This just in: No
Month: November 2021
Two new papers support Michael Behe’s thesis in Darwin Devolves
The thesis is that much evolution consists in dumping rather than adding complexity. Details, details. Subtraction is just addition with minus numbers, right? 😉 Would it be legal to teach Darwin Devolves in a U.S. school system?
Rocky exoplanets turn out to feature exotic rocks
At ScienceDaily: “While some exoplanets that once orbited polluted white dwarfs appear similar to Earth, most have rock types that are exotic to our Solar System,” said Xu. “They have no direct counterparts in the Solar System.”
At Mind Matters News: For Ants, Building a Bridge Is No “Simple” Task
Richard Stevens: Cassell shows that animal algorithms must be designed top-down starting with a goal, fashioning the data input sensors, developing the necessary procedures, and implementing them in software to direct hardware. Yet the Quanta Magazine piece reported that Panamanian army ants’ procedures for building bridges of living ants is accomplished using a “simple algorithm.”
Ars Technica slams claims re living, reproducing robots
At Ars Technica: But the paper buried this in language that, at best, is overhyped, and the researchers aren’t even being technically accurate when describing this work to the press. At a time when trust in science seems to be at an all-time low, this isn’t likely to be helpful.
Latest Sokal Hoax is a beaut
Look on the bright side. At least the money we spend supporting “higher education” is paying for entertainment. And, if you have got a subscription, get a screen shot while you can.
Sabine Hossenfelder explains why antimatter doesn’t fall up
Hossenfelder: Inside a neutron and proton there aren’t just three quarks. There’s really a soup of particles that holds the quarks together, and some of the particles in the soup are anti-particles. Why don’t those anti-particles annihilate? They do. They are created and annihilate all the time. We therefore call them “virtual particles.” But they still make a substantial contribution to the gravitational mass of neutrons and protons.
At Mind Matters News: Why panpsychism is starting to push out naturalism
Panpsychism eliminates the crudities of Darwinism. For example, if consciousness is assumed to be a natural development in the most complex life forms, human consciousness would have happened, whether it improved survival or not. Darwinian controversies on the topic become pointless or anyway, much less significant. Perhaps that’s why a classical Darwinian, who needs to see human consciousness as a simple but controversial accident, views panpsychism with hostility.
Christian Darwinists must now backtrack re Adam and Eve
Casey Luskin: “When I was reading the rhetoric used by evangelical elites who advocated abandoning a historical Adam and Eve, I was struck by how much of it seemed driven by fear — fear of looking foolish before the world because you challenged evolution and were shown to be wrong.” Maybe being right, sticking with their tradition, would have been a bigger problem for them.
Part 2 of New introduction to intelligent design: Recognizing Design Part 2
In Part 1, we look at evidence that the universe had a beginning, therefore it had a Beginner – a Creator. We look more deeply at the information in DNA that makes life possible. Part 2 applies the core concepts of irreducible complexity and functional coherence to one of the most important functions in each cell – energy production.
At Mind Matters News: Can quantum physics, neuroscience merge as quantum consciousness?
The problem is, if we assume that “the mind is nothing more than the brain,” there may be nothing we can discover about how it works. Gleiser wishes we could prove that that’s wrong but he can’t.
Bill Dembski offers some thoughts on the current state of Christian apologetics
Dembski: I say Christian apologetics needs to be expanded and upgraded rather than reconceptualized or reimagined.
Three hundred new exoplanets found
Researchers: Studying such a large new group of bodies could help scientists better understand how planets form and orbits evolve, and it could provide new insights about how unusual our solar system is.
At Mind Matters News: Exoplanets: The same laws of physics means similar life forms
Even on Earth, life forms of widely differing ancestry, arrive at the same solutions to physics problems, leading scientists note. On Simon Conway Morris’s view, life forms that fly on exoplanets will do what birds, bats, and insects do here, they say. Intelligent species may even look roughly like us.
Good news: Jordan Peterson is Uncanceled at Cambridge U
Cambridge philosophy prof, Arif Ahmed, fills us in. If your alma mater isn’t following Cambridge’s lead, stop giving. We don’t need finishing schools for censorious ignoramuses and dunces, often on the verge of violence.