2014

A new study out of Europe has demonstrated for the first time magnetoreception abilities in dogs. We recently discussedthese amazing abilities in a range of species including fish, turtles, butterflies and homing pigeons. Even though researchers have not yet figured how these species sense and process the Earth’s magnetic field data, it is clear that these species use much more than merely the compass direction given by the field. In some cases it appears the organism is using the field intensity and inclination (the angle which the magnetic field lines make with the Earth surface) data. This new study on dogs has found yet another measurement. The dogs appear to be sensitive to real-time changes in the field’s declination angle (the difference between Read More ›

In my last post I highlighted an exchange between commenters “Joe” and “AVS” concerning whether Darwinian evolution is a blind, unguided process.  My purpose was not to open the issue Joe and AVS were discussing for debate, because there really is no debate on that issue.  AVS, who took the position that evolution is, in some sense, “guided” should begin to worry when even frequent Darwinist commenter Mark Frank says, “Surely ‘guided’ is the wrong term for natural selection.”  Dawkins sums the matter up nicely: Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind.  It has Read More ›

If you thought the brain and central nervous system are complicated, then consider its development. New researchshows that the creation of a single nerve cell, or neuron, involves the precursor cell severing itself from the embryo’s neural tube. The neuronal precursors do not merely separate and withdraw. Instead, they are attached to the tube by long tentacles which constrict and then break off. This allows the precursor cell to move to where it needs to be without taking with it the machinery for constructing a new neuron. It is a very detailed and complicated choreography that just got more complicated.  Read more

This lecture by Dr Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute, with Q & A may be a good refresher and focus for thought on OoL, HT WK: WK — a useful blog to bookmark and monitor to see trends and issues — gives a helpful bullet point outline, in part: Where, of course, there is only one empirically observed, directly known causal factor capable of causing functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, especially digitally coded functionally specific complex information, design. Clipping some key points: {U/D, Jan 10:} It is also useful to follow a chain of Meyer’s argument to the inference to design: So we see here an inductive inference to best explanation as a method of historical/origins sciences, leading Read More ›

One thing scientists never, ever do is multiply entities, but not so for evolutionists:  Read more