Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

A review of Nicholas Spencer’s Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion

Wootton on Spencer: "... he doesn’t seem to grasp that the pared down, purely ‘spiritual’ religion he defends has virtually nothing in common with that of Augustine, Calvin, Loyola and Newman." Read More ›

“Trust the Science!” Files: Prof punished for saying the obvious

RNA expert Patrick Provost: “I was just doing what I was hired to do,” he said in an interview. “I had some concerns about something, I searched the literature and I prepared a talk and I delivered it to the public. Being censored for doing what I’ve been trained to do — and hired to do — well, it’s hard to believe.” Read More ›

Peer reviewed paper calls for changes to Darwinism

Stay tuned. If conclusions that cast doubt on settled, easy Darwinism are allowed to just be published and stay published, with no one punished - think of the huge swathes of sloppy Darwinian claims in the literature that could suddenly become subject to actual scrutiny… Omigosh… it would start to look like actual science… Read More ›

The “starseeds” among us: In case we thought reason was going to get a fair shake out of all this “science” stuff…

Drinkwater et al.: "Star people, or starseeds, are individuals who believe they have come to Earth from other dimensions to help heal the planet and guide humanity into the "golden age" – a period of great happiness, prosperity, and achievement." It's more popular than we might have expected. Read More ›

And now for something completely different, from spider world: Brown widows kill black widows

Seriously, this is one situation where legitimate ecology concern is not helped by natural human emotion, as in the case of eagles, for example. Natural human emotion, in this case, is more along the lines of: Oh, why can’t they all just kill each other? Read More ›

L&FP, 66: String — yes, s-t-r-i-n-g — data structures as key information storage arrays (thus the significance of DNA and mRNA)

One of the more peculiar objections to the design inference is the strident, often repeated claim that the genetic code is not a code, and that DNA and mRNA are not storing algorithmic, coded information used in protein synthesis. These are tied to the string (yes, s-t-r-i-n-g) data structure, a key foundational array for information storage, transfer and application. So, it seems useful to address the string as a key first principles issue, with the onward point being that strings of course can and do store coded information. Let us begin with, what a string — yes, s-t-r-i-n-g — is (though that should already be obvious from even the headline): Geeks for Geeks: A string is a sequence of characters, Read More ›

Junk DNA has yet another job – keeping mouse embryos alive

Depletion of MERVL transcripts [ retrotransposons] results in embryonic lethality with profound defects in development and is associated with dysregulation of MERVL including their adjacent transcripts, and retaining two-cell-like transcriptome and chromatin state. Read More ›