Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Year

2011

Book offers to settle debates re evolution

The Evidence for Evolution

Here. Alan R. Rogers tells us in The Evidence for Evolution

According to polling data, most Americans doubt that evolution is a real phenomenon. And it’s no wonder that so many are skeptical: many of today’s biology courses and textbooks dwell on the mechanisms of evolution—natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow—but say little about the evidence that evolution happens at all. How do we know that species change? Has there really been enough time for evolution to operate?

That Rogers merely means an exploded Darwinism is evident from one of the endorsements: Read More ›

Oxygen found in deep space

Liquid oxygen is blue.
liquid oxygen/Warwick Hillier

This is a serious science story, not like this one.

From MSNBC, we learn: “Breathe easier: Oxygen molecules found in deep space: For first time, after nearly 230-year search, they turn up in region of Orion nebula.” Which solves a mystery:

“Oxygen is the third-most-common element in the universe and its molecular form must be abundant in space,” said Bill Danchi, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

So where is it? Read More ›

We are living in a giant hologram, or a giant trailer filled with poop, or whatever Stephen Hawking says we are living in

So says Ars Technica at Wired (August 1, 2011)

“Hawking used quantum theory to derive a result that was at odds with quantum theory,” as Nobel Laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft described the situation. Still, that wasn’t all bad; it created a paradox and “Paradoxes make physicists happy.”

“It was very hard to see what was wrong with what he was saying,” Susskind said, “and even harder to get Hawking to see what was wrong.” Read More ›

Michele Bachmann, ID-friendly US prez contender now defined as “feminist”

In Washington Post, along with (also ID-friendly) Palin:

Religion historian Marie Griffith has been watching this shift, and recently wrote an essay titled “The New Evangelical Feminism of Bachmann and Palin.” She caught all kinds of heat from feminists on the left who say that neither Bachmann nor Palin, whom some have dubbed “the spiritual heads” of the tea party, can remotely be regarded as their conceptual colleagues. Read More ›

Invasive species: When environmentalists shove Darwinism under the bus

Anyone who has witnessed one of these popular non-native species eradication programs (the author mentions a local “Operation: No More Water Chestnuts” as a case in point) is put in mind of traditional groups conducting a ritual hunt for “evil.” Read More ›

“SETI is dead; SET your I on ID.”

Thumbnail for version as of 22:48, 20 September 2010
Weeds surround SETI's Array/Colby Gutierrez-Kraybill

In “Earth Uniqueness Up; SETI Down” (Creation-Evolution Headlines, July 29, 2011), we learn:

Some astronomers are seriously considering that life might be rare or unique on our rare (or unique) planet. If so, hopes for finding sentient aliens on the celestial radio dial drop accordingly. The 50th anniversary of the first SETI search came, unfortunately for search enthusiasts, at a time when funding is harder to get.

New Scientist has been running a series called “Existence” for the purpose of examining big questions about the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness. Most of the articles try to give atheist answers to arguments of intelligent design.

Ah, someone noticed. Read More ›