From Scripps Research Institute: Chemists discover plausible recipe for early life on Earth Their experiments, described today in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrate that key chemical reactions that support life today could have been carried out with ingredients likely present on the planet four billion years ago. … The new study outlines how two non-biological cycles—called the HKG cycle and the malonate cycle—could have come together to kick-start a crude version of the citric acid cycle. The two cycles use reactions that perform the same fundamental chemistry of a-ketoacids and b-ketoacids as in the citric acid cycle. These shared reactions include aldol additions, which bring new source molecules into the cycles, as well as beta and oxidative decarboxylations, which release Read More ›

From Sabine Hossenfelder at Quanta: Twenty-five particles and four forces. That description — the Standard Model of particle physics — constitutes physicists’ best current explanation for everything. It’s neat and it’s simple, but no one is entirely happy with it. What irritates physicists most is that one of the forces — gravity — sticks out like a sore thumb on a four-fingered hand. Gravity is different. Unlike the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity is not a quantum theory. This isn’t only aesthetically unpleasing, it’s also a mathematical headache. We know that particles have both quantum properties and gravitational fields, so the gravitational field should have quantum properties like the particles that cause it. But a Read More ›

For quite some days now, a brawling debate has raged across several UD threads on moral principles, truth and self-evidence. It is worth the while to again headline some of the exchange for record. First, an exchange or two on fairness and subjectivity vs objectivity. And yes, this is a second-order clipping — a lot tends to get buried in comment exchanges: >>Let us observe an exchange above: [JS:] My comment presupposes a fair society and claims that they, as a fair society, would base their policies on moral values. [Trib:] What determines a “fair society”? Notice, how we almost automatically assume moral government in our argument? This reflects how persuasion hinges on duties to truth, sound reasoning, fairness etc. Read More ›

From human evolution specialists Bernard Wood and Michael Westaway at The Conversation: The question of where we humans come from is one many people ask, and the answer is getting more complicated as new evidence is emerging all the time. … We now realise that modern humans are just one of the African great apes. Bl21So when and how did this radically changed perception come about? More. That’s nonsense and it will doom great apes. But we can be pretty sure post-moderns won’t care as long as they can blame someone else for whatever happens and their therapists give them something to make them feel better. Non-post-modern reality: Great apes are not “entering the Stone Age;” they risk extinction. IQ Read More ›

That’ll be dogma as post-modernism sinks in. Yesterday, we were discussing an extraordinary declaration of war on measurement from a dean of “engineering education”. Lawyer and impresario Edward Sisson offers some thoughts: Engineering is, of course, intelligent design grounded on accurate knowledge of the material world. First, for example, regarding the journal that published the paper, Riley states that “the Journal of Education Engineering [the Journal New Criterion said had published this] pre-emptively passed on publishing this work because it is not an empirical study.” As to the focus of her paper, “rigor,” she says “rigor in this context seems to refer to formal research questions, theoretical grounding, appropriate methodology (narrowly empirical and too often viewed as exclusively quantitative). In Read More ›

Philosopher Jerry Fodor attracted attention in recent years by Incorrect criticism of Darwinism. During the news flurry around his recent passing, we learned of a free pdf from Rutgers, Against Darwinism, which provides an introduction to his thought on the subject. From the conclusion: From the viewpoint of the philosopher of science, perhaps the bottom line of all this is the importance of keeping clear the difference between historical explanations and covering law explanations. Just as there is nothing obviously wrong with historical explanations, there is likewise nothing obviously wrong with covering law explanations. Roughly, they start with a world in which the initial conditions and the natural laws are specified, and they deduce predictions about what situations will transpire Read More ›

From Soul of Science co-author (with Charles Thaxton) Nancy R. Pearcey at Fox News, Silicon Valley’s drug-fueled, secret sex parties — One more reason to hate the hookup culture Before reaching campus, students are primed by high school sex education courses that typically focus on the physical: on the mechanics of sex and the avoidance of disease and pregnancy. These courses reduce the meaning of sex to a how-to manual. Many students even say the programs make them feel pressured into having sex. In one study, teens reported that they felt more pressure from their sex education classes than from their girlfriends or boyfriends. Other segments of adult culture are complicit in sexualizing children at ever-younger ages. Dolls for little Read More ›

From a study reported by political science prof Benjamin Knoll at HuffPost: – 37% reject God-guided evolution and believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were not the process of biological evolution. These Mormons have a more literalist/fundamentalist view. – 37% accept God-guided evolution as the origin of life on Earth but also believe in a literal Adam and Eve created by God and not the result of evolution. Perhaps many in this group believe Adam and Eve to be a special exception to the evolutionary process while accepting evolution as the most persuasive explanation for all other life. — 13% accept God-guided evolution and reject the idea that Adam and Eve were separately created by God outside of Read More ›

From Stephanie Hertzenberg at Beliefnet:  Are Islam and Evolution Compatible? The question is controversial and hotly debated. Helpful information but some well-meaning misdirection: Some Muslims hold that evolution is partially compatible with Islam. At “Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution,” a London event organized by the Deen Institute in 2013, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi argued that Islam is compatible with all of Darwin’s theory of evolution except in the case of humans. He claimed that, from an Islamic theological perspective, a Muslim can say that Allah inserted a created Adam into the natural order. This would be, he explained, as if Adam were the last domino placed in a line by Allah. Non-believers would see Adam’s domino as a casual connection or continuation from all Read More ›

From Notes and Comments at The New Criterion: If you are thinking of building a bridge, be careful if your engineer went to Purdue University. Donna Riley, the head of the engineering department at Purdue, has put the world on notice that “rigor” is a dirty word. In an article for Engineering Education called “Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit,” Professor Riley, who is also the author of Engineering and Social Justice, argues that academic “rigor” is merely a blind for “white male heterosexual privilege.” Yes, really. “The term,” she writes, “has a historical lineage of being about hardness, stiffness, and erectness; its sexual connotations—and links to masculinity in particular—are undeniable.” There follows a truly surreal Read More ›

From Evolution News and Science Today: Due to the tradition of professional scientific writing, major developments in scientific literature often arrive muffled in language so bland or technical as to be totally missed by a general reader. This, along with the media’s habit of covering up for evolution, is how large cracks in the foundation of Darwinism spread unnoticed by the public, which goes on assuming that the science is all settled and will ever remain so. A case in point is a recent article in the Journal of Mathematical Biology, a significant peer-reviewed publication from the influential publisher Springer. The title of the article announces, “The fundamental theorem of natural selection with mutations.” … Fisher’s theorem, offered as what Read More ›

We feared this would happen. From Sabine Hossenfelder at BackRe(action): Sometimes I believe in string theory. Then I wake up. But then I got distracted by a disturbing question: Do we actually have evidence that elegance is a good guide to the laws of nature? The brief answer is no, we have no evidence. The long answer is in my book and, yes, I will mention the-damned-book until everyone is sick of it. The summary is: Beautiful ideas sometimes work, sometimes they don’t. It’s just that many physicists prefer to recall the beautiful ideas which did work. And not only is there no historical evidence that beauty and elegance are good guides to find correct theories, there isn’t even a Read More ›

A friend writes to draw our attention to this 2014 book: by James Stroud, The Philosophy of History: Naturalism and Religion: What is philosophy? What is history? Is much of what we have been taught false concerning these two? Author James Stroud not only breaks down the often neglected field of philosophy of history but shows why much of what we have taken for granted in the subject of “”Origins”” belongs just as much in the field of history as it does in science. Supporting an open-philosophy of history versus the current closed-philosophy in place, Stroud systematically shows why the paradigm of Naturalism is most likely false and should therefore not influence the way the historian is forced to interpret Read More ›

There is such a strong tendency to project all sorts of accusations against Christian ethics that I believe it is necessary to put the indisputable core of the Christian ethical tradition on the table, to clear the air. And so, Matt 5 – 7, ESV: >>The Sermon on the Mount 5 Seeing the crowds, he [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. The Beatitudes 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and Read More ›

Fisher’s theorem, reportedly proving Darwinism, is currently disputed in mathematical literature by William Basener and John Sanford.   (Paper.) The controversy is attracting quite some attention. Dr. Basener has kindly offered an explanation for one of the questions raised in a comment and, for reader convenience, we reproduce both the question and the response as a post: Question: Erasmus Wiffball at 7: William Basener (Bill B): Do you agree that ID proponents commonly mistake mathematical models of evolution as attempts to prove that evolution works? Would you please tell everyone here what Fisher’s objective was in formulating his model? What was he attempting to model? To what degree did he succeed or fail in what he was attempting to do? (Surely Read More ›