Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The new John Lennox film, Against the Tide

John Lennox is the Oxford mathematician who wrote 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020), among many other books. "The fascinating biopic tells the story of Lennox's life defending the harmony between science and faith." Read More ›

A petition is going the rounds urging that Richard Dawkins be allowed to speak at Trinity College

ID types are urging people to sign the petition. Sign it if you like Uncommon Descent. Because we are just so NOT Cancel Culture. Read More ›

Outlining A Functional Mental Reality Theory

By accepting the fundamental, unequivocal logical fact that our experiential existence is necessarily, entirely mental in nature, and accepting the unambiguous scientific evidence that supports this view, we can move on to the task of developing a functioning and useful theory of mental reality. I will attempt to roughly outline such a theory here, with the caveat that trying to express such a theory in language that is thoroughly steeped in external, physical world ideology is at best difficult. Another caveat would be that, even though the categorical nature of the theory probably cannot be disproved (mental reality would account for all possible experiences,) some models might prove more useful and thus be better models. IMO, the phrase “we live Read More ›

Journal editors now claim they didn’t “know” that the Thorvaldsen and Hossjer paper was ID-friendly

In Klinghoffer’s telling, maybe the editors thought the paper was okay, maybe even interesting. Then they got mobbed by Darwin thugs and now can’t cringe low enough to atone for their grievous error. Surely there’s a floor down there somewhere… Read More ›

(Reformed) New Scientist on life forms evolving without changing genes

At New Scientist: Some plants change without changing genetically, in their quest to survive. This just in: The Selfish Gene has left the building in tears. They shouldn’t even have been discussing this. Read More ›

Simple, Unambigous Evidence We Do Not Live In An Objective, External Material World

When how I choose to observe a photon at a particular time and place can (1) instantaneously affect a photon a billion light years away and (2) retroactively changes the history of that photon (delayed choice quantum eraser), and when we have searched far, wide and deep and have not found any “matter,” we have comprehensive, conclusive evidence that we do not live in an objective, external, material world. At some point, if your views are guided by reason and evidence, you will have to accept that whatever “experience” is, it is not caused by an objective, external, material world.

Origin of life dustup: Once again, we discover why we love Inference Review

A genuine discussion between Helen Hansma and Brian Miller in the Letters Section about whether mica sheets made a difference. A refuge for serious dialogue. No pussyhats. No political endorsements. Read More ›

At Gizmodo: 24 planets might be better places to live than Earth

As in: “For exoplanets to be superhabitable, they should be older, larger, heavier, warmer, and wetter compared to Earth, and ideally located around stars with longer lifespans than our own. So yeah, not only is Earth inferior, so too is our Sun, according to the new research.” Read More ›

Rob Sheldon responds to Nature’s decision to go political: Are they really scientists or just political hacks?

Sheldon: My best explanation is that the editors of Nature, SciAm, NEJM are themselves not research scientists, but political hacks—hired under the supposition that good relations with government funders required not science but PR. Read More ›

Ethan Siegel at Forbes on “finally” making the United States a “scientific nation”

Siegel: “It is a fundamentally misinformative act to present multiple sides of a controversial issue equally when the scientific consensus overwhelmingly favors one perspective.” Actually, consensus is achieved in many ways, including some that contribute to the likelihood that the consensus will be wrong, no matter how many experts believe it. In fact, the surest way to often be wrong is to adopt the very attitude Siegel displays here. Read More ›

Researcher: We need a new Theory of Everything, one with no “things”

We’d have to guess that Stephen Wolfram’s attempt at a Theory of Everything didn’t solve all the problems. At any rate, by the time we get down to “a theory of every thing requires that one not start with a thing,” it’s not easy to distinguish science from Zen. But then maybe that’s the idea. Read More ›

(Reformed) New Scientist takes horizontal gene transfer seriously

At New Scientist: “‘Yeast and bacteria have fundamentally different ways of turning DNA into protein, and this seemed like a really, really strange phenomenon,’ he says.” They ain’t seen nothing yet. If you subtract the “random mutation” from “natural selection,” what’s left of Darwinism? By the time the Raging Woke hammer down Darwin’s statue, chances are the New Scientist crowd will have forgotten who the old Brit toff even was. Shrug. Read More ›