John Farrell’s article, It’s Time To Retire ‘Theistic Evolution’ (Forbes magazine, March 19, 2016), cites three prominent Catholic thinkers who reject the term “theistic evolution.” But what Farrell overlooks is that these Catholics hold wildly divergent views on the simple question of whether living things were designed by God. Edward Feser insists that they were, and Stacy Trasancos apparently agrees; Ken Miller says they were not – which puts him in the same camp as Jesuit astronomer George Coyne and Catholic theologian John Haught, two outspoken defenders of evolution who were not cited in Farrell’s article. However, the clear teaching of the Catholic Church is that humans and other living things were designed by God. What I find astonishing is Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Researchers discover sophisticated alarm signaling in a primitive insect Many insect species respond to danger by producing chemical alarm signals, or alarm pheromones, to inform others. In a recent study, investigators found that their alarm may be even be context dependent. The researchers discovered that larvae of the Western Flower Thrips produce an alarm pheromone whose composition of 2 chemicals, decyl acetate and dodecyl acetate, varies with the level of danger they face. When pheromone is excreted with a predator present but not attacking, the percentage of dodecyl acetate increases, whereas when a predator does attack, the percentage of dodecyl acetate is low. “This type of communication was so far only known from vocal alarm calling in mammals, Read More ›

Quite expectedly, the Krauss vs Meyer debate got off to a poor start. Krauss has a few go-to moves during a debate and most of them were on full display in his opening remarks (one can hardly call them arguments). He opened with an ill-informed and misrepresentative attack on the Discovery Institute and on the person, character and honesty of Stephen Meyer himself. During his diatribe, Krauss informed the audience that Meyer and his ideas are not worth debating and that Meyer himself is something of a dishonest marketing man for Intelligent Design. And what exactly is Krauss’ justification for this claim? Well, you see, several years ago, at a school board hearing in Ohio, Krauss, having failed to inform Read More ›

In a comment over at Sandwalk Larry writes: Bill says, But the point is moot. ID is not a scientific endeavor. Never has been. It’s a political movement with a social agenda to inject religion into American public schools. Simple as that. The debate took place in Canada where we allow the teaching of religion in public schools. None of us give a damn about the American Constitution. We’re interesting in knowing whether the science is valid or not. If the Intelligent Design proponents have legitimate complaints about evolution and if they have good scientific arguments in favor of design then those ideas should be taught in Canadian schools in spite of what some judge in Pennsylvania said ten years Read More ›

  From Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: Erica Klarreich at Quanta has the story of a surprising new result about prime numbers from Kannan Soundararajan and Rober Lemke Oliver. They have found that, given a prime number with a certain last digit, there are different probability for the last digit of the next one (among the various possibilities). This violates usual assumptions that such things are in some sense “random”, indicating just how subtle this “randomness” is. More. From Klarreich at Quanta: Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that Read More ›

Late this evening Darwin’s God broke into Lawrence Krauss’ much coveted private playlist. This was a major breakthrough, and Read more

From Retraction Watch, interviewing John Ioannidis, John Ioannidis is perhaps best known for a 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.” Retraction Read More ›

The developing pattern of terrorist attacks in the West continues. Looks like a bombing at an airport and a metro station in Brussels after a terrorist mastermind was captured Friday last. It seems so far, 26 dead, dozens wounded. The airport bombing may be a suicide bombing. Sky News, live: [youtube y60wDzZt8yg] Heads up. END

From ScienceDaily: For decades, physicists have been working on the theory that dark matter is light and therefore interacts weakly with ordinary matter. This means that the particles are capable of being produced in colliders. This theory’s dark particles are called weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and they are theorized to have been created in an inconceivably large number shortly after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. “But since no experiments have ever seen even a trace of a WIMP, it could be that we should look for a heavier dark particle that interacts only by gravity and thus would be impossible to detect directly,” says Martin Sloth. Sloth and his colleagues call their version of such a Read More ›

From the BBC: Why there might be many more universes besides our own … The fundamental constants of the laws of physics seem bizarrely fine-tuned to the values needed for life to exist. … For example, if the strength of the electromagnetic force were just a little different, atoms would not be stable. Just a 4% change would prevent all nuclear fusion in stars, the process that makes the carbon atoms our bodies are largely made of. … This has made some people suspect the hand of God. Yet an inflationary multiverse, in which all conceivable physical laws operate somewhere, offers an alternative explanation.More. So there it is. Brits pay taxes for this, believing it is some kind of science. Read More ›

My verdict: The debate would have been a better one without Krauss, who generally behaved like a boor, and who engaged in deliberate dishonesty (see below). Meyer and Lamoureux had a lively but amicable exchange of views. Meyer displayed admirable fortitude in soldiering on, even though he had a splitting headache. Introduction Host Karen Stiller introduces the debate, which is sponsored by Wycliffe College, in partnership with Faith Today, Power to Change, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and the Network of Christian Scholars. Professor Lawrence Krauss will speak first, followed by Dr. Stephen Meyer and finally, Dr. Denis Lamoureux. Professor Lawrence Krauss’s talk Professor Krauss begins by announcing that he wants to clear up a misconception. 3:52 Krauss declares: “The Discovery Read More ›

At his blog, Why Evolution Is True: I don’t know for sure, but would bet a lot of money, that Krauss plumps for physics while Lamoureaux and Meyer for the importance of either God or his euphemism, a “designer.” More. Prophecies are difficult, especially with respect to the future. In the event, Krauss hollered a lot about the Discovery Institute and Lamoureux testified to his faith. Meyer tried to keep things on track despite a migraine. Note: One of Coyne’s posters, Diana MacPherson announces, inter alia: Meyer drives me right crazy and I would have loved to tell him that I got his book moved out of the science section at Chapters but I can sympathize with someone having a Read More ›

With your coffee … what to make of this comment by “Charley Horse” on Michael Denton’s Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (2016), comment appended to his review, Cashing in on the Oogity Boogity: Clother….you are not one of those militant Muslims that Denton’s fellow propagandists at the Discovery Institute kowtow to are you? For the record….the DI isn’t the only young earth creationist organization in the USA that has given aid and comfort to the militant Muslims…especially in Turkey. Les often quotes from one militant Muslim…..Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya. Wow. If Charley Horse has genuine information about “militants,” why doesn’t he go to the police? This is a long way from agnostic Denton or anything he can Read More ›

I recently debated Professor Michael Ruse on the topic of … Read more

From David Klinghoffer, editor of Evolution News & Views: on the Toronto debate between Steve Meyer, Lawrence Krauss, and Denis Lamoureux It was not the ideal of a clash between ID and Lawrence Krauss’s atheism that one would hope for. However, the event was something else, in a way, of no less interest. It was a dramatic test and acting out of character. Almost as if it had been intelligently designed that way. Meyer’s courageous performance, while not his most articulate, was in a moral sense heroic. When all was said and done, Meyer with a migraine offered a whole lot more substance than either of his interlocutors. In addition, he was a gentleman throughout. His argument was about science Read More ›