A reader writes: They have a mechanism by which they can mutate a specific part of the DNA, in a pattern and rate that’s different from random mutation.
Month: January 2020
Trinity Radio on cosmologist Sean Carroll and ignoring reality
But doesn’t a multiverse cosmologist like Sean Carroll get to pick and choose the reality he prefers from an infinite variety? Who says there is only one reality, the one he doesn’t like?
Materialist skeptic Michael Shermer disses utopia, seeks “protopia” instead
He says what everyone pretty much knows about why serious socialism leads to mass death but he uses the Trolley Problem in Ethics 101 as an image.
Peter Atkins vs Jonathan McLatchie debate: “Is there a God?”
A friend writes to comment on Atkins’s “smarmy condescension.” Indeed. In an age when serious scientists wonder whether the universe itself is conscious—because they cannot otherwise account for intelligence in nature— it’s not clear what smarmy condescension would achieve.
At a philosophy of biology journal: Dipping a tippy toe into the post-Darwin world?
Be careful not to frighten them. They’ll run back into the burning building.
Gunter Bechly on the decadence of evolutionary science
He sees it exemplified in the recent “oldest scorpion” paper (the scorpion is from 437 mya).
Large and giant virus proteins not linked to any known virus lineage
So giant viruses often boost host metabolism instead of destroying it and “the team was still unable to link 20,000 major capsid proteins of large and giant viruses to any known virus lineage”? Creation ex nihilo? Hey, don’t laugh.. Look, these days, they can’t even get mouse or human sperm to buy into Darwinism. Why would giant viruses care?
Quote of the Day
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Think about this the next Read More…
Rob Sheldon on whether information can be the missing dark matter
Rob Sheldon: The location of the mass has to be “outside” the galaxy in order to account for the dark matter attraction. How does information occupy empty space? Landauer would have said it couldn’t.
Could information be—at long last—the missing “dark matter”?
One physicist now suggests that this “fifth state” of matter (the other four non-dark states are solid, liquid, gas, and plasma) might be information. But then information must be a physical thing…
Even sperm are “fine-tuned”? What now, Darwin?
Look, if they can’t even sell Darwinism to sperm, they need PR 911 pronto.
Today (Fri., Jan 24th 2020) is the annual March for Life,
. . . which, we will monitor and update across the day, including DV, inputs from our person on the ground as usual. This year, of course, will be the first MfL attended and addressed in person by a President of the United States, here, Mr Donald Trump. Other speakers will be present and hopefully Read More…
Jordan Peterson and cultural Darwinism
On these types of topics, University of Toronto psychologist Peterson often sounds as though his approach is very much in the midst of formation and he is or feels forced to say something now, on account of his celebrity for other reasons. But he is worth keeping an eye on, so a bit of background.
French administration tries to subject scientists to “Darwinism”; revolt follows
Rob Sheldon: On the whole, Darwinism looks like it makes short-term gains at the cost of long-term stagnation. It clearly sacrifices the group for the sake of a few aggressive individuals.
David Klinghoffer: Evolutionary thinking in a “state of decadence”
He quotes from a post by paleontologist Gunter Bechly on everyone’s favorite cuddly pet, prehistoric scorpions.