2018

A few years ago Paul Nelson debated Joel Velasco on the topic of design and evolution. Nelson masterfully demonstrated design in nature. For his part Velasco also provided an excellent defense of evolution. But the Epicurean claim that the world arose via random chance is not easy to defend, and Velasco’s task would be challenging. Consider, for example, the orphans which Nelson explained are a good example of taxonomically-restricted designs. Such designs make no sense on evolution, and though Velasco responded with many rebuttals, none were very convincing. Since that debate the orphan problem has become worse, as highlighted by a new study of brochosomes.  Read more

From RJS at Patheos: Ten years ago, when I first started writing on science and faith, Intelligent Design was a hot topic. It was in the news and high on the agenda for many in my local church. Today it has slid into the background, occasionally mentioned, but there are often other fish to fry. Greg Cootsona devotes a case study in his recent book (Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults) to the topic of intelligent design but not more than this because it is not one of the major issues for the emerging adults in his target audience.More. Okay, but with respect to the term “emerging adults,” are we talking about Millennials, many of Read More ›

From astrophysicist Ethan Siegel at Forbes: Again, Earth is our only laboratory for this, but let’s be optimistic in the absence of evidence, and assume there’s a 1-in-1,000 chance that a world that starts with a primitive, replicating, information-encoding strand of life can lead to something like the Cambrian explosion. That gives us 10,000 worlds in the Milky Way teeming with diverse, multicellular, highly differentiated forms of life. Given the distance between the stars, that means there’s likely another planet where this has occurred just a few hundred light years away. … The uncertainties here are huge, and any number that you can pick is as ill-motivated as any other. Someday in the future, we’ll have the capability of performing Read More ›

But isn’t the big story about why so many people thought it would be any different? From human paleontologists James Ohman and Asier Gomez-Olivencia at The Conversation: But despite this harsh life of the hunter gatherer, our research indicates that some Neanderthals lived to be fairly old and even had some of the signs of age related illnesses – such as degenerative lesions in the spine, consistent with osteoarthritis. Our research also found that an adult male Neanderthal survived bone fractures. And when he died, he was buried by members of his group. … Denis Peyrony, the director of the excavation when La Ferrassie 1 was found, indicated that this individual was lying in a “funeral pit”, a purposefully dug Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST: “Human Zoos tells the shocking story of how thousands of indigenous peoples were put on public display in America in the early decades of the twentieth century. Often touted as “missing links” between man and apes, these native peoples were harassed, demeaned, and jeered at. Their public display was arranged with the enthusiastic support of the most elite members of the scientific community, and it was promoted uncritically by America’s leading newspapers. This award-winning documentary explores the heartbreaking story of what happened, shows how African-American ministers and other people of faith tried to push back, and reveals how some people today are still drawing on Social Darwinism in order to dehumanize others. The film also Read More ›

From astrophysicist Adam Becker at Aeon: Falsifiability doesn’t work as a blanket restriction in science for the simple reason that there are no genuinely falsifiable scientific theories. I can come up with a theory that makes a prediction that looks falsifiable, but when the data tell me it’s wrong, I can conjure some fresh ideas to plug the hole and save the theory. The history of science is full of examples of this ex post facto intellectual engineering. In 1781, William and Caroline Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Physicists of the time promptly set about predicting its orbit using Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation. But in the following decades, as astronomers followed Uranus’s motion in its slow 84-year Read More ›

From Nicola Davis at the Guardian: Before being laid, bird eggs form a hard calcium-rich shell with three main layers. While it was already known that these thin from the innermost out as a chick grows in preparation for hatching – with calcium from the shell being incorporated into its skeleton in the process – quite what happens at the molecular scale has been something of a mystery. Now scientists say they have discovered that eggshells have a nanostructure, and that it appears to play a key role in the strength of the shell. “Everybody thinks eggshells are fragile – [when] we’re careful, we ‘walk on eggshells’ – but in fact, for their thinness they are extremely strong, harder than Read More ›

Technically, Earth is a sphere, of course, as in a baseball rather than a dinner plate. From CBS: A new survey has found that a third of young millennials in the U.S. aren’t convinced the Earth is actually round. The national poll reveals that 18 to 24-year-olds are the largest group in the country who refuse to accept the scientific facts of the world’s shape. More. Now, this came out on April 5, not April 1. Two things: If you had attended a cathedral school a millennium ago, you would have known the Earth – like all the “heavenly bodies” – is a sphere. You might not have learned much else by way of science but you would have learned Read More ›

More rubbish about evolution at a highbrow US mag? From David Klinghoffer at ENST: … no matter what you say, no one will challenge you other than some of those intelligent design rascals and you know you can automatically dismiss anything they say. Case in point: former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson’s recent article for The Atlantic, “The Last Temptation,” tracing the supposed “shame” and “disgrace” of Evangelical Christians who support Trump back to an original sin, namely — of all things — their rejection of evolution. I wrote about that earlier here. In a new ID the Future episode, Jay Richards talks with Mike Keas about this lengthy article, and encourages everyone to read it in full. Gerson is an Read More ›

From mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: Way back in 2005, soon after the emergence of the “String Landscape” and the ensuing debate over whether this made string theory untestable pseudo-science, Cumrun Vafa in response started writing about the “Swampland”. In contrast to the “Landscape” of effective field theories that are low energy limits of string theory, the “Swampland” is the space of effective field theories that are not low energy limits of string theory. One motivation here is to be able to claim that string theory is predictive, since if you can show a theory is in the Swampland, then string theory predicts that doesn’t describe our world. I wrote a couple blog postings about this back then, Read More ›

From Allan Adamson at Tech Times: Astronomers have been hunting for phosphorus in the universe because of the role it plays in life on Earth. If the element is lacking in other parts of the cosmos, it could be difficult for alien life to exist. A new study presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science meeting now suggests that life as we know it is more unusual than previously thought because the universe substantially lacks phosphorus. More. But then who needs phosphorus when we have imagination?!

From Mark Steyn: Google/YouTube and Facebook do not, of course, make laws, but their algorithms have more real-world impact than most legislation – and, having started out as more or less even-handed free-for-alls, they somehow thought it was a great idea to give the impression that they’re increasingly happy to assist the likes of Angela Merkel and Theresa May as arbiters of approved public discourse. Facebook, for example, recently adjusted its algorithm, and by that mere tweak deprived Breitbart of 90 per cent of its ad revenue. That’s their right, but it may not have been a prudent idea to reveal how easily they can do that to you. More. How will it affect Darwin vs design?

I have a question for our materialist friends. Often in these pages we meet an argument like the one Allan Keith makes in this post.  The thrust of the argument is that since humans are the only known intelligent species, design inferences are valid only if they infer specifically to human intelligence.  This argument would preclude inference to a non-human “intelligent agent.”  The obvious purpose of the argument is to derail biological ID, because any indicia of design in living things could not have been the result of human intelligence.  Therefore, all biological design inferences are invalid. David Klinghoffer over at ENV brings this post on NPR’s website to our attention:   In the article, astrophysicist Adam Frank (University of Rochester) asks fellow Read More ›

Without getting bitten. From Cornelius Hunter at ENST: Greg Mayer at Jerry Coyne’s website (Why Evolution Is True) posed study questions for learning about evolution. Evolutionists have responded in the “Comment” section with answers to some of the questions (see here, here, and here). Here is what I posted there in response: … But when I posted these few relevant thoughts, they were, after briefly appearing, quickly deleted. That’s unfortunate because these facts would help Coyne’s readers to understand evolution. More. Okay, you can read Dr. Hunter’s response to Dr. Coyne at ENST in “What your biology teacher didn’t tell you”, elsewhere deleted. I remember my Grade Seven biology teacher. He had a dry aquarium tank full of snakes. Now Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST: Cardiff University philosopher Orestis Palermos was at the center of a stir last week for a claim he made, in an online lecture, that evolutionary biology is as much of a pseudoscience as creationism, because it relies very heavily on ad hoc explanations for data after they have been discovered, rather than making bold universal predictions beforehand that hold up. Critics have been saying this for decades, and it’s encouraging to know that others can see it too. When this happens it is always entertaining to watch the consternation of our fundamentalist Darwinist friends. In response they have, of course, flexed their muscles to shut him up, or at least hide the intro video. It Read More ›