From Barbara J. King at NPR: Now, psychologists David A. Leavens of the University of Sussex, Kim A. Bard of the University of Portsmouth, and William D. Hopkins of Georgia State University have framed their new Animal Cognition article, “The mismeasure of ape social cognition,” around Gould’s book. Ape (especially chimpanzee) social intelligence, the authors say, has been routinely mismeasured because apes are tested in comprehensively different circumstances from the children with whom they are compared — and against whose performance theirs is found to be lacking. Leavens et al. write: “All direct ape-human comparisons that have reported human superiority in cognitive function have universally failed to match the groups on testing environment, test preparation, sampling protocols, and test procedures.” Read More ›

In regard to a recent claim that life from 3.95 billion years ago was spotted in Newfoundland, I wrote Senior Scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute Tim Standish to ask, On a practical basis, how did these earliest organisms even stay alive? He got back to me to say, Exactly. The bottom line is that life couldn’t have lasted all that long without a complete nitrogen cycle, carbon cycle and who knows what else. Those things are generally the domain of multiple organisms. I’ve yet to see an actual organism that can survive and reproduce in the absence of other life. The closest might be the C. elegans I worked with for years. You can grow them without other organisms in their Read More ›

A friend who watches these things notes that genomic medicine prof (and ID foe) Joshua Swamidass hasn’t been active at BioLogos recently and doesn’t seem to be on their speakers’ list. The flies on the wall whisper that it relates to his willingness to entertain the idea of separate creation of Adam and Eve. Recently, he took issue with BioLogos head Deb Haarsma’s comments Haarsma:At BioLogos, our views on human origins are centered on essential biblical teachings about human identity and origins. We join all Christians in affirming that humans are made in the image of God, that humans have an elevated place in the created order, and that humans have a unique relationship with God. To this extent we Read More ›

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays Have you ever engaged with a Darwinist on the Internet who did not hold his views with a religious fervor?  Neither have I.  The Darwinists who frequent these pages might object that their views fall within neither of Russell’s categories, politics and religion.  Nonsense.  Darwinian true believers are just that — believers.  Darwinism is the creation myth of metaphysical materialism, as has often been noted.  Yet the zeal with which Darwinian views are advanced is inversely proportional to Read More ›

From J. Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire:What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It,Life’s distinctive is agency. In a nutshell, this is where the crisis of biology looms, because our prevailing modes of thinking about life—the triumphant confluence of mechanism, materialism, and atomism that has made the twentieth century a golden age for biology—do not deal well with the concept of agency: that ineffable striving of living things to become something. See also: Small group study guide: See also: Homeostasis: Life’s balancing act as a challenge to unguided evolution J. Scott Turner in the Chronicle of Higher Education — ID is asking the right questions! (2007)

From Astrobiology: Life on early Earth seems to have begun with a paradox: while life needs water as a solvent, the essential chemical backbones of early life-forming molecules fall apart in water. Our universal solvent, it turns out, can be extremely corrosive. … In recent years the solvent often put forward as the eligible alternative to water is formamide, a clear and moderately irritating liquid consisting of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Unlike water, it does not break down the long-chain molecules needed to form the nucleic acids and proteins that make up life’s key initial instruction manual, RNA. Meanwhile it also converts via other useful reactions into key compounds needed to make nucleic acids in the first place. Harvard Read More ›

If we evolve at all, we are transient by nature and cannot live in a transient state forever by definition. Never mind, from ScienceDaily: As Charles Darwin explained, natural selection results in the fittest individuals for a given environment surviving to breed and pass on their genes to the next generation. The more fruitful a trait is at promoting reproductive success, the stronger the selection for that trait will be. In theory, this should give rise to individuals with traits which prevent ageing as their genes could be passed on nearly continuously. Thus, despite the obvious facts to the contrary, from the point of evolution ageing should never have happened. This evolutionary contradiction has been debated and theorised on since Read More ›

A friend drew our attention to this: From a 2012 letter to Nature: Among egalitarian communitarians, science literacy and numeracy (as reflected in the composite scale Science literacy/numeracy) showed a small positive correlation with concern about climate change risks(r = 0.08, P = 0.03). In contrast, among hierarchical individualists, Science literacy/numeracy is negatively correlated with concern(r = −0.12, P = 0.03). Hence, polarization actually becomes larger,not smaller, as science literacy and numeracy increase (Fig. 2and Supplementary Table S4 and Fig. S3). As the contribution that culture makes to disagreement grows as science literacy and numeracy increase, it is not plausible to view cultural cognition as a heuristic substitute for the knowledge or capacities that SCT [Science Comprehension Thesis] views the Read More ›

From Ken Francis, journalism prof and author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth, at New English Review: Even in works of fiction, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment highlights the barbarity humans are capable of. The protagonist in the novel, Raskolnikov, has a glass of vodka, but he’s not used to drinking alcohol. He then staggers to a park and immediately goes to sleep. He dreams that he is back in his childhood, aged seven, and as he is walking with his father, he sees a drunk trying to make his old horse pull a wagon full of people. When the crowd laugh at him struggling, the drunk peasant becomes furious and begins beating the horse so Read More ›