2015

We don’t think the World Wildlife Fund would welcome the news, put that way. Anyway, from ScienceDaily: Periods of high extinction on Earth, rather than evolutionary adaptations, may have been a key driver in the diversification of amniotes (today’s dominant land vertebrates, including reptiles, birds, and mammals), according to new research. … The new study examined the issue of adaptive radiations among early amniotes, from 315 to 200 million years ago. This time period witnessed some of the most profound climate changes on a global scale, including the dramatic shrinking of the southern polar icecap, the disappearance of equatorial rainforests, a substantial increase in temperature, and prolonged drought conditions. The time period under study also included the largest mass extinction Read More ›

At Salvo, Casey Luskin writes, Hominid Hype, Take 2015 This Time It’s “Homo Naledi” The discoverers of Homo naledi are calling it an “anatomical mosaic.” That terminology raises a red flag. In the parlance of evolutionary biology, that usually means the fossil is a unique organism that doesn’t fit easily into the standard evolutionary tree. As one technical paper concluded, “the H. naledi skeleton is a unique mosaic previously unknown in the human fossil record.” Indeed, just four years ago, the hominin Australopithecus sediba—also discovered and promoted by Berger—was the transitional form du jure between the australopithecines and our own genus, Homo. Yet sediba is very different from naledi in some important ways, including the pelvis. If the same researchers Read More ›

U Tech’s Granville Sewell recalls: Author’s note: To paraphrase Barbara Mandrell, I was ID when ID wasn’t cool. What, intelligent design still isn’t cool, you say? Oh…well, compared to 1985 it is. I offer for your interest the Postscript to my 1985 Springer book, Analysis of a Finite Element Method: PDE/PROTRAN. This Postscript draws an analogy between the evolution of the software described in the book (now calledPDE2D) and the evolution of life, and it is primarily about irreducible complexity, although Michael Behe would not coin that term until 11 years later. It is also clear that I was an intelligent design proponent then, though I had never heard of that term either at the time. In fact, as far Read More ›

So says some new research. First, remember “vestigial organs”? We learned in high school that  vestigial organs, including the appendix, show that there is no design in nature. Being teens, we never considered the implications of the fact that the proposition is never supposed to work the other way. That is, now that almost all such organs have been found to be functional (so far), the no-design PR lobby just moved to other claims. For example, junk DNA! Oh wait, let’s check our notes here on junk DNA… whoops… Okay, and now the humble appendix has the floor: Immune cells make appendix ‘silent hero’ of digestive health “Popular belief tells us the appendix is a liability,” she said. “Its removal is one Read More ›

In further addressing the curriculum abuse that sought to induce twelve year olds to imagine that belief in God is little more than a culturally induced ill-supported notion, it is critical to address the favoured ideology, evolutionary materialist scientism and/or its fellow travellers. For, never mind the lab coat clad magisterium, evolutionism is self-referentially incoherent and self falsifying. Advocates or adherents and fellow travellers of such materialistic scientism will typically try to dismiss, distract from or refuse to face this, but it is absolutely pivotal and utterly decisive. So, let us inform ourselves and our children for record. Craig, as a first point of reference, presents a useful talk: An excellent recent summary of this comes from Nancy Pearcey in Read More ›

Here (video unlikely to embed at UD). Live TV: http://livestream.com/accounts/9262780/events/3189705 Live radio: http://player.radio.com/listen/station/knx-1070-newsradio U/D Dec 4, looks like we have pics of recovered weapons, looks like Semi-auto AR15s with stabilising front hand grips, low mag optical sights and two 9mm parabellum semiauto pistols: Confirmation of explosive devices on live TV just now, that is not normal. END PS: Links (Drudge?): 14 DEAD; 17 INJURED… Dressed in ski masks and military gear… KNBC-TV LIVE… KCAL-TV LIVE… KFI-AM LIVE… KNX-AM LIVE… AP LATEST… Active-shooter drills every month at Inland Regional Center… ISIS Extremists Celebrate Shootings With America Burning Hashtag… PPS: The following was first observed on Sept 11 2001 on an Islamic Dawah site (subsequently vanished save in the web archives): Notice Read More ›

Hey, ‘tis the season to exchange gifts, so give it to every friend who has ever wondered why you think there is more to know about evolution than the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby wants the world to know: Major scientists from a dozen countries present evidence that a paradigm shift is underway or has already taken place, replacing neo-Darwinism (the standard model of evolution based on natural selection following the accumulation of random genetic mutations) with a vastly richer evolutionary synthesis than previously thought possible. Regular readers may recall that I (O’Leary for News) have long admired Suzan Mazur, a journalist with good credentials in name media, who could have done much better for herself, had she just joined in on the Read More ›

Because the bill is due for cosmology’s free, non-falsifiable lunch. At least, that is the impression one gets from Columbia mathematician Peter Woit’s comments Here: Next week there will be a workshop in Munich with the title Why Trust a Theory? Reconsidering Scientific Methodology in Light of Modern Physics. It’s organized by Richard Dawid, to discuss his ideas about “non-empirical theory confirmation”, developed to defend string theory research against accusations that its failure to make any testable predictions about anything make it a failure as a research program. I guess the idea of such a workshop is to bring together string theory proponents and critics to sort things out, but looking at the program and talk abstracts, this doesn’t look Read More ›

As we continue to respond to the abuse of curriculum authority that tried to present to 12 year olds in Texas that belief in God is in effect a culturally stamped but ill supported notion, it is appropriate to pause and watch how William Lane Craig responds to the sort of arguments presented by Dawkins et al as a refutation of arguments to God. Arguments that any number of triumphalistic YouTube videos announce as “destroying” arguments in support of theism: Further food for thought, and of course strictly verboten in today’s radically secularised public school classroom. END PS: It is worth the further pause to look at Plantinga’s collection of two dozen or so theistic arguments.

Further to astronomer Hugh Ross on degrees of certainty in science, from Christie Aschwanden, Five Thirty-Eight’s lead science writer: P-values have taken quite a beating lately. These widely used and commonly misapplied statistics have been blamed for giving a veneer of legitimacy to dodgy study results, encouraging bad research practices and promoting false-positive study results. But after writing about p-values again and again, and recently issuing a correction on a nearly year-old story over some erroneous information regarding a study’s p-value (which I’d taken from the scientists themselves and their report), I’ve come to think that the most fundamental problem with p-values is that no one can really say what they are. More. Here’s the theory, from Dummies, but apparently Read More ›

Ross, here at : : How to Understand the Degree of Certainty in Key Discoveries An international team of astronomers has recently determined the rate of expansion for the universe based on studies of HII regions (star-forming gaseous nebulae) in 69 galaxies over a broad range of distances. This seems to be a straightforward scientific determination, but it is loaded with philosophical implications. Here’s why: Since the cosmic expansion rate measured is at least approximately constant, the inverse of that rate: (1) establishes that the universe had a beginning, (2) yields the amount of time that has transpired since the cosmic beginning, and (3) implies that a cosmic Initiator must exist to have set the cosmos in motion. Thus, if we Read More ›

It occurred to me today that the United States Supreme Court is attempting to establish Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist atheism as the official religion of the United States. Sartre defined his basic project in Existentialism is Humanism: Existentialism is nothing else than an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position . . . Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.  Such is the first principle of existentialism . . . Thus, existentialism’s first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. In Being and Nothingness he added: Thus the best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human Read More ›

As we continue to respond to the abuse of curriculum authority that tried to present to 12 year olds in Texas that belief in God is in effect a culturally stamped but ill supported notion, it is appropriate to pause and watch the always entertaining — and perfect for twelve year olds — but oh so pointedly insightful Ravi Zacharias: Food for thought — of course, strictly verboten in today’s radically secularised class room. END

As we continue to address the abuse of curriculum authority that tried to present to 12 year olds in Texas that belief in God is in effect a culturally stamped but ill supported notion, it is appropriate to pause and watch Kreeft’s video lecture: Food for thought. END

This guy argues so. Drink yer brew and decide. Note: For a serious look at devolution in nature, see “Getting back to the simple life …” Hat tip: ’s blog, Signs of the Times