From ScienceDaily: Why do the majority of astronomers believe in dark matter: matter whose composition is unknown but which seems to make up 80% of the mass of the galaxies? The concept was invented in the 1930’s by Fritz Zwicky who used it to explain why the galaxies in the Coma cluster are moving much more quickly than can be explained in terms of their known masses. The most decisive step was taken in the 1970’s by the great Vera Rubin, who showed that the outer parts of galaxies are rotating much more quickly than we can explain using the combined masses of their stars, gas, and dust, and the law of gravity of Newton or Einstein. … In spiral Read More ›

From Heather Zeiger at MercatorNet: Politics is not the only place to look for ‘fake news” Jason Young, the US Food and Drug Administration’s acting assistant commissioner for media affairs, made sure before leaving that the agency will no longer use “close-hold embargoes.” This is a practice under which reporters are given advance access to news on the condition that they not seek outside perspective until the embargo is lifted. The revelation that the FDA had been spinning the news created a minor scandal late last year. The FDA was outed in articles in Scientific American and the New York Times for going against their own stated policy of not allowing close-hold embargoes. The Association of Health Care Journalists worked Read More ›

The second Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism online conference is right around the corner! On February 25th, we will convene AM-Nat Biology, focusing on biological applications for alternatives to methodological naturalism.
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We’d heard about Craig Venter’s dissent before but you should read the whole story: From Tom Bethell in Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates, This was publicized in a science forum held at Arizona State University in February 2011, a little over a year after Dawkins’s Greatest Show was published. The physicist Paul Davies and others, including two Nobel Prize winners, participated in the event, which was videotaped. Richard Dawkins himself was on the panel. The forum addressed the question, “What is life?” Most of the panelists accepted that all organisms on Earth represent a single kind of life because they believed that the genetic code is universal. The NASA scientist and panelist Chris McKay Read More ›

From John Farrell, author of The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaiître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology, at Nautilus: But Lemaître wasn’t satisfied. By 1931, he had come to believe that Einstein’s “initial condition” state could not be stable. Reaching back to Friedmann, he proposed his Primeval Atom hypothesis, essentially the Big Bang 1.0, that the universe must have initially started from a fantastically dense kernel and expanded outward. “The Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of creation,” was how the priest phrased it. This was too much for Einstein, Eddington, and their other colleagues. They disliked the metaphysical implications of a universe with a temporal origin—it was too tempting for some to see God lurking behind it. Progress stalled Read More ›

From Joseph Silk at Nautilus: Dark matter is as tangible as stars and planets to most astronomers. We routinely map it out. We conceive of galaxies as lumps of dark matter with dabs of luminous material. We understand the formation of cosmic structure, as well as the evolution of the universe as a whole, in terms of dark matter. Yet a decade of sophisticated searches has failed to detect the material directly. We see the shadow it casts, but are completely unaware of what the dark side of the universe may contain. It certainly isn’t any ordinary object or particle—that has long since been ruled out. Theoretical prejudice favors a novel type of particle that interacts only weakly with ordinary Read More ›

In a comment to another post that deserves its own post, the venerable Upright Biped hammers rvb8 and in the process gives us one of the most succinct and pithy summaries of the information issue I have seen: Pierce’s 1860’s model of signification (i.e. the ability to specify something among alternatives) suggested that all representation requires interpretation in order to exist. This model is not only consistent with naturalist views of reality, it is basically demanded by those views — and for good reason. It’s true. Then Turing showed that we can impute representation and interpretation into an arrangement of matter (i.e. a physical system) and cause novel function to come into being. Von Neumann then took Turing’s machine and Read More ›

From Luke Dunning at Conversation: Now a new study published in Science has looked at the last 18m years of horse evolution to ask whether the origin of new horse species was linked with rapid physical changes. As you would expect, horse evolution has seen bursts of diversification when there have been new ecological opportunities. These opportunities included increased food availability, which meant larger and more varied populations of horses could be sustained. … But the fossil record shows these bursts of horse diversification didn’t follow the rapid evolution of new physical traits such as body size and teeth shape. Horses didn’t need to change to be able to colonise the Old World, presumably because they were already adapted to Read More ›

From Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True: From Big Think we have physicist Lawrence Krauss showing why the “teach both sides” argument for evolution—and science in general—is fallacious. This argument is now being inserted into school standards by religionists who have lost repeated court battles trying to get creationism and intelligent design taught explicitly in public schools. Their new tactic is to pass school standards allowing or urging teachers to present evidence for alternative views and “critical evidence for and against” theories like evolution and anthropogenic global warming.More. Larry Krauss, though a cosmologist, is mooted as a possible successor to zoologist Dawkins in the defence of Darwin. Thus he may not know that there is a lot of rethinking going Read More ›

From Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky (of Retraction Watch fame) at the Scientist: “We have too often been reluctant to voice our protest, for fear of incurring the [National Institute of Mental Health’s] displeasure (and losing whatever opportunities we still have for funding),” wrote neuroscientist John Markowitz in The New York Times last fall. In a refreshing piece, Markowitz was arguing that “there’s such a thing as too much neuroscience.” As cofounders of Retraction Watch, a blog that focuses on some of science’s nasty episodes, we are occasionally admonished that pointing out cases of fraud—even when we also praise good behavior—will give anti-science forces ammunition. In some ways, we should be glad scientists are acknowledging these concerns, instead of pretending Read More ›

One of the ugliest agit prop, street theatre tactics now being commonly used is the accusation: fascist, in effect, outlaw beyond the pale of civil protection. It is therefore appropriate to pause and seek clarification on what fascism really is about. But first, let us draw attention to a disturbing historical parallel to what we saw on the streets of Berkeley only a few days past; headlining a comment in the still live agit-prop thread: >>Let’s compare UCB, two Wednesdays ago and another Wednesday in 1921 in Bavaria http://ww2timelines.com/leader…..2power.htm >> Wednesday, September 14, 1921 Hitler, a substantial number of members of the Turn-und Sportabteilung, the paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party [ = SA], and other Nazi party adherents disrupted Read More ›

 From Michael Keas at Salvo: The truth is that science and biblical religion have been friends for a long time. Judeo-Christian theology has contributed in a friendly manner to such science-promoting ideas as discoverable natural history, experimental inquiry, universal natural laws, mathematical physics, and investigative confidence that is balanced with humility. Christian institutions, especially since the medieval university, have often provided a supportive environment for scientific inquiry and instruction. … We have documented the truth that Christianity was a major factor in the growth of science. Why do myths of science–faith disharmony dominate popular culture today? Misconception flourishes when famous and influential scientists make pronouncements about the history of science based on their own biased assumptions rather than the actual Read More ›

This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to ID. These posts will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to find responses to a particular ID critic. This first one is on the work of Kenneth Miller (no stranger to anyone involved in this debate of course). If there are any articles I have missed, do let me know and I shall add it to the page.

Hitchens (1949–2011) was one of the four New Atheist horsemen.  From Larry Alex Taunton at First Things: In December 15, 2011, Christopher Hitchens died of esophageal cancer. Some remember him as a man of the left who, after 9/11, converted to a kind of neoconservatism; others remember him as an atheist provocateur and serial blasphemer. For me, Christopher Hitchens was much more than either of these things. He was, as he put it, my “debate partner” and friend. And the subject of Taunton’s book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist. The book received ample praise, with Booklist calling it “loving” and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hailing it as “beautiful.” The Gospel Coalition declared Read More ›

From the editors of Nature, on science and the new US admin: Scientists must fight for the facts Trump threw a bone to scientists with a pledge to explore space and to battle disease, but one of the first documents posted on the White House website was a bare-bones energy plan that emphasizes fossil-fuel development and makes no mention of the threat of climate change. The plan takes aim at “burdensome” environmental regulations and says that the Environmental Protection Agency should focus on protecting air and water, as opposed to the climate. Although it mentions — but does not define — “clean coal technology”, the plan ignores the struggling nuclear-energy sector as well as a burgeoning renewables industry that could Read More ›