flash Like Christmas Lights,” Sara Reardon (Science NOW, 14 July 2011) tells us:

Like little batteries, bacteria have two charges: positive on the outside of their cell membranes, negative on the inside. And as with batteries, this division of charge is their power source. By pumping protons across their membrane, bacteria can make energy, spin their flagella so they can swim, and drive the pumps that bring in food. Researchers have now found that Escherichia coli drop this voltage difference for a brief moment and depolarize, much as neurons do when they fire. The phenomenon could help explain how some bacteria resist antibiotics. Read More ›

Catholic Darwinist Ken Miller thinks his book will be bought for Texas schools, even though he refuses to follow their “no magic Darwin” guidelines. Curriculum? Guidelines? Actually, it could get worse than magic Darwin … Better stop it there. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Otherwise, what to make of this?

At Ricochet, Claire Berlinski (naughty girl, she is examining the intelligent design controversy as if there was something obvious to know about the universe we live in) says, (June 13, 2011),

What exactly is “political correctness?” Where does this idea come from, historically? What are its effects upon science, government, the public at large? Is it a single thing? How dangerous is it, really?

Depends. Some, who have dealt with PC on the ground, would say to anyone: Are you protected by a bureaucracy? Does your income and social position depend on others being forced to acknowledge you, even though you are useless or destructive to them? Are people expected to bark nonsense that upholds your position, for their own safety?

She adds, Read More ›

In this post, I’m going to assume that the only freedom worth having is libertarian free will: the free will I possess if there are choices that I have made during my life where I could have chosen differently, under identical circumstances. That is, I believe that libertarian free will is incompatible with determinism. By contrast, indeterminism is compatible with the existence of libertarian freedom, but in no way implies it.

There are some people who think that even if your choices are fully determined by your circumstances, they are still free, if you selected them for a reason and if you are capable of being educated to act for better reasons. People who think like that are known as compatibilists. I’m not one of them; I’m an incompatibilist. Specifically, I’m what an agent-causal incompatibilist: I believe that humans have a kind of agency (an ability to act) that cannot be explained in terms of physical events.

Some time ago, I came across The Cogito Model of human freedom, on The Information Philosopher Web site, by Dr. Roddy Doyle. Read More ›

At Creation-Evolution Headlines, we learn (July 11, 2011):

Plants perform a wonder that has attracted the admiration of scholars from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome to modern times: the ability to reproduce mathematically perfect patterns. This ability, called phyllotaxis, can be described mathematically with the Fibonacci Series and the Golden Angle. The beautiful spirals in sunflowers, artichokes, cacti, dandelion heads and other plants continue to fascinate children and adults today, but those are not the only examples. Leaves on a stem can emerge in phyllotactic patterns like a spiral staircase, and depending on the environment, plants can switch patterns at different stages in development. Read More ›

… a theme on which psychology lecturers and pundits preached for decades, about how humans can easily be led to violate their moral standards if authorities tell them to? Maybe it’s so, but apparently the evidence, looked at in a fresh light, is much more equivocal. For one thing, the guard who took the led in creating the much-lectured situation was well aware he was playing a role, not “acting naturally”: Read More ›

In spite of common sense and the scientific evidence, evolutionists have once again shown that evolution is a miracle worker. A new paper by evolutionists in the world’s leading journal argues that proteins evolved after all, despite just about every shred of evidence mandating otherwise. And just how did evolution do it again? It turns out proteins evolved because they evolved. If only I had thought of that—I could be an evolutionist too.  Read more