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Theistic evolution: There is no clear definition of the term, says reviewer of a critique

From Nathan Muse at Apologetics 315, a review of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, It should be noted that the scientific critiques in this volume are not new. The beauty of this project is distilling them into one volume. Even if some readers will not be completely convinced by the scientific critique in these chapters, the reader is given much food for thought. At the very least, a byproduct of this section is showing that the scientific position of TE suffers from being ill-defined and nebulous. There is no agreed upon scope of the evolutionary process and no clear definition of the term itself. Indeed, some have criticized this volume’s definition of TE as not being accurate. Read More ›

Does lack of a good father figure promote atheism?

From Wintery Knight Here’s a lecture by New York University professor Paul Vitz to explain a connection between atheism and fatherlessness: Wintery Knight also suggests an article by Paul Copan which points out how father presence/absence and father quality affects belief and disbelief in God: Seventh, the attempt to psychologize believers applies more readily to the hardened atheist.It is interesting that while atheists and skeptics often psychoanalyze the religious believer, they regularly fail to psychoanalyze their ownrejection of God. Why are believers subject to such scrutiny and not atheists? Remember another feature of Freud’s psychoanalysis — namely, an underlying resentment that desires to kill the father figure. Why presume atheism is the rational, psychologically sound, and default position while theism Read More ›

In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.

In response to the recent story “Do racial assumptions prevent recognizing Homo erectus as fully human?”, a friend wrote to say that many Darwin defenders miss the point, as follows: The problem is not merely that Darwin, a man of his age, was a racist. The problem is that his bias resulted in him and others distorting the fossil record to suit a racist worldview. To “get past” the fact that Darwin was a racist, we must be willing to undo science that begins by assuming that non-European features are sub-human. But the “hierarchy of man” is rooted in the fundamental assumptions of the “Descent of Man,” the idea that Darwin popularized. Rooting it out would call so many things Read More ›

Zebrafish made “a supreme evolutionary effort” to develop superior vision (better than Google Street View), say researchers

From Phys.org, A zebrafish view of the world has been forensically analysed by researchers at the University of Sussex to reveal that how they see their surroundings changes hugely depending on what direction they are looking. The study of the colour vision system of zebrafish larvae, published today in Current Biology, reveals they use their near 360 degree view of their world to detect threatening silhouettes above them in black-and-white but can seek out the almost transparent single-cell organisms they feed on by detecting the scattering of light in UV. Dr. Tom Baden, a senior lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Sussex who led the research, said: “By measuring the activity of thousands of neurons in the live animal Read More ›

Paul Nelson: Junk DNA is one of those propositions that have “just about the worst track record” in biology.

With respect to “A “junk DNA” jumping gene is critical for embryo cell development, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson writes to say, In personal correspondence over the past couple of years with a tenured geneticist at a major university who is a “junk DNA” proponent, I’ve pointed out that “x has no function” propositions in biology have just about the worst track record one can imagine. Namely, the propositions lead nowhere (empirically), and sit in a forlorn dim corner with other such propositions, waiting to be overturned by research. One doesn’t need to be an ID proponent to see that natural scientific curiosity will have investigators poking at apparent junk, wondering what it might be doing. As expressed beautifully in Read More ›

Linguists skeptical of Darwinian theory that toolmaking “paved the way” for human language

Should young ID theorists study language origins, as retired linguist suggests below? From Ben James at The Atlantic: Oren Kolodny, a biologist at Stanford University, puts the question in more scientific terms: “What kind of evolutionary pressures could have given rise to this really weird and surprising phenomenon that is so critical to the essence of being human?” And he has proposed a provocative answer. In a recent paper in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Kolodny argues that early humans—while teaching their kin how to make complex tools—hijacked the capacity for language from themselves. That is provocative: hijacking a capability from “themselves”…? Kolodny’s arguments build off the groundbreaking experiments of Dietrich Stout, an anthropologist at Emory Read More ›

Molecular biologist: Speculation re the last universal common ancestor is not helping science

From molecular biologist Mike Klymkowsky at The Scientist There is a pernicious temptation in science to speak authoritatively about topics that are beyond scientific exploration and certainty. This has led some theoretical physicists to advocate for a “post-empirical” form of science. That is the idea that theories need not be judged on their ability to make new and testable predictions about the observable universe, in some cases, the absence of a plausible alternative is sufficient. … Klymkowsky is certain that there was a single Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)* but before that? But what came before and the exact steps leading to LUCA are unknowable. Moreover, the billions of years that have elapsed since LUCA’s origin and the active nature Read More ›

Do racial assumptions prevent recognizing Homo erectus as fully human?

From J. R. Miller at More Than Cake: Inspired by Darwin, the Dutch anatomist Eugene Dubois set sail in 1891 for Indonesia in search of the missing link between humans and apes. On the island of Java, he discovered a tooth, a femur bone, and a skull with a low forehead and enlarged brow which came to be called “Java Man.” Dubois immediately assumed—in the tradition of many men before him—that these non-Europon features were indicative of the non-human ancestor to Homo sapiens. Based on later fossil finds this “missing link” was classified as a pre-human species Homo erectus (upright man). In the book, Contested Bones, authors Rupe and Sanford (R&S) make the case that based on the phenotypical distinctives Read More ›

At New Scientist: The neuroscientists’ bet that a signature of human consciousness will be found in the brain has only five years to go…

If it is still on. From Per Snaprud at New Scientist: TWENTY years ago this week, two young men sat in a smoky bar in Bremen, northern Germany. Neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers had spent the day lecturing at a conference about consciousness, and they still had more to say. After a few drinks, Koch suggested a wager. He bet a case of fine wine that within the next 25 years someone would discover a specific signature of consciousness in the brain. Chalmers said it wouldn’t happen, and bet against. (paywall) More. And so now: Inside Higher Ed recently ran a piece on a scholarly meeting on consciousness, asking if it was “the World’s Most Bizarre Scholarly Meeting?” Read More ›

Breaking: A “junk DNA” jumping gene is critical for embryo cell development

This was discovered by someone who was skeptical of the idea that our geomes are largely useless junk. From Nicholas Weiler at Phys.Org: A so-called “jumping gene” that researchers long considered either genetic junk or a pernicious parasite is actually a critical regulator of the first stages of embryonic development, according to a new study in mice led by UC San Francisco scientists and published June 21, 2018 in Cell. Only about 1 percent of the human genome encodes proteins, and researchers have long debated what the other 99 percent is good for. Many of these non–protein coding regions are known to contain important regulatory elements that orchestrate gene activity, but others are thought to be evolutionary garbage that is Read More ›

Materialist MatSpirit Tucks Tail and Runs When Confronted With Incoherence of His Position

Let’s review my recent exchange with MatSpirit: MatSpirit quotes Dawkins: Richard Dawkins is not just flapping his gums when he says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction . . . I point out that is the same Dawkins who wrote: The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. MatSpirit ignores the incoherence of his position and says: but the most important [question to Barry] was, “What in the world makes you think God has good morals? No, Mat. There is an even more basic and important question that absolutely must Read More ›

Odd tube-shaped animal appears, disappears in Cambrian

From ScienceDaily: The creature belongs to an obscure and mysterious group of animals known as the chancelloriids, and scientists are unclear about where they fit in the tree of life. They represent a lineage of spiny tube-shaped animals that arose during the Cambrian evolutionary “explosion” but went extinct soon afterwards. In some ways they resemble sponges, a group of simple filter-feeding animals, but many scientists have dismissed the similarities as superficial. … It was surprisingly large in life (perhaps up to 50 cm or more) but had only a few very tiny spines. Its unusual “naked” appearance suggests that further specimens may be “hiding in plain sight” in fossil collections, and shows that this group was more diverse than previously Read More ›

From Scientific American: “we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.”

From Bernardo Kastrup, Adam Crabtree, and Edward F. Kelly at Scientific American: In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of which claimed to be blind. Using EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s body, even though her eyes were open. Remarkably, when a sighted alter assumed control, the usual brain activity returned. In short, extreme dissociation has a literal, not merely imagined, effect—very helpful to Read More ›

Question of the hour: Are space aliens hoarding stars in an expanding universe?

Start your day off right with the really gripping questions. From Emily Conover at Science News: To offset a future cosmic energy shortage caused by the accelerating expansion of the universe, a super-advanced civilization could pluck stars from other galaxies and bring them home, theoretical astrophysicist Dan Hooper proposes June 13 at arXiv.org. Paper. Advanced societies might be able to harness the energy of stars by surrounding them with giant, hypothetical structures called Dyson spheres (SN: 4/24/10, p. 22). But the expansion will eventually make it impossible to reach stars outside the civilization’s home turf. Aliens that possess such technology might want to maximize energy reserves by sending spaceships to retrieve stars before the cosmic isolation sets in. Each star’s Read More ›