From Nathaniel Scharping here: The words and body language we use during social interactions belong to a set of mutually understood categories. When people deviate from this set of normative behaviors, we sense that something is off. And if something isn’t right, we don’t feel comfortable. More. That makes sense. Actual human interactions are much more complex than pop psychology. This is something to keep in mind: “I think that none of the behaviors described as creepy in our study were actually tied to danger,” McAndrew wrote. … McAndrew also asked participants whether they thought creepy people knew they were, well, creeps. The response was overwhelmingly “no,” indicating that no one thinks people are willingly trying to be creepy. Instead creepiness Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Although it’s widely known that modern humans carry traces of Neanderthal DNA, a new international study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that Neanderthal Y-chromosome genes disappeared from the human genome long ago. Apparently, 2.5 to 4 percent of DNA sequences are thought be from Neanderthals. Question: Has anyone tried doing that with any other discrete group? Why is not yet clear. The Neanderthal Y chromosome genes could have simply drifted out of the human gene pool by chance over the millennia. Another possibility, said Mendez, is that Neanderthal Y chromosomes include genes that are incompatible with other human genes, and he and his colleagues have found evidence supporting this idea. Indeed, one Read More ›

Vincent Torley wrote about the Canadian national mag’s effort here: To give credit where credit is due, Professor Bart Ehrman, in his recent scholarly attack on the reliability of the New Testament, at least took the trouble to draw upon the latest scientific research relating to the fallibility of human memory, even though he overlooked equally impressive research demonstrating the reliability of memory, both within a community and within the mind of an eyewitness, over the course of time. However, Brian Bethune’s hatchet job on Jesus attempts to cast doubt on His very existence, citing the work of one historian (Richard Carrier) who is not recognized as a New Testament scholar, and whose methodology is highly dubious. I am forced Read More ›

In the comments box at Miller’s Mendacity, Barry Arrington asks It is getting to the point that refuting the nonsense is almost beside the point. No one believes it, least of all those who say they do. As you’ve been saying for some time now, the really interesting story here is the psychological story. Why do people profess belief in the obviously false? Okay: Why do people profess belief in the obviously false? A couple notes: – The belief that randomness produces information (central to Darwinism) is obviously false. It’s never been demonstrated because it can’t be. It is assumed. It is assumed for the same reasons as the existence of a multiverse or a naturalist explanation for consciousness are assumed. Read More ›

Says Philip Ball at Nautilus: The ancient Greek philosopher Pappus of Alexandria thought that the bees must be endowed with “a certain geometrical forethought.” And who could have given them this wisdom, but God? According to William Kirby in 1852, bees are “Heaven-instructed mathematicians.” Charles Darwin wasn’t so sure, and he conducted experiments to establish whether bees are able to build perfect honeycombs using nothing but evolved and inherited instincts, as his theory of evolution would imply. More. Note how in pop science culture, a simple question like Why hexagons? turns into a hymn of praise to Darwin vs. others. You know, the author of the single greatest idea anyone ever had. Incidentally, this kind of thing is what makes Read More ›

At Patheos, the prophet RJS asks: Is ID Dead?, meaning of course that it is: A decade ago Intelligent Design with a capital I and a capital D was a hot topic. A major trial testing the teaching of the ID in Pennsylvania was decided in late 2005 and Stephen C. Meyer’s massive book Signature in the Cell was published in 2009. It was a common topic in evangelical churches – viewed as a way to combat the evil influence of evolution. Quite frankly, it was a topic I was ready to see disappear. The controversy was tainting most conversations about Christianity in my circles at the University. Today there are other points of contention and Intelligent Design has moved Read More ›

From a featurette on a New Zealand spider with really fast jaws at Mashable: The spiders are only found in New Zealand and southern parts of South America, with the quickest of the 14 species of trap-jaw spider closing their jaw more than 100 times faster than the slowest. … Not only are some of these trap-jaw spiders fast, four of the spiders boast a power output exceeding the known capacity of their muscles. It’s a finding which shows that a spider’s movements aren’t necessarily powered by their tiny muscles, according to the statement, but have perhaps developed structural mechanisms in their bodies which allow the storing of energy — thanks to evolution. More. Huh? What’s “thanks to evolution” doing in Read More ›

According to a Discovery Institute-sponsored poll: According to the survey, 43 percent of Americans now agree that “Evolution shows that no living thing is more important than any other,” and 45 percent of Americans believe that “Evolution shows that human beings are not fundamentally different from other animals.” The highest levels of support for the idea that evolution shows that humans aren’t fundamentally different from other animals are found among self-identified atheists (69 percent), agnostics (60 percent), and 18 to 29 year-olds (51 percent). The theory of evolution is also reshaping how people think about morality. A majority of Americans (55 percent) now contend that “Evolution shows that moral beliefs evolve over time based on their survival value in various Read More ›

From Retraction Watch: A philosophy journal that focuses on the teachings of philosopher Alain Badiou has apparently fallen victim to yet another Sokal hoax, and has retracted a fake article submitted by authors trying to expose the publication’s weaknesses. The paper, “Ontology, Neutrality and the Strive for (non-)Being-Queer,” attributed to Benedetta Tripodi of the Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza in Romania, is apparently the work of two academics, who submitted the absurd article to Badiou Studies to expose its lack of rigor in accepting papers. More. But the question arises, in this case, why does anyone care? As long as they aren’t funded by taxpayers who do boring, maybe dangerous, jobs all day, whose business is it? That is, at what Read More ›

And that’s not a good thing for understanding numbers, says Priceonomics: Many analysts believe that the unthinking use of the average damages our understanding of quantitative information. This is because when people look at averages, they think it is “the norm”. But in reality, it might be highly impacted by just one huge outlier. Imagine an analyst who wanted to know the representative value for the cost of real estate on a block with five houses. Four of the houses are worth $100,000 and one is worth $900,000. Given these numbers, the average would be $200,000 and the median $100,000. In this case, and many others, the median gives you a better sense of what is “typical”. … The median Read More ›

From Jazz Shaw at Hot Air: Remember when eggs were bad for you? All the doctors were telling us that eggs have cholesterol so they’re evil. Fortunately, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and I pretty much ignored them. Later we learned that the facts doctors were so sure of turned out to be not quite so factual and that we evolved to process eggs fairly efficiently. Now we have yet another element of the conventional wisdom which may be crumbling under the light of additional study. We’ve been forcing kids to drink low fat or skim milk for years because that was supposed to be bad for you too. Frankly, I can’t stand that watery skim milk Read More ›

As Robert Barron notes: In a rambling and largely incoherent response to an interlocutor who wondered whether philosophy is still relevant, Nye denigrated the discipline, stating that philosophy never deviates from common sense, that it doubts the reality of sense experience, and that it engages in speculation about whether we might be part of an intergalactic ping pong match! To tumultuous applause, doubtless. The physical sciences can reveal the chemical composition of ink and paper, but they cannot, even in principle, tell us anything about the meaning of Moby Dick or The Wasteland. Biology might inform us regarding the process by which nerves stimulate muscles in order to produce human action, but it could never tell us anything about whether Read More ›

Canadian weekly Maclean’s recently featured an article by Brian Bethune titled, Did Jesus really exist? The article, which drew upon a book recently published by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, titled, Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior, argues that the Gospel accounts of Jesus are largely based on unreliable memories and a highly distorted oral tradition. But Bethune does not stop there: citing the work of New Atheist Richard Carrier, he goes beyond Ehrman and maintains that Jesus may never have even existed at all. The issues raised by Professor Ehrman in his book are of immense philosophical significance, for they pertain to the trustworthiness of human testimony. If Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Salamanders and fish possess genes that can enable healing of damaged tissue and even regrowth of missing limbs. The key to regeneration lies not only in the genes, but in the DNA sequences that regulate expression of those genes in response to an injury. Researchers have discovered regulatory sequences that they call ’tissue regeneration enhancer elements’ or TREEs, which can turn on genes in injury sites. … Over the last decade, researchers have identified dozens of regeneration genes in organisms like zebrafish, flies, and mice. For example, one molecule called neuregulin 1 can make heart muscle cells proliferate and others called fibroblast growth factors can promote the regeneration of a severed fin. Yet, Poss says, what has not Read More ›