2017

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Here are five suggestions for reclaiming our right to think for ourselves: … 2. Stop giving to your alma mater just because you graduated there. It may not be the U you knew any longer. Some problems over the years originated in excellent intentions such as helping as many people attend college as possible. But we all tend to make an underlying assumption: that any given student would thrive in the world of ideas if only he were offered an opportunity. Money was poured into universities by private and government sources but much of it has resulted in administrative bloat, sometimes marketing nebulous “studies” programs that will not prepare a student for life in say, Read More ›

H’mm, pretty devastating — if true. But, is it true? I doubt it. Let us start with this response to a certain objector who keeps providing lists of typical objector talking points (and who evidently wishes to be able to do so on UD’s nickel, without effective response). Not on our watch, gentilhombre: >>13 kairosfocus May 30, 2017 at 1:17 am F/N: DI’s opening remarks on the annotated list of ID professional literature updated to March 2017: BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND ANNOTATED LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENT DESIGN UPDATED MARCH, 2017 PART I: INTRODUCTION While intelligent design (ID) research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. In 2011, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: By using highly advanced brain imaging technology to observe modern humans crafting ancient tools, a neuroarchaeologist has found evidence that human-like ways of thinking may have emerged as early as 1.8 million years ago. … “This is a significant result because it’s commonly thought our most modern forms of cognition only appeared very recently in terms of human evolutionary history,” said Shelby S. Putt, a postdoctoral researcher with The Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, who is first author on the study. “But these results suggest the transition from apelike to humanlike ways of thinking and behaving arose surprisingly early.” … “The fact that these more advanced forms of cognition were required to create Acheulean hand axes — Read More ›

. . . with yet another list of talking points.  Namely: >>The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no experimentation? The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no predictive qualities? The irony of a scientific idea, Intelligent Design’, that refuses to identify, or even look for, the Designer? My scientific idea has no irony, it does what it sets out to do; prove origins, prove life is one system linked by evolution, and prove life can be understood without holding God’s hand.>> Accordingly, I have replied: >>More failed talking points: >>The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no experimentation?>> 1 –> False. Cf Axe et al, cf Scott Minnich et al, cf Durston et Read More ›

From theoretical physicist M. B. Paranjape at Physics Today: Another frequent concern expressed over the existence of negative mass is that it would cause an untenable instability of the universe. Stephen Hawking once told me that if negative mass existed, “the universe would be unstable and we would not be here to this day.” But negative mass exists only in an expanding universe, and because of energy conservation it can only be produced in positive–negative mass pairs. If there is a backreaction of the production of these pairs on the background cosmological energy, the production of negative mass should drive that energy density to zero, thus terminating the possibility of its production and quenching any instability. This mechanism could offer Read More ›

Or so one would assume. From Sarah Zhang at the Atlantic: In “The Energy Expansions of Evolution,” an extraordinary new essay in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Olivia Judson sets out a theory of successive energy revolutions that purports to explain how our planet came to have such a diversity of environments that support such a rich array of life, from the cyanobacteria to daisies to humans. Judson divides the history of the life on Earth into five energetic epochs, a novel schema that you will not find in geology or biology textbooks. In order, the energetic epochs are: geochemical energy, sunlight, oxygen, flesh, and fire. Each epoch represents the unlocking of a new source of energy, coinciding with new organisms Read More ›

From astrophysicist Adam Frank at NPR: Sharf has no problem with the creative misreading that allows Buddhist Modernism to share space with scientific worldviews. “My concern,” he told Tricycle, “is not with the selectivity of those who read Buddhism as a rationalist and scientific religion — it is perfectly understandable given the world in which we live. It is really not a question of misreading. It is a question of what gets lost in the process.” Part of the problem for Sharf and others is that by focusing only on the domains of inner experience (i.e. mindfulness via contemplative practice), Buddhist Modernism loses aspects of its function that were central to its history. “Look at how suspicious many Western Buddhists Read More ›

BioLogo = mostly Christian for Darwinism. From Wayne Rossiter, at Shadow of Oz: She derives all of this is a most specious and disingenuous way. The poll contains data dating back to 1981. But, Haarsma cherry picks convenient dates spanning small periods of time in order to make her case (specifically confining the span of interest to just three years: 2014-present). If we simply look at the entire pattern from 1981 to the present we see a very different reality: In 1981, the number of people ascribing to the YEC view was 44%. Today it is 38%. In 1981, the number of people ascribing to the “theistic evolution” view was 38%. It’s exactly 38% today. No change over the last Read More ›

Sure he was. But, see, he bought the “Science” brand. From Jon Cassidy at the American Spectator: Darwinism led to Social Darwinism. As the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has written, after 1859, “subsequent arguments for slavery, colonialism, racial differences, class struggles, and sex roles would go forth primarily under the banner of science.” Most of those arguments have been banished, but were they ever less scientific than Darwin’s own work? After all, Darwin didn’t use the scientific method, either, and worried that his work was “grievously hypothetical.” When you’re working outside of falsifiable propositions, what qualifies a work as science rather than speculation? More. See also: Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away Follow UD News Read More ›

From New Scientist: IT IS just over a decade since Richard Dawkins lit the blue touchpaper with his book The God Delusion. It introduced much of the world to the so-called new atheism – a forceful rejection of religion based on the premise that scientific materialism offers a superior explanation of the universe, while religion is a corrosive influence on society: a pathological meme planted in the minds of defenceless children. Though a great read and a liberating influence for many closet atheists, The God Delusion largely omitted a new strand of scientific enquiry emerging around the time it was published. Those working on the “science of religion” – a motley crew of psychologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists – explained it Read More ›

It’s a good thing people are talking about this. What cargo cult scientists are missing is “a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty.” Having this virtue of scientific integrity means following the scientific method: conducting rigorously controlled experiments and following the data wherever they lead. Thus while some of Feynman’s examples of cargo cult scientists may have the trappings of good scientists — e.g., they are professors of psychology at major universities — they lack the true spirit of science. In particular, they are too beholden to their theories to follow the observational evidence wherever it leads. The cargo cult story offers what philosophers of science call a “demarcation Read More ›

Even though almost no one uses it? From David Robson at BBC: The practice not only highlights humanity’s amazing linguistic diversity; it may also help us to understand the limits of human communication. In most languages, whistles are used for little more than calling attention; they seem too simple to carry much meaning. But Meyer has now identified more than 70 groups across the world who can use whistles to express themselves with all the flexibility of normal speech. These mysterious languages demonstrate the brain’s astonishing capacity to decode information from new signals – with insights that are causing some neuroscientists to rethink the fundamental organisation of the brain. The research may even shed light on the emergence of language Read More ›

From Matt Ridley/Donna Laframboise at Science New/The Times: The latest university prank is embarrassing to academia and hilarious for the rest of us. Yes. The conceptual penis. And before that: This happened last year, too, when Professor Mark Carey published an even more absurd paper arguing that “a critical but overlooked aspect of the human dimensions of glaciers and global change research is the relationship between gender and glaciers” and introducing “feminist glaciology”. In that case, however, the professor continues to insist, against all evidence, that he was serious. Science magazine gave him a lengthy, softball interview to justify his work after it was laughed at on the internet. I still think he’s a joker in deep cover.More. Yeah. We Read More ›

Doesn’t far more depend on such a claim than is reasonable? From Jesse Emspak at LiveScience: A new study may help reveal the nature of dark energy, the mysterious substance that is pushing the universe to expand outward. Dark energy may emerge from fluctuations in the nothingness of empty space, a new hypothesis suggests. … The new study proposed that the expansion is driven by fluctuations in the energy carried by the vacuum, or regions of space devoid of matter. The fluctuations create pressure that forces space itself to expand, making matter and energy less dense as the universe ages, said study co-author Qingdi Wang, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. More. See also: How Read More ›

Well, we knew that math does NOT lead to a more interesting social life but… now get this from American Thinker: One thing you realize when following the follies and foibles of social justice warriors is that there is no limit to their idiocies – that anything and everything can be declared “racist” or “sexist” if they stretch logic and reason beyond the breaking point. Case in point: a course designed to teach high school kids that mathematics, as taught in the Western world, is a “dehumanizing tool” that has been used to “trick indigenous peoples out of land and property.”More. But can anyone imagine a world without math? And how did it get to be “Western” math anyhow? Isn’t math Read More ›