Monthly Archives: November 2016
Darwinian atheist slams Harvard astronomer on our cosmically unique position
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Fine tuning, News |
And guess why? From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard astronomer Howard Smith forcefully blunts Stephen Hawking’s assertion that “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet.” Of course, it’s not only Dr. Hawking who says as much — denying human exceptionalism is close […]
Fixing a Confusion
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by johnnyb under Complex Specified Information, Darwinism, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design |
I have often noticed something of a confusion on one of the major points of the Intelligent Design movement – whether or not the design inference is primarily based on the failure of Darwinism and/or mechanism.
Epigenetics: Retiring hoary Darwinian certainties
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Epigenetics, Intelligent Design, News |
Whether anyone admits it or not. From Jef Akst at The Scientist on the recent appearance of many papers on epigenetics: Last week (November 17), the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) published 41 papers in Cell Press journals and other high-impact publications. IHEC aims to provide researchers with a comprehensive epigenomic analysis of healthy and […]
Poisonous amphibians face higher extinction risk?
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by News under extinction, Intelligent Design, News |
From ScienceDaily: Amphibians which have a toxic defense against predators — such as the iconic poison dart frogs — have a much higher risk of extinction than species which use other types of defense mechanisms, research shows. The key finding of this study is that poisonous species are 60% more likely to be threatened than […]
SciAm bloggers: Should we colonize Saturn’s moon Titan?
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, News |
Science writer Charles Wohlforth and planetary scientist Amanda R. Hendrix argue at Scientific American that it’s pretty much the only place off Earth that humans could live. The idea of a human colony on Titan, a moon of Saturn, might sound crazy. Its temperature hovers at nearly 300° below zero Fahrenheit, and its skies rain […]
Speciation: Genome analysis shows Hen Harrier to be two separate species
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by News under News, speciation |
From ScienceDaily: Deemed as one species spread across different continents, scientists confirm that the Eurasian Hen Harrier and the American Northern Harrier are in fact two distinct species. … “Before the advent of sequencing technology, species were categorised by shared and divergent morphological features. However, new technology allows us to quantify the amount of genetic […]
Robin Collins on cosmological fine tuning
| November 30, 2016 | Posted by kairosfocus under Fine tuning |
As a part of basic reminders, it is worth the effort to read and watch how Robin Collins put the case in summary, in a classic essay on The Fine-tuning Design Argument (1998): Suppose we went on a mission to Mars, and found a domed structure in which everything was set up just right for […]
Aeon writer asks: Has dogma derailed the search for dark matter?
| November 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, News |
Probably, but let’s let him tell it: From Pavel Kroupa at Aeon: The issues at stake are huge. Acceptance of dark matter has influenced scientific thinking about the birth of the Universe, the evolution of galaxies and black holes, and the fundamental laws of physics. Yet even within academic circles, there is a lot of […]
Ideological Turing Test
| November 29, 2016 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
To all of our friends who subscribe to materialist accounts of evolution: Here is an interesting little test. The Ideological Turing Test is a concept invented by Bryan Caplan to test whether a political or ideological partisan correctly understands the arguments of his or her intellectual adversaries. The partisan is invited to answer questions or […]
Crick on DNA as text
| November 29, 2016 | Posted by kairosfocus under Intelligent Design |
His March 19, 1953 letter to his son Michael: Well worth pondering. END
Husband of new US education secretary once promo’d ID in schools?
| November 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Education, Intelligent Design, science education |
First: So? From Rebecca Klein at Huffington Post: While running for governor of Michigan in 2006, Dick DeVos ― whose wife, Betsy, is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. secretary of education ― said that schools should have the option of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution. … To be sure, DeVos’ comments were made 10 […]
Oxford conference to examine questions around fine-tuning of universe, Physics of Fine-Tuning, Crete, June 19-22 2017
| November 28, 2016 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Naturalism, News |
Here. Our goal is to consolidate the idea of fine-tuning across disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Fine-tuning is often deemed a fact and used to reach grandiose metaphysical conclusions by philosophers, theologians, and even physicists, without a proper understanding of the underlying assumptions entailed by these arguments. As a consequence the physical and […]
Doug Axe vs Keith Fox: Is design in nature undeniable?
| November 28, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, News, Science |
Douglas Axe, author of Undeniable, debates theistic evolutionist and biochemist Keith Fox debate the question at Unbelievable (radio). Fox is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge. The comments are fascinating insofar as they reveal the obvious superiority of fully naturalist atheism to “theistic evolution.” If we can see no intelligence behind or […]
Forever frozen: What happens when people stop believing in the existence of the soul
| November 28, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, News |
Or the mind, or the immateriality or consciousness or the resurrection of the dead… From Helen Thomson at New Scientist: “WE’RE taking people to the future!” says architect Stephen Valentine, as we drive through two gigantic gates into a massive plot of land in the middle of the sleepy, unassuming town that is Comfort, Texas. […]
Oldest alphabet from 4 millennia ago might be somewhat like Hebrew?
| November 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Information, Intelligent Design, Mind, News |
That would make it and other very ancient documents possibly decipherable. From Bruce Bower at ScienceNews: The world’s earliest alphabet, inscribed on stone slabs at several Egyptian sites, was an early form of Hebrew, a controversial new analysis concludes.Israelites living in Egypt transformed that civilization’s hieroglyphics into Hebrew 1.0 more than 3,800 years ago, at […]
We still don’t know what nearly half the chromosome does
| November 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Genetics, Intelligent Design, News |
From Robby Berman at BigThink: While it’s true that every chromosome contains some of 25,000 genes, it now turns out to be the case that this is only a little more than half the story. Computer modeling has revealed that up to 47% of each chromosome is an enigmatic sheath-like substance called the “chromosome periphery,” […]
Evidence for self-organization? Microbe redesigned core metabolic pathways
| November 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design, News |
From ScienceDaily: Researchers have developed a computer model which takes into account hundreds of genes, chemical reactions, and compounds required for the survival of Prochlorococcus, the most abundant photosynthetic microbe on the planet. They found that Prochlorococcus has made extensive alterations to its metabolism as a way to reduce its dependence on phosphorus, an element […]
Hubert Yockey, 1916-2016, and His Contributions to the Intelligent Design Movement
| November 26, 2016 | Posted by johnnyb under Evolutionary biology, Informatics, Information, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
I was sad to recently realize that Hubert Yockey passed earlier (in January) this year. Hubert Yockey, though he personally was against Intelligent Design, made many contributions to science that many of us within the ID community view as pro-ID work. I wanted to take a moment to appreciate and reflect on his contributions as […]
Fidel Castro passes on
| November 26, 2016 | Posted by kairosfocus under Atheism, Culture, Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Freedom, Geo-strategic issues, governance, Intellectual freedom, Politics/policy and origins issues, Science, worldview issues/foundations and society |
Overnight, his brother and successor Raul announced the death of the former longest serving non-royal head of a state. While we must condole with those who mourn, we must also recognise his very mixed legacy, as a Communist dictator leading a state that — per fair comment — has been very un-free and hampered in […]
Peer review: NgAgo gene editing method not replicated
| November 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, News, Peer review |
From Kerry Grens at The Scientist: Researchers continue to fail in reproducing a new gene-editing technique called NgAgo, for Natronobacterium gregoryi Argonaute, an endonuclease. In a report published last week (November 15) in Protein & Cell, scientists from the U.S. and China working independently found no evidence that NgAgo could manipulate DNA sequences.“Some of us […]
