In the next video from the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism conference, Jonathan Bartlett describes the philosophical underpinnings of methodological naturalism and why they fall short. For more information about the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism (AM-Nat) conference series, see the website. We have two more conferences coming in the next year!

I thought readers might be interested in this recent conversation I had with Scottish apologist David Robertson (of the SOLAS Centre for Public Christianity) in Dundee, Scotland, on God and science. Enjoy!

David Kaplan explains at Quanta (scroll down for vid) how the law of increasing entropy could drive random bits of matter into the stable, orderly structures of life. More. According to our favorite physicist Rob Sheldon, the guy’s hair is way more formidable than his ideas. Okay, Sheldon didn’t put it quite that way but here is what he did say: There are a number of fallacies in this video, which unfortunately, are like zombies and keep being resurrected. In addition, there’s a rhetorical “strawman” argument used to deflect rightful critique. Let’s address the strawman, and then the fallacies. (1) life is really, really, really different from non-life. So some highly simplistic feature of life is extracted–in this case–“structure”. Then we show Read More ›

From reader Gutman Levitan: I am a computer scientists and communications engineer with “unlikely” interests in nature of information and information in the nature. The interest stems basically from my research in applied AI. That was decades ago in the Soviet Union but only recently I was able to concentrate on the issues. More. From his online publication, Information: Connecting Two Sides of Reality, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics [1] famously noted that information is information, not matter or energy. Really, the three are fundamentally different in their relationship to space. A material object cannot exist simultaneously at two or more distant places; it occupies a certain place in space and no two objects can occupy the same place Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views: The first question asked: Rate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statement: Teachers and students should have the academic freedom to objectively discuss both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution. Fully 94 percent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed. Democrats and Republicans were very close at 93 percent and 95 percent agreement respectively. Admittedly, Republicans were a little more passionate, with 65 percent strongly agreeing compared to 54 percent among Democrats. Still, that’s clear bipartisan support. Theists and atheists were also in agreement, at 96 percent and 86 percent. Theists were the somewhat more enthusiastic, with 62 percent strongly agreeing compared to 51 percent Read More ›

From Adam Frank at NPR: To begin with, it’s important to understand how much cosmology and physics has gotten right. Our ability to map out the history of the universe back to a fraction of an instant after its inception is a triumph of the human intellect and imagination. And because that history could not be told without a detailed description of matter and forces at a fundamental level, it’s clear we’ve done something remarkable — and remarkably correct. It’s the next steps down into reality’s basement, however, where the trouble seems to begin. Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect. These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken Read More ›

In response to a claim at New York Times that there is no scientific method. From Ethan Siegel at Forbes: There are lots of different ways to do science that are equally valid; one scientific method does not necessarily fit all cases. In astronomy, experiments are virtually impossible, as all you can do is make observations of what the Universe gives us. In the early days of quantum physics, the results were so surprising that it took many years before it was even possible to hypothesize in a sensible fashion, as the rules defied intuition. And in many fields, there are too many variables at play to accurately model the system even when all the underlying, governing equations are 100% Read More ›

From Jeffrey Guhin at Slate: First, experts usually don’t know nearly as much as they think they do. Experts often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that, through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true, mislead us and misinterpret information. Rationality is subjective. All humans experience such biases; the real problem is when we forget that scientists and experts are human too—that they approach evidence and reasoned deliberation with the same prior commitments and unspoken assumptions as anyone else. Scientists: They’re just like us.More. Well, rule by science doesn’t really mean anything, any more than rule by ecology or religion would. What are the specifics? Does Read More ›

Recently, a debate was held in London between theist philosopher Rabbi Daniel Rowe and atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling. The subject under dispute, unsurprisingly, was God’s existence. It’s a very interesting debate to watch. I’d never heard of Rowe before, but I was familiar with Grayling, who is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Horseman of New Atheism. Generally speaking, the “New Atheists” haven’t shown any natural genius for philosophy. Grayling, though being a professional philosopher, does not prove to be the exception here. Instead, he shows that even when they have the benefit of philosophical training, it does them very little good when they engage in debates over God’s existence. I think it would be pretty uncontroversial to say that Read More ›

Here: Interactive Tree Of Life is an online tool for the display, annotation and management of phylogenetic trees. Explore your trees directly in the browser, and annotate them with various types of data. More. This is absolutely not a tree. Not the remotest resemblance to a tree. Just sayin’ is all. How about a rotunda of life with many alcoves? See also: Tree of life problematic The tree of life is mostly a complete mystery (so then how do we know it’s a tree?) Kirk Durston on the new tree of life Tree of life morphs into … leaf? Maybe the Tree of Life is more of an art exhibit than a science pursuit? Follow UD News at Twitter!

From James Blachowicz at New York Times: When a scientist tests a hypothesis and finds that its predictions do not quite match available observations, there is always the option of forcing the hypothesis to fit the data. One can resort to curve-fitting, in which a hypothesis is patched together from different independent pieces, each piece more or less fitting a different part of the data. A tailor for whom fit is everything and style is nothing can make me a suit that will fit like a glove — but as a patchwork with odd random seams everywhere, it will also not look very much like a suit. The lesson is that it is not just the observed facts that drive Read More ›

From Gary Schwitzer at Health News Review: Since many papers on clinical research spawn, in turn, dozens or hundreds of news stories, one can easily see how a tsunami of not-ready-for-prime-time medical research news and information drowns the public daily. Ioannidis makes this link with one line in his article – “Public media and related commentators of health news [53] may also help by focusing on the need to obtain clinically useful research and not compromise for less.” That citation is a paper we published about our work. More. Truth to tell, science writing has not always been a gift to science research. Like peer review, it must be evaluated every now and then. See also: Butter will not kill Read More ›

Further to Larry Moran wants Royal Society evo meeting cancelled!, here’s what he said: It looks to me like the organizers of this meeting didn’t think very carefully about the can of worms they were opening. When you have speakers like Denis Noble and Jim Shapiro you are just inviting trouble. When you try to lecture Suzan Mazur about paradigm shifting you are bound to regret it. I’m beginning to think this meeting isn’t going to happen. The Royal Society is going to end up looking very bad and there’s no easy way to fix the problem short of cancelling the meeting. More. Now he insists he doesn’t want the meeting cancelled. Larry Moran (me) does not want the meeting Read More ›

PZ Myers is incensed at the publication of a Bible tract by Ray Comfort, who argues that it’s just as absurd to believe that the human body evolved by chance as it is to believe that chance processes could generate a can of Coke, such as the one pictured above (public domain image, courtesy of Wikipedia). Over at Pharyngula, Myers wastes no time in demolishing this argument: The thing is, we know how coke cans (and bible tracts) are made: these are objects that are constructed by human beings. They do not have an independent capability to replicate. We also know that that is not how biological organisms are made. If we see something like, say, a rabbit, we know Read More ›

In this presentation from the AM-Nat conference, Mario Lopez points out the possibility that design itself may be able to serve as a neutral descriptor of what counts as science, where here “design” serves as a general description, not necessarily Intelligent Design.