From Science, where there is a paywall so I can’t swatch a bit of it for you (but you might be able to read it), there’s this big worry, via Michael Baltzley: Some students might earn credits for learning “creationism.” Would that include reading Suzan Mazur’s The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin”? Or anything about rethinking evolution? Should we punish such students by forcing them to join the Pants in Knot war on creationism in Louisiana? Except, if they had any brains, they’d probably either go home (preferred option) or switch sides (well, we all gotta learn). Note: Many countries have just avoided these wars, saving the taxpayer time, grief, and money. Some fellow tried starting Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: Hardly a month goes by without a celebration in the news that the “building blocks of life” have been found somewhere in space, or that chemical reactions “show how life emerged” on the primitive earth. Recently, the University of Bern triumphantly announced that “Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life.” All that was detected was glycine (the simplest and the only achiral amino acid) and the element phosphorus (which is tantamount to calling any other element, like hydrogen or oxygen, an “ingredient for life”). New Scientist chimed in: “Building blocks of life spotted around comet for the first time.” Meanwhile, PhysOrg suggested there might be life on the asteroid Ceres. Why? Because water ice probably exists Read More ›

John Farrell at dances around it, pointing at Cambridge’s Simon Conway Morris: Conway Morris, a paleontologist at Cambridge University, has long argued that life in the universe is probably very rare—but at the same time, where it does take root, must almost certainly lead to the evolution of consciousness. A committed Darwinian, Conway Morris nevertheless disagreed with his fellow paleontologist, the late Stephen Jay Gould, when the latter famously argued that if you could ‘rewind the tape’ and start over, the history of life on earth would have been vastly different –and human evolution would never repeat itself. Chance, for Gould, could not be counted on to replay itself for our benefit.More. It’s all basically self-referential garbage, with the usual Read More ›

Further to inbred Neanderthals damaging us all, we learn from ScienceDaily that Flores man did not have Down syndrome: Analysis of a wealth of new data contradicts an earlier claim that LB1, an ~80,000 year old fossil skeleton from the Indonesian island of Flores, had Down syndrome, and further confirms its status as a fossil human species, Homo floresiensis. For the current study, the team compared physical traits preserved in the skeleton of LB1 to those found in Down syndrome. While people with Down syndrome are not identical to one another, it was nevertheless clear that LB1 was very distinct from all humans, including those with Down syndrome. The study found that LB1’s brain was much smaller than that seen Read More ›

Yes, they published this with a straight face. From ScienceDaily: The Neanderthal genome included harmful mutations that made the hominids around 40 percent less reproductively fit than modern humans, according to new estimates. Non-African humans inherited some of this genetic burden when they interbred with Neanderthals, though much of it has been lost over time. The results suggest that these harmful gene variants continue to reduce the fitness of some populations today. The study also has implications for management of endangered species. Some time or other, these people should meet up with the Population Bomb crowd. Will they mutually self-destruct? Incidentally: Harris and Nielsen’s simulations also suggest that humans and Neanderthals mixed much more freely than originally thought. Today, Neanderthal Read More ›

On how to calm down a client, from Lawyers Weekly:  Meet in a quiet room with pictures of nature or wildlife on the walls. This reduces the effect of the stress hormone cortisol. Apart from anything else the cortisol mitigation will ensure the client is less likely to have a heart attack on your premises! Offer refreshment – including food – to the client. This encourages the production and uptake of two vital anti-stress neurochemicals glutamate and oxytocin. More. Pictures of nature? Ever anxious to help, we recommend this picture from nature, free with the biscuits and coffee. You did notice the hippie beads around the bobcat’s neck, didn’t you? Yes, they’re there! You just aren’t looking hard enough. Fast Read More ›

Maybe naturalism is reaching its natural basement. I just got this media release: Bigotry, dismissiveness, stereotyping and objectification are all forms of depersonalization that are negatively shaping human behavior. Dr. Dorothy I Riddle, psychologist and economic development specialist, has dedicated her life to ending violence. In her new book, she provides practical strategies for re-wiring how humans and nonhumans relate to the world, such as tolerance and working towards compassion for all. May I send you a complimentary copy of “Moving Beyond Duality” or help coordinate an interview or guest article? The tome in question would seem to be some iteration of this one: Are you free of prejudice? Less than five percent of us are because of the pervasiveness Read More ›

Former Templeton Fellow John Fellow asserts: Why Teleology Isn’t Dead

Conway Morris argues that in the grand scheme, evolution will not be reduced to chance: constraints built into life at the most fundamental level guarantee that life is going to follow the same evolutionary pathways to achieve limbs, respiration, vision, balance, an immune system, indeed all the remarkable features we associate with living things across the great spectrum of life.

Morris begs the question by assuming a stochastic origin of these “constraints built into life”. Read More ›

From computers to airplanes to life-giving medicines, the technological marvels of our world were made possible by the human use of fire. But the use of fire itself was made possible by an array of features built into the human body and the planet. Fire-Maker is a 22-minute documentary featuring biologist Michael Denton as he investigates the amazing story of how humans and our planet were exquisitely designed to harness the miraculous powers of fire and transform our planet. See also: Sometimes Denton sounds like a Darwin who got way more right Follow UD News at Twitter!

Eon Musk assures us that it is highly probable that a techno-version of him does in fact exist: The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following: 40 years ago we had pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let’s imagine it’s 10,000 years in the Read More ›

No matter who is on the Royal Society’s guest list. Get this, from Marcello Barbieri at Royal society: Abstract: Today there is a very wide consensus on the idea that embryonic development is the result of a genetic programme and of epigenetic processes. Many models have been proposed in this theoretical framework to account for the various aspects of development, and virtually all of them have one thing in common: they do not acknowledge the presence of organic codes (codes between organic molecules) in ontogenesis. Here it is argued instead that embryonic development is a convergent increase in complexity that necessarily requires organic codes and organic memories, and a few examples of such codes are described. This is the code Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A species of tropical fish has been shown to be able to distinguish between human faces. It is the first time fish have demonstrated this ability. First author Dr Cait Newport, Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, said: ‘Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features. All faces have two eyes above a nose and mouth, therefore to tell people apart we must be able to identify subtle differences in their features. If you consider the similarities in appearance between some family members, this task can be very difficult indeed. Read More ›

Atheists/materialists/physicalist/naturalists are delusional. Here are 10 reasons why: 1. They dismiss morality as nothing more than strongly felt subjective preference, but admit they act as if morality is objective in nature. 2. They speak, act and hold others responsible for their behaviors as if we all have some metaphysical capacity to transcend and override the deterministic effects of our body’s physical state and causative processing, yet they deny any such metaphysical capacity (like free will) exists. 3. They deny truth can be determined subjectively while necessarily implying that their arguments and evidences are true and expecting others to subjectively determine that their arguments are true. 4. They deny that what is intelligently designed can be reliably identified when virtually every Read More ›

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: One possible reaction to the phenomenon of hype in fundamental physics is to not worry much, figuring that it should be a self-limiting process. While there’s a huge appetite in the media and elsewhere for the “exciting new idea”, overhyped “new” ideas sooner or later should pass into the category of no longer “new”, and less capable of producing “excitement”. The problem is that this doesn’t seem to be happening: favored physics hype keeps getting promoted as “new” and “exciting”, no matter how old it is. More. Woit perhaps doesn’t grasp that some theses in cosmology are not held on a rational basis, and evidence for or against them does not Read More ›

In response to the current News post on Denton’s new book, Seversky raises the IS-OUGHT gap issue again in comment no. 2, casting it in terms of DERIVING ought from is. I think this is worth a discussion, but that would be off topic there. So, I responded at 3 and now headline for discussion: >> . . . Hume’s “surpriz’d” guillotine argument does establish that ought cannot be injected into the world — thus, any worldview aiming to be accurate to reality — at any level subsequent to world-root. We also face the dilemma that conscience is deeply embedded in our inner life, urging us to the right and the truth in ways that pervade all of mindedness. So Read More ›