Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New Scientist on the New Earthlings 2

(Note: A previous version of this story was just rejected by Facebook for allegedly dangerous material. It is reposted here and went through at Facebook this time. Apologies for any inconvenience.  – News) Naturalism, like many religions, features an apocalypse. One prophecy is for wastage by a comet. From New Scientist: “Some say the deep microbial biosphere couldn’t survive because if you wipe out the surface ecosystem, sooner or later the nutrients they need will disappear,” says Ward. So if life here were extinguished, could it start again? “You could argue that it happened once, so it would likely happen again,” says David Kring at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. “But it’s difficult to say because strictly speaking, we Read More ›

Michael Flannery’s essay on Alfred Russel Wallace now in Springer book

Michael Flannery, science historian who has specialized in the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, writes to say that: My paper, “Alfred Russel Wallace, Nature’s Prophet: From Natural Selection to Natural Theology,” from the 2nd International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace held in Kuching (Sarawak), Malaysia, November 7-8, 2013, hasfinally been published in Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia, Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation 15, Springer International Publishing, 2016: Alfred Russel Wallace, Nature’s Prophet: From Natural Selection to Natural Theology, Flannery, Michael A., Pages 51-70 More. Wallace was Darwin’s co-theorist on natural selection, was largely forgotten because he thought there is in fact design in nature, which did not sit well with Darwin’s boys (and still doesn’t). Many regard him Read More ›

Does at least one moral truth — M0 — necessarily exist? (Thence, justice, truth & beauty)

Let’s see, courtesy comment 469 in the WJM subjectivism thread: >>It seems we need to address as MSET 0, that there are moral truths. In steps of thought: 1 –> Let’s call this proposition, M0. M0 = there is at least one moral truth. 2–> Understand, truths are assertions that accurately describe aspects of reality. As Ari put it, truth says of what is, that it is; and of what is not, that it is not. 3 –> Further understand, morality, of course deals with OUGHT, whether ought-to or ought-not. 4 –> Thus, understand that M0 means: a: there is at least one assertion (say, X)  b: that accurately describes an actual state of affairs that obtains c: on which Read More ›

Grill Matt Dillahunty At This Saturday’s Apologetics Academy

Readers may be aware that I host a weekly webinar series called the Apologetics Academy. Every week, I bring in a different scholar to talk to my group, representing viewpoints from across the theological and philosophical spectrum. The floor is then opened for Q&A and further discussion. Participants can watch and listen anonymously, participate in the chatbox, submit questions anonymously, or engage the speaker using their microphone and/or webcam. I have had Ann Gauger and Mike Behe present to the group about intelligent design in the past. This coming week (June 4th / tomorrow), we have Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist Experience coming to talk to us on the subject of “Why I Am An Atheist.” Join us for what promises Read More ›

Epigenetics study links poverty and mental illness

From Sara Reardon at Nature News: Children from impoverished families are more prone to mental illness, and alterations in DNA structure could be to blame, according to a study published on 24 May in Molecular Psychiatry … The scientists found that children who grew up in poverty had more methylation in this region [SLC6A4 gene] compared to their wealthier peers. This might have suppressed the poor children’s production of serotonin transporter protein, so that they had less serotonin available to the brain — a condition linked to depression. The children’s amygdalas also became more active, and those who had a family history of depression were more likely to become depressed themselves. But of course there may be a huge tangle Read More ›

HGT: Gut microbes jump to insect hosts

From ScienceDaily: Many plant-feeding insects need microbial enzymes, such as pectinases, that degrade plant cell walls; yet some insects have overcome this dependency in a surprising way. Now researchers found that stick insects make microbial enzymes themselves. From an ancestral gut microbe, the genes for the essential enzymes simply ‘jumped’ as they are to their insect host. “Jumped”? “As they are?” Who predicted that? Beyond enzymes, horizontal gene transfer can provide any number of new abilities, and our microbiome provides an immense source of potential species-altering proteins. “The idea that genes from microbes living in our guts can suddenly become part of our genomes and change the course of our evolutionary history, that’s an incredible finding,” Shelomi concludes. Paper. (public Read More ›

Non-coding RNA found to code after all

From The Scientist: In 2002, a group of plant researchers studying legumes at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, discovered that a 679-nucleotide RNA believed to function in a noncoding capacity was in fact a protein-coding messenger RNA (mRNA).1 It had been classified as a long (or large) noncoding RNA (lncRNA) by virtue of being more than 200 nucleotides in length. The RNA, transcribed from a gene called early nodulin 40 (ENOD40), contained short open reading frames (ORFs)—putative protein-coding sequences bookended by start and stop codons—but the ORFs were so short that they had previously been overlooked. When the Cologne collaborators examined the RNA more closely, however, they found that two of the ORFs did Read More ›

Jumping gene drives moth colour change

The story is packaged as evidence for natural selection, but wait till you hear the details. Michael Denton is right. From ScienceDaily: Jumping genes, more formally known as transposable elements (TEs), are mobile segments of DNA that can change their position within a genome and alter the expression of other genes. Using fine-scale linkage and association mapping combined with next-generation DNA sequencing, the team established that a large transposable element, inserted within the moth’s cortex gene, was responsible for the colour change. Dr Ilik Saccheri, from the University’s Institute of Integrative Biology, who led the research, said: “This discovery fills a fundamental gap in the peppered moth story. The fact that this famous mutant is caused by a transposable element Read More ›

Researcher faked dozens of heart cell experiments

From The Scientist: A former scientist at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago made up more than 70 experiments on heart cells, according to the Office of Research Integrity. According to his LinkedIn profile, Malhotra worked at an Ann Arbor, Michigan–based microscopy company called PicoCal and is now serving as cardiovascular and metabolic consultant in the greater Boston area. He told the ORI that he does not plan to apply for any US Public Health Service funding. If he should do so in the next five years, his work will be supervised and he will be required to provide biannual reports to verify the legitimacy of his research, according to the ORI summary. More. Yawn. Either abolish Read More ›

FYI-FTR: But aren’t ‘marriage,’ ‘race’ and ‘rights’ just words . . . ?

As the WJM arguing thread continues, we can notice other concerns, here, extreme nominalism and its nihilistic consequences. Yes, nihilistic: might and manipulation make ‘right,’ ‘truth,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘law,’ and so forth. I responded to CF’s attempt to push principled objection to nihilistic, nominalistic, radically relativist, subjectivist homosexualisation of ‘marriage’ under false colour of law [cf Girgis et al here], with racism as follows, at 40: >>wrenching a term like marriage out of its natural context and imposing a distortion under false colour of law has not created a new form of marriage. It only reveals that those who do it are in the grips of a nominalism that cannot recognise the manifestly evident core principles of the moral laws of Read More ›

FYI-FTR: Conscience is a gift

In a recent exchange with BA in the WJM arguing thread, CF inadvertently revealed that he too knows or should know and acknowledge, that there is an oughtness towards truth. This is not unexpected, given the core moral self evident truths. For instance, we can see the first cycle: >>1] The first self evident moral truth is that we are inescapably under the government of ought. (This is manifest in even an objector’s implication in the questions, challenges and arguments that s/he would advance, that we are in the wrong and there is something to be avoided about that. That is, even the objector inadvertently implies that we OUGHT to do, think, aim for and say the right. Not even Read More ›

Neanderthals used fire, stalagmite circles, in their caves

From ScienceDaily: Deep inside Bruniquel Cave, in the Tarn et Garonne region of southwestern France, a set of human-made structures 336 meters from the entrance was recently dated as being approximately 176,500 years old. This discovery indicates that humans began occupying caves much earlier than previously thought: until now the oldest formally proven cave use dated back only 38,000 years (Chauvet). It also ranks the Bruniquel structures among the very first in human history. In addition, traces of fire show that the early Neanderthals, well before Homo sapiens, knew how to use fire to circulate in enclosed spaces far from daylight. … But most importantly, the cave contains original structures made up of about 400 stalagmites or sections of stalagmites, Read More ›

Human intelligence evolved to care for helpless babies?

There’s a certain haplessness to ScienceDaily. For example: Human intelligence might have evolved in response to the demands of caring for infants, new research suggests. Experts in in brain and cognitive sciences have developed a novel evolutionary model in which the development of high levels of intelligence may be driven by the demands of raising offspring. … Piantadosi and Kidd tested a novel prediction of the model that the immaturity of newborns should be strongly related to general intelligence. “What we found is that weaning time–which acts as a measure of the prematurity of the infants–was a much better predictor of primate’s intelligence than any of other measures we looked at, including brain size, which is commonly correlated with intelligence,” Read More ›

My “Theological Supplement”

My 2015 Discovery Institute Press book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition included a section entitled “A Theological Supplement,” where I wrote: It is widely believed that Darwinism is based on good science, and that those who oppose it simply do not like its philosophical and religious implications. The truth is exactly the opposite. In a June 15, 2012 post at Evolution News and Views, Max Planck Institute biologist W.E. Loennig said “Normally the better your arguments are, the more people open their minds to your theory, but with ID, the better your arguments are, the more they close their minds, and the angrier they become. This is science upside down.” The case for Darwinism Read More ›

Shared error in texts is an argument for common ancestry guided by design

Cornelius Hunter writes: Venema’s argument is that harmful mutations shared amongst different species, such as the human and chimpanzee, are powerful and compelling evidence for evolution. These harmful mutations disable a useful gene and, importantly, the mutations are identical. Are not such harmful, shared, mutations analogous to identical typos in the term papers handed in by different students, or in historical manuscripts? Such typos are tell-tale indicators of a common source, for it is unlikely that the same typo would have occurred independently, by chance, in the same place, in different documents. Instead, the documents share a common source. Now imagine not one, but several such typos, all identical, in the two manuscripts. Surely the evidence is now overwhelming that Read More ›