Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

How many “types of human” “coexisted with our ancestors”?

But what if these “Homo species”were never sharply differentiated groups? Cutting edge techniques might turn up many more such “species”/groups in the near future, comprising a sort of “United Nations” of deceased cultures. Read More ›

Hoover Institution interview with David Berlinski

In 1996. David Berlinski published an article in Commentary, skewering the vast public nonsense that Darwinism had become - and remained for roughly two decades, only now beginning to totter under a variety of assaults. Time to reminisce a bit. Read More ›

Why do plant scientists need to tell the world that plants are NOT conscious?

You didn’t think plants were conscious, did you? Did you really think salad is murder? Yet telling us that plants are not conscious is the gist of a recently published major paper in Trends in Plant Science. (open access) Part of the background to the “plants think like people” movement in science, which they oppose, is that we have learned over the years that plants communicate a lot. The other part is refusal to acknowledge that humans are exceptional. Quite simply, the need to see humans as equivalent to animals has now spread to the need to see us as equivalent to plants. We can expect many more such conundrums. They will result in further declarations in science journals that Read More ›

Alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein pledged $30 million for Harvard evolution program

Some of these areas would seem to be science issues and others only questionably so. It is much easier to get general, evidence-based agreement on what constitutes cancer and its remedies, for example, than on what constitutes selfishness and its remedies. Read More ›

J.P. Moreland on the reality of the mind tested by psychiatric disorder

Moreland: We are a unity of body, mind, spirit, emotions, and will and they all affect one another. And so, if my brain is damaged and it’s not producing the kinds of chemicals that it needs to help me have a good mood, then medication feels like oiling the engine or vitamins for your brain. Read More ›

Well, if Neanderthal history is as complex as other human histories…

That's bad for "evolutionary theory." Actual histories of the Neanderthals are like actual histories of the Navaho or the Welsh. What they “would have” done doesn’t matter; only what they apparently did. Enter historical interpretation from a variety of schools of thought. Read More ›