Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 11, 2020
Categorized
Academic Freedom, Climate change, Culture, Information, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Wikipedia erases list of climate skeptics

Denyse O'Leary
March 11, 2020
Academic Freedom, Climate change, Culture, Information, Intelligent Design
Even if everything is all pristine and honest with climate science today, the settled habit of simply censoring opposing views inevitably corrupts. Over time it corrupts absolutely. Darwinism is paying the price even now for that kind of thing, if we go by the defensive Darwinblather around the current, sublime embarrassment of de novo genes. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 11, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Why does Darwinism remind one of the propaganda of unfree countries?

Denyse O'Leary
March 11, 2020
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design
Never mind that the de novo genes have no apparent ancestors. Universal common ancestry, the supposed bedrock of the system, is not as important as simple, unquestioning obedience to the current pronouncements of the ideologues. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
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Big new telescope array to search for extraterrestrial alien signals

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
The nice thing about SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects is that it makes very little difference if we don’t find anything. It’s not as though any conclusion can be drawn from a failure to find anything. We will just indulge in another round of speculations as to why we don’t. It’s not always clear why this is a science and not a religion. But hey. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Racism
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Nature tut tuts on eugenics, forgets Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Racism
In our current cultural climate, it is very difficult to have a useful discussion of the contribution Darwinism made to modern racism, as evidenced by racist yammer today featuring “natural selection.” To recap, Darwinism made racism “scientific.” That was much easier to sell to the educated classes in the nineteenth century than the idea that some people’s papa was a god and the rest of us were just bricks. And many committed and devoted Darwinists believed in and co-operated with the new, “scientific” racism. Until all that can be fully and freely acknowledged, the matter can never be laid to rest. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Human evolution, Intelligent Design
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Did Stone Age beads found at 33 kya function as a “social safety net”?

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Human evolution, Intelligent Design
However the beads were used, the concept of beads as a medium of exchange, a record of treaties, or a social status marker involves abstraction. They represent an idea. Ideas surely became much more powerful when they were portable. They have a much longer and wider reach when they can be shared and embodied in something other than a given person’s brain. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
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Michael Egnor: The bird does NOT do math

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
Egnor: Dr. Pepperberg could have been more forthright: Parrots can’t do statistics. No animal (except man) can do statistics, because statistical reasoning is abstract and only human beings are capable of abstract thought. Parrots think concretely—they think of particular things and relations between particular things, but they cannot think without particular things—they can’t think abstractly. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Genetics, Genomics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design
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At Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable: The scientific case for Adam and Eve

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Genetics, Genomics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design
"He [Swamidass] is joined by atheist biologist Nathan Lents who has given his support to the book, believing that it may help Christians who hold to a traditional understanding of the Adam and Eve story, to also accept evolutionary science. " Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categorized
Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
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Michael Behe: New paper supports my “Darwin Devolves” thesis

Denyse O'Leary
March 7, 2020
Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
The trouble with Darwin Devolves is that it is likely to be both quite right and a big problem for schoolbook Darwinism. Just as it is much easier to—without thinking much—throw something out than fix or adapt it, life forms will far more likely randomly mutate by dumping complex equipment than by reengineering it. It’s not that life forms can’t develop complex new equipment. But such changes probably aren’t an instance of natural selection acting on random mutation. And in these times, that’s the controversial part: design in nature. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categorized
Information, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
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Davies and Walker on Origin of life: Life as information

Denyse O'Leary
March 7, 2020
Information, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Walker and Davies, 2013: The manner in which information flows through and between cells and sub-cellular structures is quite unlike anything else observed in nature. If life is more than just complex chemistry, its unique informational management properties may be the crucial indicator of this distinction [13]. Unfortunately, the way that information operates in biology is not easily characterized. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy
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Science historian asks, What kicked off the ID movement?

Denyse O'Leary
March 7, 2020
Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy
He offers three events that he thinks boosted ID specifically: You can read about the first two for yourself at the link but you may not even have ever heard of the third (the discrediting of the Vienna Circle): ... Read More ›