Here. A century or so ago, British anatomist St. George Mivart noted that Darwin’s theory of evolution “does not harmonize with closely similar structures of diverse origin” (convergent evolution). There is more evidence for Mivart’s doubts now than ever. According to current Darwinian evolutionary theory, each gain in information is the result of a great many tiny, modest gains in fitness over millions or billions of years, due to natural selection acting on random mutations. The resulting solutions should then follow inheritance laws, in the sense that the more similar life forms are according to biological classifications, the more similar their genome map should be. That just did not work out. Different species can have surprisingly similar genes. For example, Read More ›

Further to NASA says new Earth-like planet found (which may or may not be actually Earth-like), the question was raised, “Is there an accepted hypothesis on the subject of whether Earth-like conditions are essential to life?” Physicist Rob Sheldon writes to say, Like most other things involving life, NASA is schizophrenic about the subject. Darwinists say that life ought to be springing up everywhere that conditions permit. But then when their initial exuberance is not rewarded, the excuse is that conditions are not permitting. But Darwinists can’t have it both ways. Either Origin-of-life (OOL) is tough and the Earth is miracle, or it is easy, really really easy and Earth is nothing special. If life sprang up on Earth between Read More ›

Further to: NASA says new Earth-like planet found: from Real Clear Science: Another problem is that Kepler-452b is alone. As far as we know, there are no other planets in the same system. This is an issue because it was most likely our giant gas planets that helped direct water to Earth. At our position from the sun, the dust grains that came together to form the Earth were too warm to contain ice. Instead, they produced a dry planet that later had its water most likely delivered by icy meteorites. These frozen seas formed in the colder outer solar system and were kicked towards Earth by Jupiter’s huge gravitational tug. No Jupiter analogue for Kepler-452b might mean no water Read More ›

From the New Statesman: To support Minkowski’s proposal, a 2014 paper published in arXiv, says the universe had no beginning and will have no end (a “block universe”), according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory general relativity. The model also helps solve the problem of dark matter and dark energy. What some cosmologists now believe is that rather than matter collapsing, causing a “Big Bang”, the matter bounced (“the Big Bounce”). Ie, they believe the universe has energy levels and goes through a cycle of collapses and bounces. “[The Big Bounce] is actually in doubt because we now know that our universe is not going to re-collapse. It is actually going to expand Read More ›

In the Telegraph, Michael Hanlon advises, The Universe is big. Huge. But we’re so alone. Get used to it If we find life of any kind out there – whether it be Martian microbes (we have several probes prodding the Martian surface and observing it from orbit) or a signal from super-intelligent (or even mildly brainy) aliens – it will change everything. ET will force us to confront a deep truth; that humans are not the only game in town, that we live in a possibly crowded (and quite probably threatening) universe. But here’s the thing. What if they don’t find anything? What if, 10 years, a 100 years, a 1,000 years hence, endless sky-surveys, proddings and pokings of Mars Read More ›

It has just got to be a Coffee!! Post at Uncommon Descent. Courtesy New Scientist, we learn: Semen has controlling power over female genes and behaviour It’s not clear whether any components of human semen get into the bloodstream, but it could be possible, particularly for small molecules like hormones, says Robertson. She has shown that seminal fluid induces expression of a range of genes in the cervix, including ones that affect the immune system, ovulation, the receptivity of the uterus lining to an embryo, and even the growth of the embryo itself. … Whatever the mechanism, both Chapman and Robertson say it’s plausible that semen could have effects on women well beyond their reproductive tract. More Zillions of guys worldwide Read More ›

Deborah Haarsma was professor and chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College and is currently the President of BioLogos. Both of these Christian organizations promote evolutionary theory (Calvin statement, BioLogos statement). That is not surprising since evolution derives, at least in modern times, from theologians and philosophers in the church. To be sure, evolutionary thinking is obvious in ancient Epicureanism, but its resurgence in the seventeenth century was almost exclusively the work of Christian thinkers. Descartes, Malebranche, Cudworth, Ray, Burnett, Leibniz and Wolfe are good examples of how widespread was the movement within Christian thought, and of how varied were the arguments for a strictly naturalistic origins narrative. These Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans agreed that Read More ›

How academia resembles a drug gang: In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece would later serve as a basis for a chapter in Levitt’s (and Dubner’s) best seller Freakonomics. The title of the chapter, “Why drug dealers still live with their moms”, was based on the finding that the income distribution within gangs was extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, while the rank-and-file street sellers earned even less than employees in legitimate low-skilled activities, let’s say at McDonald’s. They calculated $3.30 as the hourly rate, that is, well below a living wage (that’s why Read More ›

Further to: A prof has resigned from Bethel College. Can’t affirm Adam created directly by God: This from (formerly Bethel’s, currently BioLogos’) Jim Stump’s review of An Introduction to Design Arguments, by Virginia Tech’s Benjamin C. Jantzen: in a magazine for churches no one goes to any more (As if anyone cares*). Anyway, here: The idea of irreducible complexity has had remarkable intuitive staying power among ID followers, but when the intuition is converted into an argument, it has considerably less persuasive force. First, almost all biologists think Behe is wrong about the specific examples of structures that he says are unexplainable by evolution. But most people’s intuition is guided by a caricature of how evolution works. They think that each Read More ›

At the Daily Beast, Karl Giberson tells us, In a story becoming all too familiar, another pro-evolution faculty member has been forced to leave his evangelical institution. Jim Stump, longtime professor of philosophy, productive scholar, and popular, award-winning teacher at Bethel College in Indiana, resigned his position in June because of pressures put on the college by its sponsoring denomination, the Missionary Church. The issue, once again, was evolution. Most members of the Missionary Church reject Darwin’s theory of evolution in favor of a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Book of Genesis. But many faculty members at Bethel College accept evolution and consider it part of their “teaching ministry” to help their students do the same, within the Read More ›

Regular readers will of course be familiar with Vincent Torley’s insightful posts. It is a pleasure to report that he has made three lists of his 380 articles: one ordered by date, one indexed by subject, and one indexed by subject’s name. Make your writing assignments fun! Okay, okay, can we settle for better and faster?

We wouldn’t have believed it possible. Trust a celebrated Darwinian atheist to bring it off. And so now here (Huffpo): Outspoken atheist writer Richard Dawkins took to Twitter this week to air concerns about the status of women in Islam. Needless to say, his unsolicited advice to a religion of 1.6 billion people didn’t sit well with many. It shouldn’t sit well. The status of women in Islamic regions is a disgrace in the eyes of the world and everyone knows it, including all decent Muslims. So why do we need an outspoken atheist to point it out? Dawkins pointed to child marriage, female genital mutilation and other atrocities in some countries as evidence of Islam’s inherent bias against women. Read More ›

Here: Nasa scientists have announced the discovery of Kepler 452b, also known as ‘Earth 2.0’, an earth-like planet in our galaxy. Over the course of years of data-gathering by the Kepler space telescope and even more analysis and work here on Earth, scientists confirmed the existence of the distant exoplanet, which is the most earth-like planet ever discovered. Although the planet is far too far away to photograph, advanced Nasa technology means we know a surprising amount about this ‘New Earth’. Earlier this year, there were eight of them. We shall see. The new planet is slightly larger than Earth, and is estimated to have twice the gravitational pull of our own planet. However, according to the scientists on the Read More ›

From their earliest cinematic appearance in Georges Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon” in 1902, our conception of life beyond Earth has changed to reflect our hopes and fears, the technology we’ve mastered, and our growing knowledge of the universe. Watch our depictions of extraterrestrial life change over nearly 100 films and 112 years. Good chance the vid below is as good as it’ll get re space aliens. Follow UD News at Twitter! B

One of the standard defenses of evolution—the Epicurean idea that the world arose spontaneously—is that science is a self-correcting, feedback process and, as such, will always lead to the truth. This is such an ignorant claim it is difficult to know where to begin in rebutting it. First of all, at its best science is a process that takes as input a set of observations and produces as output some generalizations, sometimes called models or hypotheses or theories or laws, about how nature works. A scientist might observe the planetary motions in the sky and hypothesize that the planets travel in elliptical orbits about the Sun. Or a scientist might observe the movement of objects and theorize that the product Read More ›