January 2014
Origin of life researchers say they are one step closer to RNA world
This guy is one brave journalist
First Things Goes From Giving ID a Platform to Viciously Attacking It
Richard John Neuhaus died five years ago this month. I miss him. Neuhaus was always willing to give ID a fair shake: DNA and Other Designs Stephen C. Meyer First Things, April 2000 Science and Design William A. Dembski First Things, October 1998 The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism Phillip E. Johnson First Things, November 1997 That was then. This is now. Neuhaus’ successors are vehemently anti-ID. The February 2014 issue has an anti-ID hit piece by Stephen Meredith called Looking for God in All the Wrong Places. It is hard to say whether the piece is more vicious or more muddleheaded. Michael Flannery does an admirable takedown here. This year I let my subscription to FT run out after nearly 20 years. Read More ›
Early tetrapod (“fishapod”) sheds light on transition to land—maybe
Atheists/Materialists Are Closet Moral Objectivists
1. If morality is subjective (by individual or group), as atheists/materialists claim, then what any individual/group ought to do is necessarily relative to that individual/group purpose. IOW, if my purpose is to make a frozen margarita, I ought put ice in the blender. If my purpose is to make fresh peanut butter, I ought not put ice in the blender. The ought-ness of any task can only be discerned by mapping it to the purpose for which the act is committed. Under moral subjectivism, acts in themselves are just brute facts with no objective moral value; they must be mapped to the subjective purpose to determine subjective moral value (oughtness). 2. The question “Is it moral to gratuitously torture children?” Read More ›
Oops, “Environmental Information May Be Inherited Transgenerationally”
Drug addictions and neuropsychiatric illnesses seem to recur in parents and their children in a cycle that is difficult to break. As neurobiologist Kerry Resslerexplains “There are a lot of anecdotes to suggest that there’s intergenerational transfer of risk.” But until recently evolutionists denied—and actively persecuted scientists suggesting—any such thing. For evolutionary theory has traditionally viewed heritable changes as being strictly channeled through DNA and its chance mutations which are selected when they happen to improve fitness. Thus, according to modern evolutionary theory, all inherited change that ever occurs to a species is, ultimately, from a source that is random. Non random heritable change that might be directed or influenced by environmental challenges is not allowed. No teleology, no final causes, Read More ›
Ari Brynjolfsson’s Plasma Redshift
[This essay has marginal relevance to the UPB (which has relevance to ID) but might be of interest to the anti-Big Bang, anti Einstein General Relativity crowd, and hence is of marginal interest to YEC’s.
I’m not totally against Einstein’s work, but Einstein’s work does have some negative bearing on YEC. Brynjolfsson’s work is also a mixed bag for creationists and IDists (good and bad). I cross posted it at TSZ ad received some very good criticism from Dr. T. Dr. T has corrected my numerous misunderstandings of physics, so his comments always carry great weight.
Notwithstanding possible serious errors in Brynjolfsson’s work, page 28, figure 4 of his paper showed discrepancies in gravitational redshift regarding measurements by LA Higgs and Adams. If true, this would require revision of General Relativity and may indeed indicate a mechanism of redshift not due to cosmological expansion as required by the Big Bang.
There are published works on the effect of plasma on photon frequency such as by respected researchers like Sunyaev (of Sunyaev-Zel’dovich fame), even though Sunyaev would appear to hold the some opposite conclusions of Brynjolfsson. Brynjolfsson tried to lay out that although there is Compton and inverse Comptom scattering in plasmas as asserted by Sunyaev-Zel’dovich, there is a secondary effect which may actually cause redshift when one photon interacts weakly (via quantum mechanics) with a set of N-electrons with a net zero momentum.
Nevertheless, Figure 4 page 28 in Brynjolfsson’s paper carries a lot of weight with me and I’m trying to find anyone who can give me more data points. I wish to thank Dr. Liddle for allowing me to post my essay at TSZ since I’m needing to get feedback on some of my speculations. Even if my speculations are wrong, investigating the them will be a good learning experience since there is lots of good physics to learn in understanding plasmas and electromagnetism, and there is always fun and benefit in studying science.]
This essay will outline some of the work of Ari Byrinjolfsson. He says some things I don’t agree with regarding eternal universes, but if Brynjolfsson is right then it has some negative impact on ID and creationism and the UPB, etc. So, let me be clear, Brynjolfsson’s paper is generally bad for ID, creation, and the Big Bang. That said, his papers most definitely got my attention, and there is much that I like about his work. Wikipedia has this entry on Ari Brynjolffson:
Read More ›
People’s Choice Awards: Our most read stories September 2013
Making common cause with non-materialist atheists
Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate, February 4, to be live, free of charge
Volcano eruptions claimed as driving force for Cambrian animal evolution
Earth-mass planet turns out to be gas
David Berlinski calls Steve Meyer’s book “impressive,” not “definitive”
Quantum effects confirmed for photosynthesis
Quantum phenomena in biology are receiving the attention of more and more researchers, with photosynthesis being the process getting the most attention. Back in 2007, it was apparent that quantum effects were effective for “explaining the extreme efficiency of photosynthesis”. Then, in 2010, the photosynthetic apparatus of cryptophyte algae was the focus of research, because its pigments are farther apart than was expected for efficient functioning. In a News & Views article in Nature, van Grondelle & Novoderezhkin discussed evidence suggesting that a process known as quantum coherence is part of the explanation. They added: “This is the first time that this phenomenon has been observed in photosynthetic proteins at room temperature, rather than at much lower temperatures, bolstering the Read More ›