Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 10, 2021
Categorized
Atheism, Logic and Reason, theism
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Michael Egnor: Atheist Claims about logical fallacies often just mean: Shut Up!

Denyse O'Leary
October 10, 2021
Atheism, Logic and Reason, theism
In Egnor’s view, what atheists fear most is having to explain themselves, and the invocation of fictitious “fallacies” is one of their favorite ways to evade scrutiny. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design
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Can the fallout from mass extinctions enable prediction of patterns in evolution?

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design
The description of the research makes clear that evolution is seen as an intelligent agent, like a coach deploying players. "Think of this as the biosphere's version of choosing starters and benchwarmers based on height and weight more than skill after losing a big match. There may well be a logic to this game plan in the arc of evolution." But can evolution be both mindless and a strategic coach? Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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If dark energy is “neither particle nor field,” what is it?

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Siegel: "It is time to take seriously the idea that dark energy might simply be a property inherent to the very fabric of space. Until we learn how to calculate the zero-point energy of empty space itself, or gain some bizarre, surprising, and unanticipated evidence, this will remain one of the biggest existential questions in all the universe." So this is existentialism for physicists, right? Even Sabine Hossenfelder sounds sort of existential on this one. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Convergent evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, stasis
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Claim: Modern crocodiles are evolving rapidly

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Convergent evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, stasis
Into what? Crocobirds? Smithsonian Magazine is anxious for us to know that they are NOT "living fossils." They have evolved a lot, we are told, though admittedly they are evolving around in a circle. It would be interesting to know why stasis became such a threatening concept in some quarters. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Books of interest, Evolution, Intelligent Design
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Douglas Axe chapter excerpt: Can proteins evolve?

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Books of interest, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Axe: A random gene would specify a random sequence of amino acids, which would flop around without folding. Chains like that are rapidly broken back down into amino acids to keep them from interfering with cellular processes. Very special amino acid sequences are needed for protein chains to fold into stable structures. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 8, 2021
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science
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Tal Bachman on the folly of “Trust science!”

Denyse O'Leary
October 8, 2021
Culture, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science
Prediction: As the smarter portion of the population begins to piece together what’s happened in the past few years, “Science!” is going to take a beating in public reputation. That’s too bad. But, under the circumstances, the harm done by continued uncritical belief may be greater than the harm done by disillusionment. Agree or disagree, we will likely find out. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 8, 2021
Categorized
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
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At Mind Matters News: Does a chimp mom who carries a dead baby around understand death?

Denyse O'Leary
October 8, 2021
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
The point about death — as a human understands it — is that the deceased loved one is never coming back. That is why human mothers do not carry a dead baby around for months. The primates’ behavior definitely demonstrates grief in the sense of attachment but also makes clear that they don’t understand what death means. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 8, 2021
Categorized
'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design
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Jonathan Wells reflects on the importance of “junk DNA” to Francis Collins’ Language of God

Denyse O'Leary
October 8, 2021
'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design
Wells: It’s not a moral failure to be mistaken about evidence that supposedly supports Darwinian evolution. But the title of Collins’s Language of God was deceptive from the start. And Collins has looked the other way as it has continued to deceive. I consider this one more moral failure of Francis Collins. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 7, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Design inference, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Preprint paper by Nobel Prize winner on mind-like processes underlying the order in nature

Denyse O'Leary
October 7, 2021
Cosmology, Design inference, Intelligent Design
Josephson: David Bohm suggested that some kind of implicate order underlies the manifest order observed in physical systems, while others have suggested that some kind of mind-like process underlies this order. In the following a more explicit picture is proposed, based on the existence of parallels between spontaneously fluctuating equilibrium states and life processes. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 7, 2021
Categorized
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design
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Robert Shedinger’s recent podcast on Darwinism vs. design

Denyse O'Leary
October 7, 2021
Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design
Luther College prof Robert F. Shedinger has two books, Jesus and Jihad: Reclaiming the Prophetic Heart of Christianity and Islam and The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology's Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion. It appears that, although the intention was to talk about both books, the design controversy stole the show. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 7, 2021
Categorized
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Rob Sheldon: Migrating birds’ mysterious quantum sense is “spooky”

Denyse O'Leary
October 7, 2021
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
Sheldon: "Since this sensing is happening at the level of electron spins and excitation, it is an inherently QM [quantum mechanical] effect, hence the title of the article." The spooky part is how finely tuned the bird's sensitivity is: "Packing a $10,000 lock-in amplifier into a 2 micron cell." Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 7, 2021
Categorized
'Junk DNA'
Tagged
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Casey Luskin reflects on the “official” demise of the term “junk DNA”

Denyse O'Leary
October 7, 2021
'Junk DNA'
Luskin: “these authors remember a day when ‘the common doctrine was that the nonprotein coding part of eukaryotic genome’ consisted of ‘“useless sequences, often organized in repetitive elements.’” Good. Keep the history alive. It won’t be very long before Darwinians start claiming that they never thought it was junk. Then they will start insinuating that WE said it was junk. No, that doesn’t make any sense but if the history is forgotten, it doesn’t need to either. Read More ›