Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Mapping the Brain’s Connections—The Connectome

As we have seen before the brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. That is not all the brains on Earth, nor all human brains, but merely a single brain of a single human. With over 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, and a quadrillion synapses, or connections, it is, as one researcher described, “truly awesome.” Researchers have found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, or as one evolutionist admitted, almost to the point of being “beyond belief.” Amidst all these nerve cells and connections, a key question is: “Exactly which nerve cells do all these connections link together?” These connections should reveal a great deal about how the brain works, for Read More ›

“We Shouldn’t be Surprised that it Could Happen Because, Well, it Happened Didn’t it.”

A frequent materialist retort to the fine-tuning argument is “We shouldn’t be surprised that unlikely event X happened, because X in fact happened.” I hope my materialist friends will enlighten me, because this statement seems daft to me. For example, in Why Earth Isn’t Fined Tuned for Life, UD’s News Desk quotes David Waltham: we shouldn’t be surprised that Earth fits life because, in fact, life has adapted to fit Earth. Finally, perhaps planets suitable for complex organisms occur only rarely and purely by chance. But even then we shouldn’t be surprised that we inhabit one of the few lucky worlds. ppolish responds in the combox: Lucky is winning the Powerball Lottery. Winning it 5 times in a row goes Read More ›

Reductive evolution of complexity — can we say square circle?

Walter Remine mentioned in passing about a parasite that slowly evolved to lose all its organs except for its anus. Unfortunately he didn’t recall the name of the creature or whether he got all the details right, but rather than peppered moths, if that creature really exists, it should be the poster child of Darwinism. I’ve argued almost from the beginning that most observed evolution in real time is loss of function. Loss of function is called reductive evolution. And the fact that most selectively favored adaptations involving function is loss of function rather than acquisition of function is what I refer to as Behe’s Rule. But far be for evolutionists to salute creationists and IDists who have pointed out Read More ›

OK, comments are on now

Erik Anderson, thanks for your post giving readers the opportunity to comment on my new video and Biocomplexity paper. As you noted, I usually leave comments off when I post on this topic, for exactly the reason you stated, they usually generate more heat than light. In fact, which I noticed your post this morning, I have to admit I thought, oh God, here we go again, but I was pleasantly surprised by the 100+ comments, for the first time in 13 years, I felt they generated more light than heat! I want to add one further comment myself. Some people argue that the second law only applies to heat/work, that is, they accept only the first (and oldest) of Read More ›

Turns out, Earth is in the “lamest” part of the universe

The latest in Onion-ology: PARIS—Citing factors ranging from the dumb, ugly asteroid belt separating the terrestrial planets from the gas giants, to the super-boring and practically empty interstellar medium extending in nearly every direction, new research published Wednesday by the International Astronomical Union has concluded that Earth is located in “by far the lamest” region of the observable universe. “Despite years of intensive analysis, we have failed to uncover even a single pulsar, black hole, lenticular galaxy, binary star system, quasar, or any other cool stuff within 50 light years of this stupid dump of a solar system,” read the study, which noted that to date, no telescope—either ground-based or in earth orbit—has been able to locate a portion of Read More ›

A little bad can be very good! Refuting the “bad design” argument.

[cross posted at CEU Insight and Inspiration. The essay is terse and is primarily oriented to high school seniors and college freshman struggling with their Christian faith, but presents the essentials in refuting the “bad design” argument. It links to revised essays that were edited and cleaned up from their original form at UD. The links are for those wanting a far more advanced treatment of the “bad design” argument.] [for new students of creation science and intelligent design] Perhaps the strongest argument against the existence of God and against His Intelligent Design of the universe is the fact the world is a real mess. The argument goes something like this: Someone so smart and capable as God wouldn’t make Read More ›

Can the neutral theory of evolution explain what makes us human?

When it comes to explaining the origin of complexity, evolutionists are a house divided. Here’s what Professor Richard Dawkins has to say on the subject: I have written many times that natural selection is NOT the only mechanism of evolution. I have said it is the only known mechanism of ADAPTIVE evolution. And I’ll say that again. Natural selection is the only known mechanism of adaptive evolution, meaning the evolution of complex adaptations carrying the illusion of design. If you have another candidate not involving selection, let’s hear it. (Source, November 26, 2011.) Compare that with what Professor PZ Myers wrote recently, in two posts which are provocatively titled, The fundamental failure of the evolutionary psychology premise and Complexity is Read More ›