In response to my last post A-Mat timothya writes: “If You are Going to Reject Something, At Least Take the Time to Understand What You Are Rejecting” Absolutely agree. Evolutionary biology would be a good place to start. Timothy, it is easy to be a smartass.  Making cogent arguments, not so much.  You appear to be suggesting that those who disagree with evolutionary biology do not understand it.  That is a mere assertion (an unspoken one at that).  If you are going to make an argument, as opposed to a splenetic grunt, you will need to demonstrate where an ID proponent failed to understand an evolutionary concept he rejected.    

The post by News here about how an atheist believed that miracles are impossible because “science,” reminded me of the atheist who responded to one of my posts a few weeks ago.  He said he cannot believe in an immaterial mind because in his view the interaction problem is hopeless for dualists.  The problem of course is that the atheist was attacking a strawman caricature of what most dualists believe, not actual dualism.   It is as if our A-Mat thinks all dualists hold to a sort of hyper-Cartesian  substance dualism in which an immaterial homunculus  sits in a material seat in the brain (perhaps in the pineal gland) and pulls levers to operate the body, and his knock-down objection to that theory Read More ›

And Big Science is afraid to confront it. From Katherine Timpf at National Review: A course that will be taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges next year will teach students that “objectivity” and “meritocracy” are examples of “white mythologies” and “social constructs.” … The idea that objectivity is somehow a myth, or that it has anything even remotely to do with “whiteness,” is so absolutely stupid that I feel like I don’t even have to spend time explaining why. Objectivity isn’t a myth. For example: … Truly, it is odd how often I see stories like this, because people on the left are always the ones claiming to stand for science. They often accuse the Right of refusing to Read More ›

From Amy K. Hall at Stand to Reason: Recently, when I asked an atheist why he was an atheist, the first reason he gave was that “science has disproved God.” When I asked what he meant by that, he started listing miracles in the Bible—such as the virgin birth—that were impossible for him to believe “because of science.” This is simply a misunderstanding of what a miracle is and, therefore, how one can evaluate it. Yes, people have used the methods of science to study the natural workings of the reproductive system and have very accurately said that virgins do not get pregnant naturally, but of course, no Christian ever claimed they did! We agree on how the reproductive system Read More ›

From Amy K.Hall at Stand to Reason: Are naturalistic assumptions necessary for doing science? In the video below (or see the transcript here), Stephen Meyer argues that not only is naturalism not necessary, but in fact, it was a Christian worldview that gave rise to modern science. More. From Transcript: The first thing to say is that science did not arise because of a set of naturalistic presuppositions. It actually arose because of a conviction that there was a lawful order in nature, that human beings could discern and understand it because they’d been made in the image of the creator of that order, and that also they needed to go investigate. While they might expect that there’s a rational Read More ›

From J. Warner Wallace at Cold Case Christianity: Yesterday I posted a number of scientific consistencies found in the Old Testament. While I think there are good reasons why God might not reveal advanced scientific details in Scripture, I do expect God’s Word to be scientifically consistent with the world we experience. One interesting scientific consistency seems to exist in the ancient book of Job. One of the examples he offers, citing Job 38:31-32, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?”: The text refers to three constellations, Pleiades, Orion and Arcturus (the fourth, Mazzaroth, is still unknown Read More ›

On July 11, the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence officially launched and design theorist William Dembski offered some thoughts: The Walter Bradley Center, to the degree that it succeeds, will not merely demonstrate a qualitative difference between human and machine intelligence; more so, it will chart how humans can thrive in a world of increasing automation. … Yet the Walter Bradley Center exists not merely to argue that we are not machines. Yes, singularity theorists and advocates of strong AI continue to vociferate, inflating the prospects and accomplishments of artificial intelligence. They need a response, if only to ensure that silence is not interpreted as complicity or tacit assent. But if arguing, even persuasively, with a Ray Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at Salvo: Minority Reporter: A Finnish Bioengineer Touches the Third Rail Randomness and chaos are much easier to market today than order, meaning, and purpose. The songs write themselves. Serious scientists, therefore, can find themselves in conflict with a view that is not so much an argument as an attitude to life, not so much a marshalling of evidence as a demand that posturing overrule evidence. Case in point: Matti Leisola, a gifted Finnish bioengineer, started out as a good Darwinist. But he could not avoid the massive pushback from the evidence of design he . . . More. Yes, it’s mostly paywalled. It describes the situation of a scientist who thinks that nature shows evidence of Read More ›

Recently, Philippines president Rodrigo Dutarte threatened to resign if anyone could prove that God exists. It turns out that the great mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) offered a proof of the existence of God. Today, Euler is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His interests covered almost all aspects of mathematics, from geometry to calculus to trigonometry to algebra to number theory, as well as optics, astronomy, cartography, mechanics, weights and measures and even the theory of music. Much of the notation used by mathematicians today – including e, i, f(x), ∑, and the use of a, b and c as constants and x, y and z as unknowns – was either created, popularized or standardized by Euler. Read More ›

From at ScienceDaily: Self-fertilization is a problem, as it leads to inbreeding. Recognition systems that prevent self-fertilization have evolved to ensure that a plant mates only with a genetically different plant and not with itself. The recognition systems underlying self-incompatibility are found all around us in nature, and can be found in at least 100 plant families and 40% of species. … In plants such as snapdragons and Petunia, when the pollen lands on the stigma, it germinates and starts growing. The stigma, however, contains a toxin (an SRNase) that stops pollen growth. Pollen in turn has a team of genes (F-box genes) that produce antidotes to all toxins except for the toxin produced by the “self” stigma. Therefore, pollen Read More ›

From Chuck Dinerstein at American Council for Science and Health, Many of us feel aging is a natural process, after all, everyone “gets it,” and disease is more of a deviation or aberration of nature. The proponents of aging as disease point out that aging is related to the apparent random degradation of our DNA, that aging serves no evolutionary purpose, and is more a “consequence of evolutionary neglect, not evolutionary intent.” [2] And without an evolutionary role, why consider it natural? Of course, that aging serves no purpose, is a statement made by those with a stake in the outcome, us, and we may be biased in that regard. We may be unaware of aging evolutionary purpose. From a Read More ›

From Bruce Bower at Science News: Excavations at the Gault site, about 64 kilometers north of Austin, produced a range of stone artifacts that date to between around 16,700 and 21,700 years ago, reports a team led by archaeologist Thomas Williams of Texas State University in San Marcos. An analysis of 184 of those finds identified 11 spearpoints unlike any others that have been found at ancient American sites, the scientists conclude July 11 in Science Advances. Researchers have long argued about whether people reached North America before the rise of Clovis culture 13,000 years ago. Evidence from the Gault site joins other recent reports of humans venturing deep into North America far earlier (SN: 6/11/16, p. 8), which would Read More ›

From Hannah Devlin at The Guardian Researchers say it is time to drop the idea that modern humans originated from a single population in a single location ??? Readers, please wear eye protection due to splinters flying from Human Evolution lecterns: The origins of our species have long been traced to east Africa, where the world’s oldest undisputed Homo sapiens fossils were discovered. About 300,000 years ago, the story went, a group of primitive humans there underwent a series of genetic and cultural shifts that set them on a unique evolutionary path that resulted in everyone alive today. However, a team of prominent scientists is now calling for a rewriting of this traditional narrative, based on a comprehensive survey of Read More ›

From Mike Klymkowsky at PLOS: Through his studies on peas, Gregor Mendel was the first to clearly identify some of the rules for the behavior of these inheritable factors using highly stereotyped, and essentially discontinuous traits – a pea was either yellow or green, wrinkled or smooth. Such traits, while they exist in other organisms, are in fact rare – an example of how the scientific exploration of exceptional situations can help understand general processes, but the downside is the promulgation of the idea that genes and traits are somehow discontinuous – that a trait is yes/no, displayed by an organism or not – in contrast to the realities that the link between the two is complex, a reality rarely Read More ›

From Richard Weikart at ENST: Even in cases of behaviors that seem to hinder reproduction, evolutionary psychologists can invent some good-old “just-so story.” E.O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist and the founder of sociobiology, claimed that homosexuality might be selected for, because a homosexual would be able to help siblings have more offspring. Is there any empirical evidence for this? No, but apparently it is the best just-so story he could devise. In a similar fashion Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker asserts that infanticide has biological roots. He claims that ancient humans were picky about which babies they would raise to maturity. According to Pinker, “A new mother will first coolly assess the infant and her current situation and only in Read More ›