October 2012

For those of you who live in the Seattle area (which now includes me), the “Seattle Analytic Philosophy Club” are hosting an event on the 28th of November from 7pm till 9pm in Lake Hills Library (15590 Lake Hills Blvd, Bellevue, WA). Here’s the event description from the website: Is there a demarcation between science and pseudoscience? This is the “demarcation problem” made famous by Karl Popper. Popper’s thesis was that falsifiability differentiated science from pseudoscience. However, although Popper’s views are still popular among some scientists, they are widely rejected by philosophers. In fact, most philosophers believe that it is very difficult to find a strict demarcation between science and pseudoscience. This essay explains, in layman’s terms, why this is Read More ›

A new paper just published in the journal Science reveals how an SMC (structural maintenance of chromosome) complex called MukBEF “climbs” DNA in a manner similar to a rock-climber grabbing onto a handhold. The paper reports, Although ATP hydrolysis is essential for the activity of SMC complexes, its mechanistic importance has been unclear. Our data indicate that the minimal functional MukBEF complex acting at discrete chromosome positions is an ATP-bound dimer of MukB dimers, with ATP binding and head engagement being necessary for stable chromosome association and ATP hydrolysis required to release complexes from chromosomes. The observation that turnover of MukBEF complexes from chromosomes is slower than predicted from in vitro adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) levels supports a model where ATP hydrolysis Read More ›

  In an interview with Playboy, September just past, Dr Dawkins made some dismissive remarks  on the historicity of Jesus, in the context of having made similarly dismissive talking points about Intelligent Design.  As UD News noted: PLAYBOY: What is your view of Jesus? DAWKINS: The evidence he existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy. PLAYBOY: You’ve read the Bible. DAWKINS: I haven’t read it all, but my knowledge Read More ›

For those of you wanting to see the new movie about the Scopes trial, I just noticed it is available on Netflix streaming! I just watched it, and it is indeed excellent.

Kantian Naturalist writes a thought-provoking response to my Thomas Nagel and the “Quartum Quid” post and Eric Anderson responds. Kantian: The problem here is whether ‘naturalistic teleology’ collapses into reductive naturalism or design realism. Rather than treat naturalistic teleology as a quartium quid, it is a tertium quid. The first two, “chance” and “necessity” are not different ontologies (contra Peirce, maybe?) but tightly integrated aspects of a single ontology, Epicureanism, or reductive naturalism. (It must be remembered here that it was Epicurus’ addition of chance to the deterministic system of Democritus that saved atomism from many of Aristotle’s criticisms — just not all of them!) So here, then, are the ontological options: (1) reductive naturalism (Epicureanism, “chance” + “necessity”) (2) Read More ›

My video “Evolution is a Natural Process Running Backward” has been translated into Spanish by Sebastian Escuain, and produced with the help of Jorge Viramontes and my brother Kirk Sewell. The Spanish version is linked below (high def. version is here). For more background, see How the Scientific Consensus is Maintained . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn44EfOAn2Y

Scientific American features an article based on a new paper in Current Biology. Scientific American reports, A study on the development of priapulids or ‘penis’ worms throws doubt on a feature that has been thought for more than 100 years to define the largest branch of the animal tree of life. Members of this branch — the protostomes — have historically been defined by the order in which they develop a mouth and an anus as embryos. But gene-expression data suggest that this definition is incorrect, researchers report this week inCurrent Biology. […] Now, using molecular techniques to analyze gene expression, Hejnol and his team have revealed that a primitive protostome, the priapulid Priapus caudatus, develops like a deuterostome. These ‘living fossils’ look nearly identical Read More ›

New information has emerged to show that a prediction of neo-Darwinism has been falsified. Everyone knows that animals adapt to their environments. The surge of interest in climate change has stimulated research into morphological change in Galapagos finches, “Siberian warblers, English sparrows, cuckoos, cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds, and many others.” The message coming through is that the sizes and shapes of animals can change quickly in response to environmental constraints. These findings have been used as fundamental evidence to support mainstream thinking about organic evolution. As explained by Prothero et al.: “The classic neontological model of gradualistic evolution argues that organisms are sensitive to small environmental changes, and readily adapt to such changes through transformations of body size or morphology. Such Read More ›

First off, let me say that I would be delighted if green technologies could be made to work and could account for much of our energy (leaving aside the politics and powertrip that seem to lure many who push green technologies). That said, these technologies have consistently underperformed in relation to the hype used to promote them. This disconnect between promise and performance of green technologies is emblematic of how easy it is for ideology to subvert science. We see this all the time in the evolution-design debate. In any case, here’s an instructive infographic that underscores the consistent failure of green technologies. The lesson for the ID community is simply to be aware of how widely ramified is the Read More ›

Paul Nelson highlights an interesting paper that appeared relatively recently in the journal Protein Science entitled “The Levinthal Paradox of the Interactome.” The paper’s abstract reads, The central biological question of the 21st century is: how does a viable cell emerge from the bewildering combinatorial complexity of its molecular components? Here, we estimate the combinatorics of self-assembling the protein constituents of a yeast cell, a number so vast that the functional interactome could only have emerged by iterative hierarchic assembly of its component sub-assemblies. A protein can undergo both reversible denaturation and hierarchic self-assembly spontaneously, but a functioning interactome must expend energy to achieve viability. Consequently, it is implausible that a completely “denatured” cell could be reversibly renatured spontaneously, like Read More ›

Over at ENV, Casey Luskin draws our attention to a new paper in Nature which elucidates new function for long-non-coding RNA. The paper, which can be downloaded here, reports, Most of the mammalian genome is transcribed. This generates a vast repertoire of transcripts that includes protein-coding messenger RNAs, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and repetitive sequences, such as SINEs (short interspersed nuclear elements). A large percentage of ncRNAs are nuclear-enriched with unknown function. Antisense lncRNAs may form sense–antisense pairs by pairing with a protein-coding gene on the opposite strand to regulate epigenetic silencing, transcription and mRNA stability. Here we identify a nuclear-enriched lncRNA antisense to mouse ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase L1 (Uchl1), a gene involved in brain function and neurodegenerative diseases. Antisense Read More ›

Since Aristotle it has been common to refer to intelligent agency as a third cause in addition to law and chance.  The Philosopher obviously spoke Greek, but his concept has come to be known by the Latin “tertium quid” the “third thing.”  Over at Witherspoon William Carroll reviews atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  According to Carroll, Nagel believes he has found a Quartium Quid, a “fourth thing”  Carroll writes: Nagel’s arguments that consciousness is not reducible to material phenomena, that there is an objective order of value, and that we do have knowledge of the world are all dialectical. He asks us to recognize, on reflection, their obvious Read More ›

I just want to let people on this forum know that I’m finally updating my personal website at DesignInference.com. Specifically, the page with my writings, which had not been updated for three years, is now largely up to date (though it omits articles and books in the pipeline): http://www.designinference.com/dembski-on-intelligent-design/dembski-writings. My own work and research, though still readily accessible at DesignInference.com, will increasingly take backstage as I develop it into a more general educational website directed at cultural and worldview issues. For information about my work and research on this site, please note the following links: (1) Biosketch of William A. Dembski (2) CV/resumé of William A. Dembski (3) Teaching: Courses taught by William A. Dembski (4) Writings of William A. Dembski

Check out the paper in Nature here. From the abstract, Oxygen consumption in marine sediments is often coupled to the oxidation of sulphide generated by degradation of organic matter in deeper, oxygen-free layers. Geochemical observations have shown that this coupling can be mediated by electric currents carried by unidentified electron transporters across centimetre-wide zones. Here we present evidence that the native conductors are long, filamentous bacteria. They abounded in sediment zones with electric currents and along their length they contained strings with distinct properties in accordance with a function as electron transporters. Living, electrical cables add a new dimension to the understanding of interactions in nature and may find use in technology development. Science Daily reports, Researchers at Aarhus University, Read More ›