Monthly Archives: February 2018
The memtransistor as brainlike computing – with what outcome?
| February 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Information, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
From ScienceDaily: In recent years, researchers have searched for ways to make computers more neuromorphic, or brain-like, in order to perform increasingly complicated tasks with high efficiency. Now Hersam, a Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, and his team are bringing the world closer to realizing […]
Mystery: How DO fish end up in isolated bodies of water?
| February 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: How do fish end up in isolated bodies of water when they can’t swim there themselves? For centuries, researchers have assumed that water birds transfer fish eggs into these waters — however, a systematic literature review by researchers at the University of Basel has shown that there is no evidence of this to […]
Laws of physics say you can’t escape old age
| February 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
We’ve heard plenty from the transhumanists and the pillpushers who think we can medicate our way to eternity. But now this, from Peter Hoffmann at Nautilus: Nanoscale thermal physics guarantees our decline, no matter how many diseases we cure. There is a vigorous discussion inside the aging research community about whether to classify aging as […]
More scientists wanted in government – but only if they are Democrats (progressives)
| February 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, science education |
Science journalists are actually fun— provided they are not just a flock of page boys for science boffins: This, for example, from Alex Berezow at ACSH: 314 Action’s stated mission is laudable. It includes, among other things, a desire to “elect more leaders… from STEM backgrounds” and to “strengthen communication among the STEM community, the […]
If science journals can’t solve their own problems, why are they dictating to Florida parents?
| February 27, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, science education |
Read this and then ask yourself, why is historic journal Nature freaked out over American public school science classrooms – again? From Richard Harris at NPR: Another concern is that today scientists are judged primarily by which journal publishes their work. The greatest rewards tend to go to scientists who can get their papers into […]
Historic journal Nature is freaked out over American public school science classrooms – again
| February 27, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
It’s not like the United States put a man on the moon and then brought him back or supervised mapping the human genome or anything useful like that. So it stands to reason that anyone at all, including people who live in countries where witchcraft is a capital offense, are free to fret about Florida […]
My conclusion (so far) on the suggested infinite past, beginningless physical world: not plausible, likely not possible, here’s why
One of the more astonishing points of debate that has come out at UD is that at least some defenders of the evolutionary materialistic view are prepared to argue for or assume as default that we have had a beginningless past for the physical world. This has come up several times in recent years and […]
At Scientific American: Not sure when or how cooking originated but it was decisive in human evolution, says anthropologist
| February 27, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From anthropologist Alexandra Rosati at Scientific American: The shift to a cooked-food diet was a decisive point in human history. The main topic of debate is when, exactly, this change occurred. … But at what point in our evolutionary history was this strange new practice adopted? Some researchers think cooking is a relatively recent innovation—at […]
Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: But it’s too late for enlightenment now
| February 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Science |
Readers will recall Steven Pinker, a Darwinian cognitive scientist, one of whose key concepts is “A…reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” He has a new book out, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Reason, Humanism, and […]
Shaking the horse family tree
| February 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design, speciation |
Ah, start the day with fond memories. Most people who were kids in the mid-twentieth century grew up with the icons of horse evolution, starting with grubby little Eohippus and ending with Black Beauty. Of course, the story didn’t need to be true and as Jonathan Wells pointed out in Icons of Evolution, it wasn’t […]
Researchers: Our new theory is that humans domesticated themselves
| February 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From ScienceDaily: Human ‘self-domestication’ is a hypothesis that states that among the driving forces of human evolution, humans selected their companions depending on who had a more pro-social behavior. Researchers have found new genetic evidence for this evolutionary process. Human ‘self-domestication’ is a hypothesis that states that among the driving forces of human evolution, humans […]
C. S. Lewis and J. R.R. Tolkien on science and authoritarianism
| February 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Politics/policy and origins issues, Science |
From Mike Kugler in Northwestern Review: Long before Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings and Lewis converted to “mere Christianity,” their suspicions of modern science, the heart of the modern worldview, and anxiety about Europe’s future were latent. The Great War illustrated terribly how well-grounded were their concerns. Later, in the 1930s, Europeans […]
Americans don’t fear the discovery of alien life. So why do some commentators insist they do?
| February 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Religion |
From Maria Temming at Science News: If alien microbes crash-land on Earth, they may get a warm welcome. When people were asked how they would react to the discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life, they give generally positive responses, researchers reported at a news conference February 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for […]
A theology question you may never have thought of: Is God an android?
| February 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Religion, theism |
From theologian Norman Geisler at Jonh Ankerberg Show: Persons have mind, will, and feelings. Androids have only mind and will, but no feelings. Open theists and others sometimes object to the classical view of God by claiming that if God is impassible then He cannot experience feelings like love and joy. In short, it makes […]
Max Planck Institute: Neanderthals thought like we do
| February 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From the Max Planck Institute: At least 70,000 years ago Homo sapiens used perforated marine shells and colour pigments. From around 40,000 years ago he created decorative items, jewellery and cave art in Europe. Using Uranium-Thorium dating an international team of researchers co-directed by Dirk Hoffmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in […]
If You are Going to Be an Atheist, at Least be a Courageous Atheist
| February 24, 2018 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
As I have often written in these pages, happy-faced New Atheists are simpering cowards. They say you are a cosmic accident with no more intrinsic value than a grub worm. There is no meaning. There is no foundation for ethics. Everything you do is utterly determined by impersonal natural forces, so free will cannot exist. Indeed, […]
Theistic evolutionist: Neanderthals “not members of our own species,” despite evidence of Neanderthal ancestry
| February 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, speciation, theistic evolution |
Theology can lead us to some weird places. From Evolution News and Science Today, in a continuing series on Adam and the Genome, As if on cue, science news today reports a remarkable discovery: cave art in Spain from upwards of 64,000 years ago, apparently by Neanderthals. The Wall Street Journal aptly summarizes the takeaway: […]
Panpsychism: The cosmic mind debuts at YouTube
| February 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From Robert Wright and Galen Strawson at Meaning of Life TV: 0:30 Why scientific materialism is harder to define than you think 14:42 Galen explains panpsychism 27:36 What does “mind is all there is to reality” mean? 32:48 Is human consciousness epiphenomenal? 40:35 Do physical laws come from somewhere? 44:35 Is it like something to […]
Jonathan McLatchie vs. Keith Fox: Has ID stood the test of time?
| February 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity |
Saturday 24th February 2018 – 02:30 pm Seems to be up now in EST. Audio:Premier Christian Radio: A bacterial flagellum acts as the outboard motor on a bacteria. But is the complex arrangement of parts that enable it to do its job a result of design or evolution? Michael Behe first opened the debate on […]
Lactose tolerance: Human ancestors evolved “far more quickly than was originally thought”
| February 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From George Busby, offering five examples, at the Conversation: 3. Our ancestors evolved surprisingly quickly Interbreeding accounts only for a tiny amount of human adaptation around the world. Analyses of DNA are showing us that, as our ancestors moved around the world, they evolved to different environments and diets far more quickly than was originally […]
