Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Debate in a Nutshell

The whole design debate could not be simpler, and neither side’s viewpoint really requires much scientific expertise to understand: On the one hand, most scientists say, nothing can possibly be beyond the reach of our science, so if we can’t explain where the designer came from, there CAN’T be any design in Nature. (See last segment of video below) On the other hand, even if there “can’t be” any design in Nature, it is absurdly, spectacularly, ridiculously, blindingly obvious that there is.

According to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, the universe has never truly been empty

But wait. If it was truly empty, it would not exist, right? What we mean by the “universe” is everything that exists. So, if it’s “empty,” nothing exists. Of course, it could always exist as an abstract idea but then it must be the abstract idea of a Being in another dimension. Read More ›

Bats are born knowing how to measure speed in time, not distance

Most interesting. But what does the professor mean when he says, "we hypothesize that an evolutionary 'choice' was made to be born with this knowledge in order to save time during the sensitive development period." So evolution is a designer that makes choices? But, as Michael Behe would ask, “How, exactly?” He can’t walk away from the problem just by putting “choice” in quotation marks. Read More ›

National Academy of Sciences attempts to grapple with “misinformation” and “disinformation”

Well, re COVID-19, a good deal of that disinformation and misinformation was purveyed by authorities, scientific and political. Books have been written about that. It’s going to take a long time to come back from this and authoritarian posturing won’t help. It would just prove the cynics right. Read More ›

Re design in nature: New AAAS head says… What? Follow the… evidence?

Of course, Dr. Parikh may be forced to clarify and qualify, to make clear that Darwinism, however implausible in the light of new evidence, occupies a special position as the single greatest idea anyone ever had. But if he even put on the table the idea of following the evidence instead of the demand for assent, he can't just take it back with no one noticing. Read More ›

Emergence and the Dormitive Principle

There is a famous passage in Molière’s play The Imaginary Invalid in which he satirizes the tactic of tautology given as explanation.  A group of medieval doctors are giving an oral exam to a doctoral candidate, and they ask him why opium causes people to get sleepy.  The candidate responds: Mihi à docto DoctoreDomandatur causam & rationem, quareOpium facit dormire ?A quoy respondeo,Quia est in eoVirtus dormitiua,Cuius est naturaSensus assoupire. Which is translated: I am asked by the learned doctor the cause and reason why opium causes sleep.  To which I reply, because it has a dormitive property, whose nature is to lull the senses to sleep. Of course, “dormitive” is derived from the Latin “dormire,” which means to sleep.  Thus, Read More ›

Michael Flannery on non-Darwinian discoverer of the Archaea, Carl Woese

Woese as "scarred revolutionary"? He had to fight hard to get the Archaea, the third kingdom of life, accepted. He regretted that he had not succeeded in overthrowing “the hegemony of the culture of Darwin.” Read More ›

Hybridization is much more common and normal among animals than once thought

Darwinian Ernst Mayr cast doubt on hybridization as an important source of change so for decades few believed it could be. Now, says one researcher, the consensus is that it “is hugely widespread and much more common than was appreciated.” But isn’t hybridization cutting into a lot of the things Darwinism supposedly did? Read More ›

How Sabine Hossenfelder’s opinion of dark matter has changed over 20 years

She thinks the solution now is to combine dark matter with modified gravity. Now that will be a challenge. We kind of wish she would go back to denying free will and fine-tuning of the universe. Read More ›