Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Year

2022

Ghostly ‘mirror world’ might be cause of cosmic controversy 

University of New Mexico: New research suggests an unseen ‘mirror world’ of particles that interacts with our world only via gravity that might be the key to solving a major puzzle in cosmology today – the Hubble constant problem. Read More ›

Article by David Snoke: Spontaneous Appearance of Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Dr. Snoke's recent article, published in Biocosmos, dives into the important topic of the link between the 2nd law of thermodynamics, information theory, and living systems. He explores the notion of physical law, similar to the 2nd law, that applies to information, and concludes that "there is a fundamental entropy problem with the origin of life." Read More ›

Eric Hedin and our cultural moment

UD welcomes our new News anchor. As a starter for reflection, let’s clip from his current book: Naturalism holds that nature is all there is,and that the order of the universe, including the order of the living world,is merely the result of the laws of nature, or, as some put it, of “chance andnecessity.” [Jerry] Coyne went a step further. He insisted that this view cannoteven be questioned in a public university science course—or to be moreprecise, cannot be questioned even in a cross-disciplinary course on sci-entific discoveries and their larger cultural implications.But the question as to whether philosophical naturalism is true istoo important to shove into a corner. This and other closely related ques-tions are precisely those anyone striving Read More ›

Gene-edited hamsters did not behave as expected

Hamsters from hell. Quote of the decade: “We don't understand this system as well as we thought we did.” One suspects that some of these people are going to learn respect for the design of life the hard way. Hope it’s not too hard on the rest of us. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Study: Eight-week mindfulness courses do not change the brain

O'Leary: Eight-week courses don't provide enough time. Tibetan monks can control metabolism and even brain waves through meditation but they devote their lives to it. It would be more surprising if that fact had no effect on their brains than if it does. Read More ›

At Evolution News: Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?

David Coppedge: "The old mechanical philosophy is hopelessly inadequate for these realities. The reason? We know from our experience that unguided natural law does not produce machinery, factories, and quality control. Something else is required: information." He recommended Bill Dembski's book, Being as Communion. Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder on the closest we have to a theory of everything

She argues that the principle of least action is the closest we have to a theory of everything but, of course, along comes quantum mechanics and… Quantum mechanics keeps the world interesting and reminds us that this is not a deterministic world after all. Read More ›

Are all those codes used by cells really “codes”?

One biologist thinks that only DNA is really a code. David Coppedge disagrees. Coppedge: But it seems fair to categorize codes separately if they contain unique information and produce unique results. Even if histones are built from DNA, once they are assembled, they no longer rely on the genetic code. Read More ›

Some species thought to be extinct may simply be “lost”

Apart from loss of habitat due to human encroachment, it would be interesting to know whether there is much study of patterns that govern extinctions — that is, natural extinctions. Paleontologist David Raup (1933–2015) wrote quite a good book on the topic, Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck in 1991 but it’s not clear how much has been done since then. Read More ›

Evolution News: In His New Book, Denton Shows How Science Leads the Charge to Theism

Thomas: Recent advances in biological science, a subject formerly proclaimed to be corrosive of metaphysical beliefs have somewhat unexpectedly become a stimulus to the emergence of new advances which endorse many of the older observations of natural theology. As astronomer Paul Davies remarked some four decades ago, “It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.” Read More ›