Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Irreducible Complexity: the primordial condition of biology

In 1996, Lehigh University professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, published his first book Darwin’s Black Box, which famously advanced the concept of irreducible complexity (IC) to prominent status in the conversation of design in biology. In his book, Professor Behe described irreducible complexity as: A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. In illustrating his point, Behe used the idea of a simple mousetrap — with its base and spring and holding bar — as an example of an IC system, where the removal of any of these parts would render the mousetrap incapable of its Read More ›

Grade VII classroom, TX: Is God real — fact, opinion, myth, common (but questionable ) view

Here (make sure to watch the embedded Fox26 video which I doubt I can embed at UD). Is it reasonable to be putting such a question to 12 year old students in class? (And if you think this was just one teacher, note how it came up the next day in other classes and in multiple classes on the day in question; somebody with responsibility wrote this into a curriculum with intent to create the view that per critical thinking, belief in God is little more than a widely believed, religiously backed [itself a loaded issue] questionable opinion with little warrant.) Is the view that God is real merely a religious belief with no serious weight of evidence or argument? Read More ›

The rejection of continental drift and consensus science

Hard on the heels of the Atlantic noting the resistance to valid new ideas in science, we hear from Inside Science that : Scientific Consensus Is Almost Never Wrong – Almost The man who shifted the geology paradigm was Alfred Wegener and he was never mentioned in my Geology 101 class. How this happened was discussed at a meeting of the Geology Society of America in Baltimore earlier this month. … No one knows how it happened, but likely one day Wegener simply looked at a globe and noted that you could slide South America right up against Africa. The bulge in Brazil near the city of Natal, would fit snugly into the bight of Africa near Cameroon. There are Read More ›

Will Dawkins’ selfish gene concept die as its proponents retire?

From The Atlantic: The strangeness of the geology and fossil evidence behind the theory of continental drift helped drive a half-century of resistance to the idea. Siddhartha Mukherjee documented in his book The Emperor of All Maladies how a fixation on the cure for a misconceived disease inhibited recognition of the complexity of cancer for a generation. It took decades before physicists came to grips with experiments that showed that the speed of light was constant for every observer—and even then, only the very young Einstein took that observation seriously enough to produce his first relativity theory. In the long run, it’s true: Reality imposes a final and authoritative judgment on the rights and wrongs of any idea. In the Read More ›

Slain officer in Colorado Springs was a pro-life pastor

Amid media speculation about the possible motivation of the Colorado Springs shooter who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic last Friday, one thing seems to have been overlooked: the slain officer, The Rev. Garrett Swasey, was actually a pro-life pastor (h/t Terry Mattingly). Time magazine reports that the officer was “heavily involved in his church, a non-denominational evangelical place of worship called Hope Chapel where he was a co-pastor.” Hope Chapel’s doctrinal statements can be viewed online here. The Chapel’s statement on marriage is doctrinally conservative, firmly opposed to gay marriage, and its affirmation that “children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” is staunchly pro-life (emphases mine – VJT): It is Read More ›

Physicist Brian Cox targeted over free speech?

Readers recall Brit physicist/TV presenter Brian Cox? You know, ”multiverse/“many worlds” makes sense“ and all that? Rumour has it that he became something of a target this year. A reader sends: Laughably, Prof. Brian Cox – a household name in Britain in science-communication – was attacked for having the ‘wrong’ wife. Not so laughable at all though was the large-scale harassment directed against him by flamers. They also mounted a major campaign of harassment against another person who is also a household name in Britain for science-communication, Prof. Mary Beard. The personal attacks upon Cox about his wife were in the course of Cox’ having tweeted in mild, polite support of an open letter in favour of free-speech. Though Brian Read More ›

Is evil a disease?, asks New Scientist

Thoughts spurred by ISIS, apparently. From New Scientist: What turns an ordinary person into a killer? The idea that a civilised human being might be capable of barbaric acts is so alien that we often blame our animal instincts – the older, “primitive” areas of the brain taking over and subverting their more rational counterparts. But fresh thinking turns this long-standing explanation on its head. It suggests that people perform brutal acts because the “higher”, more evolved, brain overreaches. The set of brain changes involved has been dubbed Syndrome E – with E standing for evil. Yes, evil is an intelligent choice. Not a “natural” one. As Aesop’s fable tells it, the scorpion doesn’t sting because he is evil, but Read More ›

Fundies and new atheists have a secret sympathy?

Recently, we looked at open theology in connection with the work of one-tme BioLogian Karl Giberson. “The Secret Sympathy: New Atheism, Protestant Fundamentalism, and Evolution” by Liam Jerrold Fraser for an argument for similarlity, from the open theology perspective: Abstract: In spite of the apparent differences between the two, a number of commentators have suggested an underlying sympathy between new atheism and protestant fundamentalism (e.g. De Botton 2012; Vernon 2007; Flew 2007; Robertson 2010) While such comparisons are intriguing, it not always clear whether they should be taken seriously, as they are frequently asserted without sustained argument. This paper seeks to ameliorate this lack of clarity through a textual study of new atheist and protestant fundamentalist texts. This textual study Read More ›

Evangelical Henry Center launches “Creation Project”

From Henry Center: The Creation Project recognizes the need and opportunity for establishing and strengthening this field of inquiry within the evangelical community, both among its thought leaders and the general ecclesial public. We believe that the doctrine of creation provides opportunity for humble and open inquiry and the potential for new insights at the intersection of science and theology. While some scholars have begun to wrestle with the difficult issues, much work remains. Gathering the thought leaders throughout the evangelical community—pastors, scholars, administrators, and the like—we are interested in changing the tone of discourse, research agendas, and public perception within the evangelical community and in making progress towards new insights in the doctrine of creation. Friends advise that the Read More ›

Off topic and unbelievable: A U prez who is NOT running a daycare

From Dr. Everett Piper, President, Oklahoma Wesleyan University: This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable. I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a Read More ›

Snake turns out to be six different “species”

From ScienceDaily: The Persian dwarf snake is wrongly classified as one species, scientists say. New research shows it is composed of six different species, a finding which might be important for the conservation of the snake. Well, the new finding might be important for the conservation of the snake but, together with many other instances, it isn’t doing much for a science-based use of the term “species.” That’s been noted here before. except for claiming instances of evolution right under our noses on weak evidence. The research, which was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, revealed that the Persian dwarf snake is not a single species at all. It is composed of 6 different species, wrongly classified Read More ›

Convergent evolution: Tarantulas evolved blue hue eight times

From BBC News : Tarantulas have evolved almost exactly the same shade of vibrant blue at least eight separate times. That is the conclusion of a study by US biologists, exploring how the colour is created in different tarantula species. The hue is caused by tiny structures inside the animals’ hairs, but those shapes vary across the family tree. This suggests, the researchers say, that the striking blue is not driven by sexual selection – unlike many other bright colours in the animal kingdom. This argument is also supported by the fact that tarantulas have poor colour vision, and do not appear to show off their hairy blue body parts during courtship. More. The researchers think that the blue colour Read More ›

Researchers: Cyanobacteria responsible for Earth’s early oxygen

From ScienceDaily: Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged in whiffs from a kind of cyanobacteria in shallow oceans around 2.5 billion years ago, according to new research. … “The onset of Earth’s surface oxygenation was likely a complex process characterized by multiple whiffs of oxygen until a tipping point was crossed,” said Brian Kendall, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo. “Until now, we haven’t been able to tell whether oxygen concentrations 2.5 billion years ago were stable or not. These new data provide a much more conclusive answer to that question.” The new data supports a hypothesis proposed by Anbar and his team in 2007. In Western Australia, they found preliminary evidence of these oxygen whiffs Read More ›

Cosmologist Sean Carroll asks, Is anything constant?

From PBS: The ability for seemingly constant things to evolve and change is an important aspect of Einstein’s legacy. If space and time can change, little else is sacred. Modern cosmologists like to contemplate an extreme version of this idea: a multiverse in which the very laws of physics themselves can change from place to place and time to time. Such changes, if they do in fact exist, wouldn’t be arbitrary; like spacetime in general relativity, they would obey very specific equations. So are we now enlisting Einstein on behalf of the multiverse? Out of interest, what would he have thought? We currently have no direct evidence that there is a multiverse, of course. But the possibility is very much Read More ›

Did farming change the human genome?

Did farming change the human genome? If so, the genome has certainly been a work in rapid progress, and maybe regress too From : Genomic analysis of ancient human remains identifies specific genes that changed during and after the transition in Europe from hunting and gathering to farming about 8,500 years ago. Many of the genes are associated with height, immunity, lactose digestion, light skin pigmentation, blue eye color and celiac disease risk. … “From an archaeological perspective, it’s quite amazing,” said co-senior author Ron Pinhasi, associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin. “The Neolithic revolution is perhaps the most important transition in human prehistory. We now have proof that people did actually go from Anatolia into Europe and Read More ›