September 2015

From UNZ, alternative media: The Jerry Coyne Retirement Jerry Coyne, an eminent evolutionary geneticist and all around public intellectual, is retiring, and has posted a bitter sweet and hopeful farewell letter to his conventional scientific career. For the general public Coyne is probably more famous as a New Atheist, though Coyne is actually a vocal atheist of long standing. His most recent book was on that topic, Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. I’m an atheist, but on the balance I demur form many of his positions in regards to religion and science. More precisely, I am quite willing to defend atheism and dismiss religion, but on philosophical or meta-scientific grounds, not scientific grounds as such. More. Read More ›

From Casey Luskin at Christian Post:: Hominid Hype and Homo Naledi: Did Scientists Really Discover a Human Ancestor? Indeed, just four years ago Australopithecus sediba — also discovered and promoted by Berger — was the transitional form du jure between the australopithecines and our own genus Homo. Yet sediba had a very different set of traits from naledi. If the same researchers now want to advocate Homo naledi as the new “transitional form,” they must radically revise their evolutionary story. Both species been called a “human ancestor,” in recent years, but both claims cannot be true. Another major challenge to claims for Homo naledi as a transitional form is the fact that the age of these newly reported fossils is Read More ›

Over at What’s Wrong with the World, Dr. Lydia McGrew has written a short article that nails the reason why atheists are liable to err on moral matters. The article, titled, Does being an atheist interfere with being moral? (September 22, 2015), identifies metaphysical naturalism (which views the world as the sum total of what can be described by the sciences) as the root of the problem. There is of course no logical reason why atheists are bound to accept this materialistic worldview, but the vast majority of contemporary atheists do, and the ethical theory which they tend to opt for, as a best fit for their metaphysical views, is utilitarianism. On a utilitarian view, there are no radical discontinuities Read More ›

From Should Scientific Truth Be Subjected to a Vote?: Those who promulgate the rhetoric of consensus rightly want to preserve the integrity of science in the eyes of the public. The empirical, precise, and collaborative method of natural science remains – despite the current reproducibility crisis – our most reliable source for knowledge about the natural world. And it often facilitates tremendous technological achievement. No surprise that its practitioners enjoy a high degree of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “cultural capital.” They ought to. More. Well, yes, but if there is a reproducibility crisis, one would best deal with that before subjecting any decision to a vote. Otherwise, it’s like showing up in court and saying you have no evidence Read More ›

From The Scientist:: The form and function of the ears of modern land vertebrates cannot be understood without knowing how they evolved. Excuse me, excuse me, we can know everything there is to know about hearing today simply from examining life forms today. Darwinism forces on people the belief that they must know about the “evolution” of such a function – somewhat like thinking you have to know a lot about Henry Ford in order to drive or fix a car. Hey! Who pays for this stuff anyway? Meanwhile: Although fish can hear, only amphibians and true land vertebrates—including the aquatic species that descended from them, such as whales and pinnipeds—have dedicated hearing organs. In land vertebrates belonging to the Read More ›

Okay, okay, not directly our thing, but I am just gearing up here again: The False Science of Cryonics No one who has experienced the disbelief of losing a loved one can help but sympathize with someone who pays $80,000 to freeze their brain. But reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the “cryonics” industry. Those who profit from this hope deserve our anger and contempt. More. In case you knew someone who was thinking of doing this. Why not give the $80,000 to a health research outfit? Also: That means the mind is something different from the brain.

Jurisprudence Professor Robert George and bioethicist Patrick Lee have written a devastating take-down of Bill Nye in an article for National Review titled, Back to Science Class for the Science Guy, after Nye published a video on YouTube, claiming to tell us what science says about abortion. As take-downs go, this one is about as good as it gets, and I warmly recommend it to readers. The authors write: …[H]e (Nye) misrepresents the facts from top to bottom in an embarrassingly transparent effort to hijack science in the cause of pro-abortion ideology. The authors’ conclusion is also worth quoting: At several points in his video, Nye expresses frustration with people who don’t share his support for the moral and legal Read More ›

Okay, this is the last thing I (O’Leary for News) have to say on the subject of doctors and evolution, and fitness for public office: Once, about forty years ago, one of my kids was hit on the head by a car. She was taken immediately to the local ER. I flagged down a cruiser to follow. Even in those days, one could get immediate updates by cruiserphone (… so far okay … so far okay … um, check with medical resident … ) So the cops and I rushed through the ER doors. It wasn’t hard to find her; I could hear her screaming from four emergency rooms away. Later, a medical attendant told me to carry her upstairs Read More ›

I passed by and noted a dismissive comment (or a few) regarding US Presidential candidate, retired neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson: CASE A: he’s running for President of the United States of America; he’s a politician who’s put religion and science into his platform. He willingly exposed himself to criticism and does not deserve a pass because he did good things as a surgeon. CASE B: Dr Carson. He is clearly a talented physician, but get him talking about evolution or cosmology and he turns into Ken Ham. Looks like a classic case of willful ignorance to me; he should know better. Is that acceptable for the president of a world power? CASE C: Surgery is to science what carpentry is Read More ›

When John Ray refused to conform to the 1662 Act of Uniformity—aimed mainly at the Puritans—and so was forced to leave his position at Cambridge University, he roamed Europe for three years doing what he loved: observing nature. Ray and his companions were in for a surprise: unfathomable diversity. They found thousands of different kinds of insects, animals and plants. Every place had a different flora and fauna, and with different interactions. Life did not seem to follow the kind of compact formulas Isaac Newton was discovering for the new physics. With the overthrow of Aristotelianism, physics was becoming more parsimonious in line with Occam’s Razor. But biology was headed in the opposite direction. Were all these organic life forms Read More ›

Why does anyone care what any US Prez thinks about evolution? If it is really a science topic, shouldn’t it be like the Large Hadron Collider or Pluto’s  geography? So how is it the Prez’s business? Why ask him in particular? Doesn’t he mainly deal with domestic and foreign crises? I first wondered about this when I saw four hairstyle models (oh, excuse me!, highly paid US broadcast media reporters) puzzling over former prez  contender Scott Walker’s views on “evolution.” People who, I realized, knew nothing whatever of the issues and would consider it their professional duty not to know anything. Their duty is just to look concerned. You bought, you paid. Fine. Glad you like the hair. If it Read More ›

Ben Carson, pediatric neurosurgeon, saved children’s lives. Here is a typical Darwin follower’s’ response, demanding worship of their idol: So imagine it’s 1970 or so, and you’re young Ben Carson, sitting in a biology class at Yale University. With your sharp mind and strong study habits, you don’t have much problem understanding the material, grasping the copious evidence underlying the theory of evolution, all the fossils going back millions of years, how it all fits together in an endless process that affects everything from a towering redwood down to a microscopic virus. And yet, the whole thing sounds like an attack on the beliefs about the universe you were taught your whole life from your family and your church. How Read More ›

From 365 Million-Year-Old Fossil Catches Trilobite in the Act of Molting: In shedding it’s armored exoskeleton, the fossilized creature was molting. Molting is without a doubt one of nature’s most incredible acts. Every so often, certain creatures cast off parts of their bodies in a process of biological renewal. Cats and dogs do it with their fur (often shedding hair all over your sofa). Chickens do it with their feathers. Snakes do it with their skin. Most remarkably, many arthropods, including spiders, crabs, and insects, discard their entire exoskeleton! Ripping themselves out of their bodies in an unnerving and alien manner, they emerge revitalized and renewed, leaving behind a near-complete husk of their former selves. This happened 365 million years Read More ›

Some claim we can. We are told, It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it is rather a consequence of our current understanding of theoretical physics. This distinction is crucial. We have not waved our hands and said: “Let there be a multiverse”. Instead the idea that the Universe is perhaps one of infinitely many is derived from current theories like quantum mechanics and string theory. Any time people must talk this way, they have a bad theory. Popular, but bad. But the critical question is, what if they discovered it wasn’t true? Would they just keep the baffle going? Well, let’s see … Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here. Gut reactions guide our judgements and behaviour, but those reactions, developed over millions of years of living in small groups, aren’t up to the grand challenges that face us in an interconnected world of billions of people. On the road ahead, this is a recipe for tyranny everywhere: Traditional moral instincts don’t work; we need some brand new scheme. Sound familiar? The main thing to see is, these people are serious. Follow UD News at Twitter!