It’s come down to this, apparently, among the no-design crowd. From Raw Story: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution offers an explanation for why biological organisms seem so well designed to live on our planet. This process is typically described as “unintelligent” – based on random variations with no direction. But despite its success, some oppose […]
Month: January 2016
Consciousness like a self-driving car with no will or intent?
A product of carefully balanced chaos? According to the last whiz that blew through here, There is no “I” anyway. From Science: Instead, consciousness might emerge from a careful balancing that causes the brain to “explore” the maximum number of unique pathways to generate meaning, he says. The researchers call this balance point “a critical […]
Durston and Craig on an infinite temporal past . . .
In recent days, the issue of an infinite temporal past as a step by step causal succession has come up at UD. For, it seems the evolutionary materialist faces the unwelcome choice of a cosmos from a true nothing — non-being or else an actually completed infinite past succession of finite causal steps. Durston: >>To […]
Hawking uses black hole to split physicists
From Nature: Some welcome his latest report as a fresh way to solve a black-hole conundrum; others are unsure of its merits. … In a paper published in 1976, Hawking pointed out that the outflowing particles — now known as Hawking radiation — would have completely random properties. As a result, once the black hole […]
Our Moon formed in collision with embryo planet?
A new moon formation theory, from ScienceDaily: The moon was formed from a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a ‘planetary embryo’ called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. … Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, […]
Newsweek admits, mediaeval world didn’t think Earth was flat
Of course not. That would make Earth a dinner plate circled by globes. From Newsweek: Columbus and the Spaniards knew the Earth was round—Columbus’s plans to sail to Asia were questioned because the ocean was thought to be too vast to sail across, not because anyone thought the Earth was flat, Gould writes. Even the […]
Bees and ants provide clue to human suicides?
From Science Daily: Could human suicide have evolutionary roots in self-sacrificial behaviors like those seen in species such as honeybees and ants? … In a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Review, the researchers theorize that humans exhibit the characteristics of eusocial species such as relying on multigenerational and cooperative care of young and […]
Aw, not more of this “There is no ‘I’ stuff”?
Cartloads of it these days at places like Big Think: Jon Kabat-Zinn: If you put people in a scanner and tell them to just do nothing; just rest in the scanner; don’t do anything at all, it turns out that there’s a region in the midline of the cerebral cortex that’s known as the default […]
Empathy more common in animals than thought?
From ScienceDaily: A new study reveals that prairie voles console loved ones who are feeling stressed — and it appears that the infamous “love hormone,” oxytocin, is the underlying mechanism. Until now, consolation behavior has only been documented in a few nonhuman species with high levels of sociality and cognition, such as elephants, dolphins and […]
More ways to pack tennis balls than atoms in universe?
From New Scientist: How many ways are there to arrange 128 balls? Now Stefano Martiniani of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have found a clever way around the problem. They say there are 10^250 ways to arrange 128 jammed spheres – far more than the 10^80 atoms in the universe. So how did […]
Is the gene tree a delusion?
From a recent article in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution: In summary, the long c-genes that are required for accurate reconstruction of species trees using shortcut coalescence methods do not exist and are a delusion. Coalescence approaches based on SNPs that are widely spaced in the genome avoid problems with the recombination ratchet and merit further […]
Dawkins disinvited but defended here
With your coffee … At “TGIF: Dawkins disinvited to science conference”: Professor Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to speak at a science event withdrawn by organisers for sharing a “highly offensive” video mocking feminists on Twitter. Here. Make a point of seeing it while it is up. Big Social Media like Facebook and Twitter have […]
TGIF: Dawkins disinvited to science conference
Probably for all the wrong reasons. From UK Independent: Richard Dawkins dropped from science event for tweeting video mocking feminists and Islamists Professor Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to speak at a science event withdrawn by organisers for sharing a “highly offensive” video mocking feminists on Twitter. Dawkins was scheduled to speak at the […]
Wikipedia: The world of heavily edited unfacts
Or “troo” facts. From APS Physics: Focus: Wikipedia Articles Separate into Four Categories But do we know which category we are reading? Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute to its millions of articles and doesn’t exert any central control, yet striking order has emerged, according to an analysis of the entire editing history of the English portion […]
The Selfish Gene, dying, yet lives?
We figure Dawkins’ selfish gene will die after its proponents retire. Look, even New Scientist was last spotted quietly getting off the boat. It doesn’t get worse than that. Oh wait … from a puff piece in Nature: Matt Ridley reassesses Richard Dawkins’s pivotal reframing of evolution, 40 years on. … Books about science tend to […]