Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Year

2022

Charming bacteria set off virus bombs in their neighbors

Researchers aren't yet sure if it happens outside the lab. If it is the case, then it is another example of a life form having strategy that raises the question, “Could it really have randomly evolved with no underlying intelligence in nature?” Lot of those questions piling up. Read More ›

What makes a law of nature a “law,” exactly?

Philosopher Marc Lange: Laws of nature can explain why something failed to happen by revealing that it cannot happen – that it is impossible. If so, there can’t really be “laws” of evolution unless we can show that no other outcome is possible. Read More ›

Researchers: Some genes are unique to humans

One of the faculty advisors is Nathan Lents, known to many readers as the author of a book, Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, claiming that humans are poorly designed. Perhaps we will soon hear that these unique, de novo genes were poorly designed. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Science writer: Explain-away-the-mind book doesn’t succeed

Ball notes that the Journey of the Mind authors’ (phantom) reductionist revolution relies on a single cognitive scientist’s work. It's not that he thinks it's a terrible book. But he supposes (unusually in this area) that critical standards matter and that he should apply them. Read More ›

How Darwinians deal with the lack of evidence for gradualism

They pick an easy target like body size, for one thing. A supposedly slam dunk paper deals with body size in mammals. Trouble is, says Casey Luskin, it’s too easy a topic. Body size is — everyone agrees — easily malleable, compared to say, the development of vision. Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder: Did the early universe really inflate rapidly?

Hossenfelder: In the popular science media, inflation is sometimes presented as if it was established fact. It isn’t. Its status is similar to that of particle dark matter. They are both unconfirmed hypotheses. But while most physicists agree that particle dark matter has yet to be empirically confirmed, opinions about inflation are extremely polarized. Read More ›

Neil Thomas on “Evolutionary Theory as Magical Thinking”

Thomas: The shaky logical basis of Darwin’s thinking has not gone entirely unremarked. The notion of a supposedly unintelligent yet remarkably independent “self-evolving” biosphere (like the postulation of a self-creating cosmos) presents, when dispassionately considered, an offense to logic great enough to invite attempts to square the circle. Read More ›

Yes, law schools have changed. Now here’s a key way media have changed

Media people today see freedom of speech in a much more hostile light. During the Convoy response to the COVID crazy here in Canada, we were explicitly given to understand that freedom of speech is a “right wing” value. That view is now widely shared. It would certainly have surprised generations of liberal-minded journalists. But if we ponder the matter for a moment, we can see what drives the change of view. Read More ›

Dr John Campbell, more on Ivermectin

Here is Dr John Campbell on Ivermectin (IVM): Recall, here is a picture of the kit used in Uttar Pradesh, India where the sort of protocol illustrated helped break the Delta dominated wave: Food for thought. END

Frank Herbert’s Secular Prophecy

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles Frank Herbert, Children of Dune Last Tuesday I arrived at an inflection point in my view about the prospects of a negotiated solution to our national divisions.  It was one of those shocking moments that slashes through the haze and brings startling clarity.  Law professor Ilya Shapiro was invited to speak at the U.C. Hastings Law School.  The event had to be cancelled because every time Shapiro attempted to speak, fascist students banged the table and shouted him down.  After enduring these Brownshirt tactics Read More ›

Neil Thomas on why so many 19th century thinkers turned a blind eye to Darwinism’s problems

It’s a religion without the transcendent hitch. That’s the main reason that so many people today are impervious to the fact that illustrations of Darwinism are often just nonsense barked in Darwin’s name. Read More ›