From Science: Why water worlds won’t host life New research published online before print in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society shows that Earth-sized water worlds are habitable only in a very limited range of temperatures—from about 0̊C to 127̊C. Anything outside that range, which tends to occur on planets that are in a “Goldilocks zone” of 102 million to 140 million miles away from their stars (Earth is about 93 million miles away from the sun), could be devastating for life as we know it. More. Here’s the abstract: The unstable CO2 feedback cycle on ocean planets Ocean planets are volatile-rich planets, not present in our Solar system, which are thought to be dominated by deep, global Read More ›

From MinnPost: Many common psychology terms are ‘inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous or logically confused,’ experts claim Many terms commonly used in psychology, psychiatry and related fields — such as chemical imbalance, love molecule, and autism epidemic — “should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats,” according to a recent paper in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology. Although the article is aimed at health-care professionals, it’s a fascinating and helpful read for the rest of us as well. For it provides detailed explanations of why each of the 50 listed words and phrases is either “inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, [or] logically confused.” And those explanations will probably surprise many readers. Example are offered, including: Love molecule. Read More ›

It is one thing to point out particular conflicts between religion and science, it is quite another to characterize broadly the relationship between religion and science as one of conflict. The former is simply recognizing realities, the latter is the failed view known as the Conflict or Warfare Thesis. Certainly there are some genuine conflicts that arise from certain religious sects or traditions, but historically the relationship between religion and science is far more complicated than simply an on-going conflict. The BioLogos organization is very much concerned with this conflict, but they point out that they are careful to avoid the Warfare Thesis. Unfortunately this claim depends on a carefully crafted definition of the Warfare Thesis.  Read more

For a theory that is supposed to be scientific, and therefore not teleological, evolution certainly does have its share of Aristotelian commitments. In fact, the Philosopher seems to be present at every turn in evolutionary thought. Consider the latest thinking from evolutionists—a brand new theory formulated to replace the last brand new theory which, not surprisingly, failed just as badly as the previous theories. The new one is called the extended evolutionary synthesis. First there was evolution. Then there was the evolutionary synthesis. Now there is the extended evolutionary synthesis. Well at least this one affords evolutionists a three-letter acronym. Here is how evolutionists describe it (as usual, watch for the infinitive form):  Read more

From ScienceDaily: Analysis supports a previous finding, that the best match for the marks is butchery by stone tools Not trampling. The paper supports the original interpretation that the damage to the two bones is characteristic of stone tool butchery, published in Nature in 2010. That finding was sensational, since it potentially pushed back evidence for the use of stone tools, as well as the butchering of large animals, by about 800,000 years. The Nature paper was followed in 2011 by a rebuttal in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggesting that the bones were marked by incidental trampling in abrasive sediments. That sparked a series of debates about the significance of the discovery and whether the Read More ›

Like humans take rap for killing off mammoths. Yes, August. Hot weather. Stories. From ScienceDaily: Competition from cats drove extinction of many species of ancient dogs Competition played a more important role in the evolution of the dog family (wolves, foxes, and their relatives) than climate change, shows a new international study published in PNAS. An international team including scientists from the Universities of Gothenburg (Sweden), São Paulo (Brazil) and Lausanne (Switzerland) analyzed over 2000 fossils and revealed that the arrival of felids to North America from Asia had a deadly impact on the diversity of the dog family, contributing to the extinction of as many as 40 of their species. “We usually expect climate changes to play an overwhelming Read More ›

Materialists have a lot of stock responses they use to distract themselves from the explanatory poverty of the “answers” their faith commitments require them to spew out in response to obvious objections.  Consider the materialist responses to my last post, Quashing Materialist Appeals to Magic (Again). Briefly, I argued that unless materialists can provide some sort of an explanation of the process by which the physical electro-chemical properties of the brain result in the mental properties of the mind, then merely invoking “emergence” has exactly the same explanatory power as invoking “magic.”  I quoted atheists Thomas Nagel and Elizabeth Liddle, who concur. Now to the materialist’s stock answer (courtesy of Popperian):  Barry, you have committed the Fallacy of Composition.  The Read More ›

Everyone who believes the barbarians among us have declared total war on Western Civilization raise your hand. The differences between this and Auschwitz: 1.  The victims are more defenseless. 2.  The victims are more innocent. 3.  The victims are smaller. 4.  The execution chambers are more sanitary. Ideas have consequences.

A series of articles by philosopher of biology James Barham on key new thinkers, collected together on his blog: Part I: The Machine Metaphor Part II: James A. Shapiro Part III: Mary Jane West-Eberhard Part IV: Some Experiments Part V: Life and Emergence Part VI: F.E. Yates’s Homeodynamics Seeing Past Darwin VII: Some Physical Properties of Life Dr. Barham is glad to hear from commenters. So are we. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Further to National Geographic: Bonobo peeps point to human language origin ( No one even thinks of asking why, if baby bonobo peeping tells us about the roots of human language, it never did anything for the bonobos). and Apes close to speaking? No. (In the middle ages, it was implausible miracle stories that attracted attention, but today, it is implausible ape achievement stories. ) The agenda is so obvious, it stinks like the garbage on a hot summer night before the pickup. For example, this just rolled out of the files: Neanderthals could talk? Warning: Concept now used to claim that language was no big leap after all. Note that if bonobos “peep,” that shows they are on the verge Read More ›

No sooner did we hear that apes are close to speaking (no, they aren’t, and the claim is just another example of how, in our time, impossible ape achievement stories have replace impossible miracle claims)—than we are informed by National Geographic: Bonobo “Baby Talk” Reveals Roots of Human Language As we watch the bonobos, I think I hear a vocalization called peeping—a short, high-pitched sound bonobos make with their mouths closed. Peeping, which is very similar to the burbling of human infants before they form words, may tell us more about the evolution of human speech. That’s because while most animal sounds have a more narrow meaning, bonobos use peeping in several contexts, including eating, communicating danger, and resting, according Read More ›

Dr. Karl Giberson, a scholar of science and religion, a former co-president of the Biologos Foundation, and the best-selling author of ten books, including Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, has written a blurb for atheist John Loftus’ new book, How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist (Pitchstone Publishing, November 2015), in which he openly admits that it undercuts his own evolutionary theodicy. Dr. Giberson’s blurb reads as follows: For years I have despaired about the sorry state of Christian apologetics, and even sorrier state of Christian apologists. If there be Christian truth, it lies beyond the reach of rational inquiry, and perhaps that is OK. In How to Defend the Christian Read More ›

In robots. From ScienceDaily: A computer science team at The University of Texas at Austin has found that robots evolve more quickly and efficiently after a virtual mass extinction modeled after real-life disasters such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Beyond its implications for artificial intelligence, the research supports the idea that mass extinctions actually speed up evolution by unleashing new creativity in adaptations. … “Focused destruction can lead to surprising outcomes,” said Miikkulainen, a professor of computer science at UT Austin. “Sometimes you have to develop something that seems objectively worse in order to develop the tools you need to get better.” In biology, mass extinctions are known for being highly destructive, erasing a lot of genetic Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Apes may be closer to speaking than many scientists think In 2010, Marcus Perlman started research work at The Gorilla Foundation, where Koko has spent more than 40 years living immersed with humans — interacting for many hours each day with psychologist Penny Patterson and biologist Ron Cohn. … “She doesn’t produce a pretty, periodic sound when she performs these behaviors, like we do when we speak,” Perlman says. “But she can control her larynx enough to produce a controlled grunting sound.” In other words, Koko does not speak. “Decades ago, in the 1930s and ’40s, a couple of husband-and-wife teams of psychologists tried to raise chimpanzees as much as possible like human children and teach them to Read More ›

This is the time of year when pop science news recycles all the leftovers left over all over again, and this one was bound to come up—left over again: From ScienceDaily: Early humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of a variety of species of giant beasts, new research has revealed. The researchers ran thousands of scenarios which mapped the windows of time in which each species is known to have become extinct, and humans are known to have arrived on different continents or islands. This was compared against climate reconstructions for the last 90,000 years. Examining different regions of the world across these scenarios, they found coincidences of human spread and species extinction which illustrate that man was Read More ›