Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

William Lane Craig and atheist actor Scott Clifton on the Kalam Cosmological Constant

The Kalam Cosmological Constant “uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from particular alleged facts about the universe (cosmos) to the existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God.” - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More ›

At ScienceNews: Statistical significance as a strange idea

Bower: To make matters worse, psychology journals began to publish papers only if they reported statistically significant findings, prompting a surprisingly large number of investigators to massage their data — either by gaming the system or cheating — to get below the P value of 0.05 that granted that status. Inevitably, bogus findings and chance associations began to proliferate. Read More ›

Researchers find Philippine group to have highest known Denisovan ancestry

Don’t you just love the way the writer refers to the Denisovans as a “species” that went “extinct” (like Tyrannosaurus?) As Darwinism dies out, its usages begin to sound more and more, well, quaint. Read More ›

Geostrategic developments, fall of Kabul

The weekend marked a shock-wave event, the rapid fall of Kabul that was not supposed to happen. Twenty years of nation-building attempt failures, a poorly managed withdrawal, abandonment of 14 – 86,000 supportive allies, logistically crippled government forces and likely bribing local commanders led to a one-week collapse. This primarily speaks to strategic and operational incompetence of the US decision-makers as a class as a better managed withdrawal was clearly feasible and a soft landing end state was arguably possible. Trillions wasted, with blood also on the line. Predictably, mass murders, return to utter unbridled barbarism, hosting of terrorism and likely a surge in opium-based drugs esp. Heroin. More subtly, Afghanistan counts as in the direction of Khorasan in Islamist Read More ›

Karsten Pultz on why randomness depends on order

Pultz: Comparing to evolution, the randomness produced by the orderly dice, would be the same randomness having produced the dice itself, because that’s how evolution works, slowly building order by random events from the bottom up. Applying the same hypothetical process to bicycles the random event that I get a puncture when riding my bike would be the same type of event which initially created the bike. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Buddhist monks’ bodies decay very slowly at death

According to traditional meditation lore, they are in a meditative state (thukdam) until their consciousness is clear; only then does the body begins to decay. Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson. saw it for himself, then organized a study of the phenomenon. Read More ›

ENCODE foe Dan Graur isn’t sure if Jesus existed

Wow. Dr. Graur should get out more. Only crackpots argue that Jesus did not exist... There is less evidence for the existence of Socrates but no one gets all skeptical about him. Interesting responses. Read More ›

William Lane Craig and Alvin Planting rank in Top Ten of world philosophers

Craig: What is especially significant is that these rankings are not just someone’s subjective opinion but are computed according to an algorithm that takes into account such objective data as number of citations of one’s work. Read More ›

At Forbes: Could dark energy be a misinterpretation of the data?

Siegel: In the near future, observatories like the ESA’s Euclid, the NSF’s Vera Rubin Observatory, and NASA’s Nancy Roman Observatory will improve that uncertainty so that if dark energy departs from a constant by as little as ~1-2%, we’ll be able to detect it. If it strengthens or weakens over time, or varies in different directions, it would be a revolutionary new indicator that dark energy is even more exotic than we currently think. Read More ›

Jordan Peterson’s reflections on Twitter on reading Steve Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis

Jordan, if you believe Meyer is right or even partways right or is making a good case, stand your ground. You have already faced some of the most incomprehensibly vicious mobs that Cancel Culture has spewed and you are still standing. Follow the evidence, not the crybullies. You, of all people, can afford to and it would do immense good. Read More ›

At New Scientist: Ancient comb jelly more complex than its modern relatives?

Well, it’s a good thing for “evolutionary theory” that it doesn’t “preclude” life forms becoming “simpler over geological time.” That’s called devolution and it is in fact very common. Read More ›

Chase Nelson at Inference Review: Reconstructing ancestral proteins

Nelson: "... it is only possible to scratch the surface of evolutionary history—only those proteins which diverged relatively recently remain similar enough to compare with confidence. The deepest questions about the origins of novel gene families remain shrouded in mystery." Read More ›