Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At RealClearScience: Replace juries with scientists!

So. In a science world where Scientific American broke with a 175-year tradition to endorse a candidate for U.S. President, we are still supposed to believe in some objective gold standard of science? Precisely what those people GAVE UP is any claim to be considered objective. Sorry. Scientists can’t just deke in and out of objectivity whenever it suits them. And they’ll sure miss it when it’s gone. Read More ›

Primate intelligence test just makes humans more exceptional

A recent finding was that mouse lemurs, with a brain 1/200th the size of that of a chimpanzee, performed approximately as well on a primate cognition test. And then there's human intelligence... Read More ›

Are science journals starting to behave like Facebook?

Chuck Dinerstein, MD, argues the case. " You would think that if a fraction of that money, say 1%, which is about $30 million, could be redirected at paying for peer-review, we might get a better quality product." Read More ›

(Reformed) New Scientist 4: There is more to inheritance than just genes

At New Scientist: “Subsequent studies in plants and animals suggest that epigenetic inheritance is more common than anyone had expected. Whatʼs more, compared with genetic inheritance, it has some big advantages. Environments can change rapidly and dramatically, but genetic mutations are random, so often require generations to take hold.” Just think, within a few years, genetics might start to make some sense. You’ve got to hand it to the New Scientist gang; when they rethink, they really do. Read More ›

Debunking another claim that an alleged “pillar” of human exceptionalism has “fallen”

Stripped of the rhetoric about supposedly fallen “pillars of human exceptionalism,” the researchers found a neuronal response in carrion crows that “might be a broad marker” for consciousness. Well, sure, it might. But before we get carried away, the consciousness we should know the most about is human consciousness, which remains almost a complete mystery to us, despite much research. Read More ›

How much computing power would we need to evolve computer via Darwinian evolution that can program itself ?

But read the fine print: We would need to run many trials of planets in parallel in order to simulate the real conditions in the universe. Yampolskiy concludes, ‘In fact, depending on some assumptions we make regarding multiverse, quantum aspects of biology, and probabilistic nature of Darwinian algorithm such compute may never be available.’” Read More ›

Book by classical philosopher of design in nature is now available after 200 years

At Amazon: The Lectures on Natural Theology were not included in the ten-volume Edinburgh Edition of Reid's collected works. Moreover, while two earlier editions of these lectures exist, both contain serious mistakes of transcription and annotation. For these reasons, this carefully revised edition of this important text fills an important gap in the literature. Read More ›

Richard Dawkins is getting canceled again

Apparently, when Richard Dawkins said he was an atheist, some people didn’t realize that he rejected Islam along with Christianity. The stark reality is that the post-Christian student does not want to win a debate but rather to cancel it. Read More ›

Jonathan Bartlett: Elon Musk inadvertently tumbles to a big problem in origin of life theory

Bartlett: Indeed, whatever the difficulty of creating life in the lab, making individual prototypes is not nearly as problematic as making “the machine that makes the machine,” which all reproducing living cells can do. That is, the ability of an organism to reproduce is at least an order of magnitude harder that the ability of an organism to just live. Read More ›

Christian Scientific Society’s upcoming online seminar: “Is the Natural World Good or Bad?”

Talks include: Stuart Burgess, professor of engineering, University of Bristol, discussing the "bad design" argument (a.k.a. the "Panda's Thumb" argument) and design tradeoffs. Read More ›