Modified gravity is a hypothesis (1983) that attempts to account for the gravitational pull that is otherwise attributed to dark matter (which has never been identified). From Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at : Which one is right? We still don’t know, though astrophysicists have been on the case since decades. Ruling out modified gravity is hard because it was invented to fit observed correlations, and this achievement is difficult to improve on. The idea which Milgrom came up with in 1983 was a simple model called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). It does a good job fitting the rotation curves of hundreds of observed galaxies, and in contrast to particle dark matter this model Read More ›

Here’s an inventive turn of phrase from Nature: “Eye evolution came easy for simple sea creatures Family tree shows that jellies and their relatives evolved eyes independently at least eight times.” Jellyfish and their kin have no brains and make do with rudimentary nervous systems. But an analysis now shows that these simple sea creatures evolved eyes multiple times, transforming basic precursor cells into a wide range of useful visual systems. Curr. Biol. (2018), “Eye evolution came easy for simple sea creatures” at Nature Nothing like a bold approach to the problems of irreducible complexity! Imply, without stressing the point, that if the creatures were “simple,” the process must have been “easy” and therefore wthin the range of random Darwinian Read More ›

From Jillian Mock at Audubon: Hummingbirds come in a jewel-like assortment of colors and are so dexterous, they can hover still for seconds and fly backward. They also have one of the most diverse avian families in the world, boasting about 350 known species across North and South America. Sunbirds, the prime nectar-feeding birds of the Old World, have fewer than 150. But once upon a time, tens of millions of years ago, hummingbirds did zip around the hills and forests of Europe. According to Jim McGuire, it all started about 42 million years ago, when hummingbirds broke away from the swifts, their closest living relatives. McGuire, an integrative biologist at University of California Berkeley, calculated this date by examining Read More ›

At Scientific American, John Horgan reprints his profile of  Bohm (1917-1992) shortly before his death, in which Bohm explains his view: Although he tried to make the world more sensible with his pilot-wave model, he also argued that complete clarity is impossible. He reached this conclusion after seeing an experiment on television, in which a drop of ink was squeezed onto a cylinder of glycerine. When the cylinder was rotated, the ink diffused through the glycerine in an apparently irreversible fashion. Its order seemed to have disintegrated. But when the direction of rotation was reversed, the ink gathered into a drop again. He was consistent: Bohm rejected the claim of physicists such as Hawking and Weinberg that physics can achieve a Read More ›

Much has been written about the so-called “warfare thesis” first popularized in the 1870’s by Andrew Dickson White.  This thesis posits that there is an inherent conflict between Christianity and science.  Never mind that many of the most famous scientists in history, including practically all of the progenitors of the scientific revolution, were Christians (Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, etc.).  The obvious historical weakness and intellectual tendentiousness of the warfare thesis has led to its reevaluation and often its rejection by contemporary researchers.  (See here for example). The idea that there is an inherent conflict between science (in the sense of an investigation of nature) and Christianity is risible.  This is not to say, however, that there is no conflict at all.  Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Researchers have developed new techniques to track the mobilization of jumping genes. They found that during a particular period of egg development, a group of jumping-genes called retrotransposons hijacks special cells called nurse cells that nurture the developing eggs. These jumping genes use nurse cells to produce invasive material (copies of themselves called virus-like particles) that move into a nearby egg and then mobilize into the egg’s DNA driving evolution, and causing disease. … Carnegie co-author Zhao Zhang explained: “We were very surprised that the these jumping genes barely moved in stem cells that produce developing egg cells, possibly because the stem cells would only have two copies of the genome for these jumping genes to use. Instead, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: One of the candidates for ‘dark energy’ is the symmetron field. Researchers have developed an experiment capable of measuring extremely small forces with the help of neutrons. The measurements could have provided pointers to the mysterious symmetrons, but the particles didn’t show up. This excludes the possibility of symmetrons in a broad parameter range. ‘Dark energy’ is going to have to be explained differently. One thing is certain: there’s something out there we don’t yet know. For years now scientists have been looking for “dark matter” or “dark energy” — with our current inventory of particles and forces in nature we just can’t explain major cosmological phenomena, such as why the universe is expanding at an ever faster Read More ›

Readers will recall Sam Harris, an atheist who tried thinking for himself and ended up on the dark internet with Jordan Peterson. A meltdown is happening among materialist atheists, mainly over progressivism, and some of the fallout is quite revealing. From Samuel Buntz at The Federalist: Atheists are divided against each other. This is not surprising when you consider that a negative principle like “God does not exist” fails to provide a unifying force or center of meaning capable of organizing one’s life. … Yet, after more than a decade of New Atheist polemics, it is clear that Harris is the only New Atheist who still matters. He just wrapped up a blockbuster series of debates with Canadian psychologist Jordan Read More ›

Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel co-authored an article entitled “Directed Pansmermia” in which they advocated consideration of infective* theories for the origin of life on earth in addition to the moribund (then and now) search for a materialist terrestrial origin.  In that article the following sentence stands out: It has also been argued that ‘infective’ theories of the origins of terrestrial life should be rejected because they do no more than transfer the problem of origins to another planet. ID proponents frequently get similar push back.  Indeed, Crick and Orgel’s sentence could be modified only slightly to reflect that materialist objection: It has also been argued that ID theories of the origins of terrestrial life should be rejected because they Read More ›

Fideism is the idea that sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and believe, because faith is independent of, or even in opposition to, reason.  Theists are often accused of fideism.  Every time you hear someone say, “your belief in God is based on nothing but blind, unreasoning faith” the speaker is accusing his target of fideism.  Theists respond to the “blind faith” attack by pointing out that their beliefs are evidence-based, reasoned, and reasonable.  See here for an example. But this post is not about responding to materialist accusations of fideism against theists.  It is about the irony of such attacks coming from any materialist who has ever cited Orgel’s Second Rule of Evolution.  Orgel’s Second Rule, named Read More ›

Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God, responds at his blog to a claim by Paul Thagard at Psychology Today that science and philosophy offer more for grief than religion does: Thagard’s view is that religion is false comfort, and that science (and philosophy) can do better. He begins by outlining four major problems with Asma’s view [NYT article “which advanced the utility of religion in personal and societal spheres, even for the secular,” irrespective of the fact base]: – “It depends on a view of how emotion works in the brain that has been rendered obsolete by advances in neuroscience.” – It underestimates how much science can help to understand the nature of Read More ›

From Rabbi Moshe Averick, author of author of  The Confused World of Modern Atheism (Mosaica Press, 2016), at Times of Israel: Dr. Leonard Susskind is a renowned professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and is credited as being one of the fathers of string theory. He was asked to comment at a NASA panel discussion on the lack of design in the universe, and replied: Dr. Susskind responded by saying: “I don’t believe the universe was designed by an intelligence. I believe the universe was designed the same way the incredible human being was designed. It certainly looks – and before Darwin – it looked like some designer must have, what else could possibly account for the complexity of a Read More ›

An open letter to William Lane Craig and the proponents of theistic evolution from Karsten Pultz,: author of Exit Evolution, in response to William Lane Craig’s questions around whether Adam and Eve really existed. For 30 years I didn’t believe in a personal God. I was not an outright atheist but was an agnostic leaning just a little towards new age explanations and interpretations of the reality we experience. I had the greatest mistrust in the Bible although I found the New Testament important as a philosophical text. I considered the Bible a collection of myths rather than historical facts. I was raised with a materialistic worldview but happened to experience so much spiritual richness in music, that it made Read More ›