Conservation of sequence in the course of natural history has always been considered a sign of function. But does function always coincide with sequence conservation? And are there other important aspects which must be considered? This topic has been discussed recently with some passion here, so I will dedicate a series of two posts to it, in the hope that we can base our discussions on reliable data. I apologize in advance if some of the following discussion is necessarily rather technical. In general, in evolutionary analysis, conservation is considered a sign of function. Protein coding genes which are more strictly conserved in the course of time are usually considered as having greater functional constraint than those genes which change more. The Read More ›

Here: A well-replicated finding in the psychological literature is the negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. However, several studies also conclude that one form of religiosity, church attendance, is protective against later-life cognitive decline. No effects of religious belief per se on cognitive decline have been found, potentially due to the restricted measures of belief used in previous studies. Here, we examined the associations between religiosity, intelligence, and cognitive change in a cohort of individuals (initial n = 550) with high-quality measures of religious belief taken at age 83 and multiple cognitive measures taken in childhood and at four waves between age 79 and 90. We found that religious belief, but not attendance, was negatively related to intelligence. The effect Read More ›

In his new book, “Social Physics,” Alex Pentland, a prominent data scientist at M.I.T., shows as much uncritical enthusiasm for prediction as Tucker, while making a case that we need a new science — social physics — that can make sense of all the digital bread crumbs, from call records to credit card transactions, that we leave as we navigate our daily life. (That the idea of social physics was once promoted by the positivist Auguste Comte, one scholar who would have warmed to the idea of Big Data, goes unmentioned.) What is social physics good for? It would allow us to detect and improve “idea flow” — the way ideas and behaviors travel through social networks. For example, Pentland Read More ›

Here: Allen Orr, my first Ph.D. student, has developed a thriving career as a popular book reviewer, and in this week’s New York Review of Books, he critique’s Nicholas Wade’s new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. I made a few comments on this book a few days ago, saying that it was in the main pretty bad, though one part, the presentation of the case for genetic differentiation of human populations, was not too bad. But Wade’s main thesis was that differences between human societies, as well as rapid changes within human societies, was due to evolutionary change mediated by natural selection. That latter contention, I claimed, had no evidence behind it, though Wade argued otherwise. Read More ›

Here. By definition, no one can know what arrogance looks like. It wouldn’t be arrogance if we knew it. Here (Ethan Siegel) Now, philosophy doesn’t have the answers, but it does teach ways to consider the limits of our knowledge. And if you’re talking about the philosophy of science, so long as those doing the philosophizing are honestly and accurately representing the science (which is something they can only do if they actually understand it adequately themselves, which many?—?but not all?—?of them do), it can certainly give you a number of interesting possibilities to think about. Which is why I was incredibly disappointed to learn that Neil de Grasse Tyson went on the Nerdist Podcast, and absolutely ripped the entire Read More ›

Gravitational wave theory faces scrutiny here, at Nature: Cosmologist casts doubts on BICEP2’s analysis of cosmic microwaves, but the team stands by its conclusions.

In his recent debate with Paul Nelson, evolutionist Joel Velasco appealed to several evidences in making his case for evolution. In my previous posts I examined Velasco’s claims about the nested hierarchy and ORFans (hereand here). Here I will examine two more of Velasco’s evidences: the recurrent laryngeal nerve and a common genomic element known as an ALU.  Read more

Over at his Website, Debunking Christianity, John Loftus has put up a very brief post titled, What About the Origins of Life Itself? It reads as follows: We know that we descended from a common ancestor. We know this. Evolution is a fact. Many believers agree about this, even a growing number of evangelicals. But what about the origins of life itself? The answer is simple. Ready? Since the evolution of life has a natural explanation then so also does the origins of life, we just don’t know how yet. Give science time. Don’t punt to a god explanation just as believers shouldn’t have done before Darwin. Comprende? A commenter named formerlutheran responded: Science has yet to figure out exactly Read More ›

In a recent debate between Stephen Meyer and Karl Giberson, Giberson (a well-known theistic evolutionist) related what he thought was how ID could proceed in order for him to take it more seriously as a scientific endeavor. I thought it was a very thoughtful response, and posted it here for you.
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As claimed here, he says: The simulation is really quite bad. According to the article, they used 12 billion pixels in a cube 350 million ly across, for a resolution of 153000 ly per pixel (without adaptive meshing). Now our galaxy is about 100,000 ly across, so we basically have one largish galaxy per pixel. With 100 billion galaxies in the universe, then at a minimum we would need to have 100 billion pixels to simulate for our “universe simulation” if we used “adaptive meshing” to skip over the vacuum in between, so right away you can tell we have only about 10% of the necessary computer resolution. But they didn’t even come close to that. According to the article Read More ›

Unsatisfied and unconvinced by what he was being taught about evolution at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, 21-year old student Enes Kayan knew there was another side which was never presented in his courses. So in 2012, Enes, a member of the Marmara Young Vision Student Club, decided to organize a symposium in which he and other Marmara students could hear alternative views on evolution, including intelligent design. The idea that evidence against Darwinism, and even for intelligent design, could be freely presented at a university angered some students and professors, and about 300 of them staged a protest, which Enes said actually worked to his advantage as it brought publicity to the event, which was held on May 16-17, Read More ›