2012

One of the common complaints about Intelligent Design is that it’s a science stopper. Something about how the idea that the conviction that intelligent agents are have produced extraordinarily advanced technology will discourage intelligent agents from producing extraordinarily advanced technology. With that in mind, I thought it’d be worth focusing on a recent, if not ID-related, science development. The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to two men for their work in adult stem cell research – and the awarding of that prize is worth pondering.

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Readers may recall the media hype, back in December 2010, surrounding the claim that a bacterium is capable of utilising arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA. A new study, published in Nature and reported on by Nature News, has discovered that the bacterium “actually goes to extreme lengths to grab any traces of phosphorus it can find.” The Nature News press release goes on to report, The finding clears up a lingering question sparked by a controversial study, published in Science in 2010, which claimed that the GFAJ-1 microbe could thrive in the high-arsenic conditions of Mono Lake in California without metabolizing phosphorus — an element that is essential for all forms of life. […] Dan Tawfik, who studies Read More ›

Our own Denyse O’Leary has published an article in Salvo magazine entitled: “If Peer Review Is Working, Why All the Retractions?” She writes, British author and retired psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple recently flagged an article in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, in which researchers announced that they had calculated that an average of 92 ­minutes per week of exercise reduced subjects’ “all-cause rate of mortality” by 14 percent. They also claimed that “every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum of 15 minutes per day further reduced all-cause mortality by 4 percent.” Later, The Lancet received a letter pointing out that, if the researchers’ findings were correct, a man who exercised for six hours every day would reduce Read More ›

Last week, New Scientist magazine featured a special edition on reality. What particularly caught my attention is the accompanying video appearing on their website, which you can view for yourself here. The description states: Is there such a thing as reality? It’s easy to take reality for granted: after all, science does a reasonably good job at describing the world in an objective way. But what does science have to say about the concept of reality itself? One approach would be to identify what is most fundamental in the universe. Using this reasoning, everything around us can be broken down into molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms, which in turn are made up of smaller and smaller components. Read More ›

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know I like to play poker.  I have read numerous poker books and articles over the years, and the concept of “expected value” is at the core of every one.  Expected value theory helps skilled players calculate whether a particular play will, in the long run, be profitable.    Here’s a simple example.  Suppose I’m playing Texas Hold ‘em and my hole cards are the king of hearts and the three of hearts.  The flop comes and the community cards are the ace of hearts, the four of clubs and the nine of hearts.  My opponent is in front of me and bets out for $10 into a pot of Read More ›

The worm-like molluscs, the Aplacophoria, are not well known to most of us, and they are a difficult group to study because they live in deep waters. Their taxonomy has been somewhat controversial, with little agreement on their relationships with other molluscan groups. However, the consensus has been that they are the “most primordial molluscs to be found on earth”. There is an evolutionary story that helps to promote this understanding: the other molluscan groups appeared during the Cambrian Explosion, and they have armour of some kind. It is reasonable to postulate a simpler kind of mollusc that had no armour – which appears to be exactly what we have in the aplacophorians. New research, however, has brought a change Read More ›

Richard Lenski (of the University of Michigan) and his colleagues have published a new paper in Nature (Blount et al., 2012) entitled “Genomic analysis of a key innovation in an experimental Escherichia coli population.” Lenski, as most readers will be aware, is famed for his long-term E. coli evolution experiment. The abstract of the new paper reads, Evolutionary novelties have been important in the history of life, but their origins are usually difficult to examine in detail. We previously described the evolution of a novel trait, aerobic citrate utilization (Cit+), in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. Here we analyse genome sequences to investigate the history and genetic basis of this trait. At least three distinct clades coexisted for more Read More ›

George Gilder has a new article up at National Review titled Unleash the Mind, which, though it never mentions Intelligent Design, is an direct application of ID thought to economics. In fact, for those more interested in technical definitions for what Gilder calls “surprise” and “creativity”, you might check out my talk on modeling non-materialistic representations of the mind at the Engineering and Metaphysics conference earlier this year. Anyway, I’ll leave you all to read the article, but here are a few interesting quotes: Increasing revenues come not from a mere scheme of carrots and sticks but from the development and application of productive knowledge With fewer resources diverted to government bureaucracy, they can conduct more undetermined experiments, test more Read More ›

If you remove the caterpillars from an evening primrose population, the plants will adjust, and adjust fast. Within even a few generations intelligent changes arise reflecting the absence of the predator. For instance, in plots protected from insects, the flowering time and defensive chemicals against the insects adjust. The plant’s resistance to insects is reduced, which makes sense since the insects are no longer attacking the plant. And in exchange, the plant’s competitive ability is improved. In other words, remove a threat that the plant had to defend against, and the plant population immediately and intelligently exploits the opportunity. It is yet another fascinating example of biology’s many built-in adaptation capabilities. Yet evolutionists claim it demonstrates evolution occurring in “real Read More ›

Critics of modern evolutionary theory have an intellectual responsibility to strive to understand the paradigm that they are critiquing, preferably to a level where they can clearly articulate the key propositions of evolutionary theory and offer a standard defense of them. Richard Hoppe, at the Panda’s Thumb blog, drew my attention to a free online course on the subject of genetics and evolution. You can, as I have done, sign up for (and read about) the course at this link. The course description states, “Introduction to Genetics and Evolution gives interested people a very basic overview of the principles behind these very fundamental areas of biology.  We often hear about new “genome sequences,” commercial kits that can tell you about Read More ›

Sacramone rips up the latest evolutionary psychology spewings over at Strange Herring.  

1. Here’s a sure sign of a Darwinist losing an argument with the evidence: He (or she) rattles on that it will help “creationists.” It’s not like they care what the true story is or anything. 2. Remember Ben Carson? That brilliant neurosurgeon who sparked a Darwin hatefest at Emory University? He has a book out now, a bargain on Kindle at $4.63. 3. Decode ENCODE (= there is NOT much of the “junk” DNA Darwinists believed in) with embryologist Jonathan Wells Also ran: What Darwinists say about ENCODE (don’t seem knowledgeable) and Wells (“creationist clown”). This is what happens when you are right. 4. NCSE, the U.S. Darwin in the schools lobby, is really going big into climate change Read More ›

1. Dawkins claims in public, ignoring his OWN writings, that “little junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected. 2. Christian Darwinists, including Francis Collins, misrepresent C.S. Lewis. Never really supported Darwin. 3. Claim in Nature: Human moral compasses are easily confused. Study really shows that most people don’t read carefully if they don’t care much 4. TED talks creator Wurman says they’ve lost their jazz. Now plans new type of event most of us can’t afford. 5. Oldest galaxy ever detected? 6. Wikipedia in (inevitable) corruption scandal ======================== 1. Dawkins claims, in defiance of evidence from his OWN writings, that “not much junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected In “In Debate, Britain’s Chief Read More ›

On Sept 23rd, I put up an essay challenge as captioned, primarily to objecting commenter Jerad. As at October 2nd, he has definitively said: no. Joe informs us that Zachriel has tried to brush it aside: Try Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). It’s a bit dated and longer than 6,000 words, (the 6th edition is 190,000 words), but Darwin considered it just a long abstract, and it still makes for a powerful argument. This is, frankly, a “don’t bother me” brush-off; telling in itself, as a definitive, successful answer would have momentous impact on this blog. Zachriel’s response reminds me, all too strikingly, of the cogency of  what Philip Johnson had to say in reply to Lewontin’s claims in his Read More ›