Excerpt from: “There is a God, How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”
At The Debrief: The Case for Alien Life Elevated By the Exciting First-Ever Confirmation of Two Exoplanet Water Worlds
At Phys.org: Experimentalists: Sorry, no oxygen required to make these minerals on Mars
At SciTech Daily: Hubble Space Telescope Captures Festive and Free-Floating Scene
At Evolution News: “Why Life?”: A Question Atheist Scientists Never Ask
Stephen J. Iacoboni‘s article contains a profound question… One cannot understand organisms — that is, life itself — without incorporating the concept of purpose within biology, the science of organisms. Such purpose is observable and measurable, and therefore well within the bounds of scientific inquiry. In order to understand life, it is not sufficient to simply observe what is happening. The real question is why things are the way they are. However, did we not just decide that animals eat because they are hungry and avoid danger to eschew harm? Yes, these are clearly purpose-driven activities, and they all have a biochemical or physiologic basis. True enough. But the deeper question is, why are these physiologic stimuli there in the first place? Answer: to allow for Read More ›
At Big Think: What sort of ethics would aliens practice?
At Evolution News: Salt of the Earth Regulates Habitability
Origenes on the self-defeating incoherence of the [hyper-]skeptic
Origenes is on fire these days, so let’s headline: [Origenes, emergence play thread, 57:] The skeptic wants to criticize, but he doesn’t want to be criticized himself. We all make statements of belief, skeptics included. But the skeptic posits a closed circle in which no beliefs are justified. Yet at the same time, he arrogates to himself a position outside of this circle by which he can judge the beliefs of others, a move he denies to his opponents. Since the raison d’être of his thesis is that there is no outside of the circle, he does not have the epistemic right to assume a position independent of it, and so his belief about the unjustifiability of beliefs or reasoning Read More ›
At Sci.News: Human Bipedalism May Have Evolved in Trees, Study Says
At Astronomy.com: The universe may be more unstable than you think
Michael Denton: The Miracle of Man
Your Designed Body: Engineering Hurdles
Annual Fundraising Drive
Please support UD! Everyone has heard of a “shoestring budget.” But did you know that UD gets by on an “aglet budget”? What is an aglet? you ask. An aglet is that little plastic sheath at the end of a shoestring. That’s right. Our budget is so small that we only wish we could get by on a shoestring. All of which is prelude to our annual holiday fundraising drive. If you have benefited from Caspian’s and the News Desk’s tireless efforts chasing the latest ID-related happenings, or KF’s in-depth analysis of the fundamentals, or any of our other UD features, please consider a donation to help fund our efforts. The Donate button is there on the right of the Read More ›