From the editors at New Scientist: So yet again we find ourselves criticising Trump, even though we know that some readers are tired of it. Some are his supporters; others simply do not wish to see politics in a science magazine. Hint: If you know your readers are tired of something, stop doing it. The US prez has a genius for living rent-free in the heads of people who hate him and you are living proof. But why inflict the problem on your readers? We make no apology for covering global political issues. Science does not exist in a bubble. It is influenced by, and influences, the wider world. It also underpins an enlightened world view that we strongly advocate. Read More ›

“Everybody knows there’s something wrong with them.”  Rust Cohle, True Detective, Season 1. True or False:  Powerful evidence that materialism is false. Explain your answer.  

  Several years ago, we held a conference on the interaction between engineering, science, philosophy, and theology. The result of this was a book titled “Engineering and the Ultimate: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Order and Design in Nature and Craft”. It is now available for half price at Amazon if anyone wants to pick up a copy! You can find the book here. It contains chapters from a number of authors on topics such as: Reverse engineering, its role in scientific methodology, and its relation to design The role of theology and philosophy in public architecture Modeling non-naturalistic causation mathematically Using non-naturalistic causation principles in software complexity analysis and management A reformulation of specified complexity using algorithmic information theory Meeting Read More ›

Curious to find and shun, then destroy, all evidence-based doubt. Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design by Matti Leisola and Jonathan Witt here: What happens when an up-and-coming European bioscientist flips from Darwin disciple to Darwin defector? Sparks fly. Just ask biotechnologist Matti Leisola. It all started when a student loaned the Finnish scientist a book criticizing evolutionary theory. Leisola reacted angrily, and set out to defend evolution, but found his efforts raised more questions than they answered. He soon morphed into a full-on Darwin skeptic, even as he was on his way to becoming a leading bio-engineer. Heretic is the story of Leisola’s adventures making waves—and many friends and enemies—at major research labs and universities across Europe. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Every time our cells divide, the DNA within them must replicate so that each new cell receives the same set of instructions. Molecular machines known as polymerases make these copies of DNA by recognizing the shape of the right base pair combinations — G with C and A with T — and adding them into each new double helix, while discarding those that don’t fit together correctly. Though they are good at their job, polymerases are known to slip up from time to time, generating a mistake roughly one out of every 10,000 bases. If not fixed these become immortalized in the genome as a mutation. … The study, published in a 2015 issue of Nature, showed the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: In a new PLOS ONE study, scientists from Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Biostudies have shown that certain ‘mechanosensitive’ genes are suppressed when subjected to audible sound. Moreover, these effects vary depending on cell type, where some don’t show any sensitivity. … “One such gene we examined helps in bone formation, and is known to be upregulated with low-intensity ultrasound pulses,” continues Kumeta. “The other genes were associated with wound healing and the extracellular matrix.” Series of cells were placed in an incubator outfitted with a full-range loudspeaker. After several hours of exposure to sounds with specific frequencies, expression levels of the target genes were analysed. The team found that these mechanosensitive genes were suppressed by up to Read More ›

At ENV Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor exposes how materialist metaphysics flounders on logical grounds in its theory of mind: As an example, let us suppose that a certain pattern of neuronal activation in my cortex were shown to represent my thought about justice. Obviously that pattern is not my thought about justice itself — justice is a concept, not a bunch of neurons. And if that pattern of neuronal activation represented my thought about justice, it must map to my thought of justice, which presupposes my thought about justice and thus cannot explain it. Succinctly, mental representation of abstract thought presupposes abstract thought, and cannot explain it. It is on abstract thought that materialism, as a theory of mind, flounders. Abstract thought, Read More ›

From Mindy Weisberger at LiveScience: Captured in a dramatic photo shared yesterday (Feb. 1) to Imgur, a grim scene hints at a violent battle to the death between two giant snakes, identified in the caption as a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) and a king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), both native to Southeast Asia and among the biggest snakes in the world. Both are formidable serpents. The reticulated python is the longest and heaviest snake on Earth, reaching 23 feet (7 meters) in length and weighing as much as 165 lbs. (75 kilograms), and wielding considerable constricting power. Meanwhile, the king cobra can measure about 18 feet (5.5 m) long and weigh up to 20 lbs. (9 kg), and has a bite Read More ›

As was recently discussed, contrary to objections being made, the concept of blind search and linked search challenge in a configuration or state space is a reasonable and even recognised concept. As we explore this concept a little more, an illustration may be helpful: With this in mind, we may again look at Dembski’s arrow and target illustration from NFL, p. 11: Now, let us ponder again Wiki on state space search: >>State space search is a process used in the field of computer science, including artificial intelligence (AI), in which successive configurations or states of an instance are considered, with the intention of finding a goal state with a desired property. Problems are often modelled as a state space, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: It has often been claimed that humans learn language using brain components that are specifically dedicated to this purpose. Now, new evidence strongly suggests that language is in fact learned in brain systems that are also used for many other purposes and even pre-existed humans, say researchers in PNAS (Early Edition online Jan. 29). The research combines results from multiple studies involving a total of 665 participants. It shows that children learn their native language and adults learn foreign languages in evolutionarily ancient brain circuits that also are used for tasks as diverse as remembering a shopping list and learning to drive. “Our conclusion that language is learned in such ancient general-purpose systems contrasts with the long-standing theory Read More ›

From Ken Francis, journalist and author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth, at New English Review: The atheist Karl Marx—whose belief in moral autonomy and non-belief in Hell was his opium—said that religion was the opium of the people. But nowadays, it seems technology, consumerism and opiates have replaced that for many. But, Francis says, they do nothing to alleviate boredom. Another philosopher, Martin Heidegger, renowned for his bleak writings, wasn’t optimistic about boredom and the technological age. He believed we might be stuck in the darkest night for the rest of human history. But some of his solutions to this problem are weak if not transient and ultimately in vain. He encouraged getting involved in local concerns Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST: The newly launched podcast Great Minds with Michael Medved goes where few other podcasts would dare to tread. On a new episode, Medved talks with historian Richard Weikart about the clear intellectual and genealogical links between the thought of Charles Darwin and that of Adolf Hitler. Weikart, a meticulous scholar, traces the connection in his book From Darwin to Hitler, demonstrating that Darwin’s theory is tainted at its origins. This is an aspect of history that most historians won’t tell you about. It’s timely for me because over the weekend my family went to see Darkest Hour, about the crucial moment of decision for Great Britain under Winston Churchill — whether to appease Hitler and Read More ›

From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: On Friday night, Mike Keas and I debated whether and how much human sin could be seen as a reason for animal death. We agreed on many things, for example, that the age of the earth is billions of years, that animals died before Adam and Eve lived, that predatory animals are not “evil” in a moral sense, and that they glorify God. Much of the debate revolved around the interpretation of Romans 8:18-25. Mike feels that the “groaning,” “bondage,” and “corruption” in this passage clearly show a negative aspect placed on creation due to human sin. In his view, before people came along, predatory animals were not “evil” and in fact Read More ›

A friend writes to say, “Some noted medieval theologians were quite wiling to consider that God had created other inhabited worlds. They saw no logical or scientific difficulty in assuming that such worlds might indeed exist.” Our friend cites in evidence: – When Tempier [d. 1279] declared that the omnipotent God could create a vacuum if he so desired, Tempier insisted that God could break any Aristotelian law. God could create life on other worlds if he wished. There could be thousands of other Earths, each teeming with creatures; it was certainly within God’s power, whether Aristotle agrees or not. – Nicholas of Cusa [1401 – 1464] was bold enough to say that God must have done so. The regions Read More ›

From Rafi Letzter at LiveScience: According to two papers published in the journal Cell in January, long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals. That snippet of code is still very much alive in humans’ brains today, where it does the very viral task of packaging up genetic information and sending it from nerve cells to their neighbors in little capsules that look a whole lot like viruses themselves. And these little packages of information might be critical elements of how nerves communicate and reorganize over time — tasks thought to be necessary for higher-order thinking, the researchers said. Though it may sound surprising that bits of human genetic code come from viruses, it’s Read More ›