Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
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Jack Cole

New Look Coming Soon to Uncommon Descent

Tomorrow (Sunday), I will be implementing a new look to the Uncommon Descent website. This will not be an instantaneous process, so there may be a period of time when the site appearance is incomplete. We appreciate your patience in this process. Read More ›
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Interest in Intelligent Design is Strong

We thought the readers here might be interested in knowing a little bit about how much interest is out there for ID.  One gauge of that is UD’s traffic.  August traffic is at a high for the year with 31,000 more visits than the previous 7-month average (see graph). What is also of interest is the number of unique addresses visiting UD over the course of a month.  This is an indicator (although imperfect) of the number of individual computers that are used to view UD.  Note that this number has grown for every month that we have data for (sorry the data only goes back to April because of a server change). We think this shows that many people Read More ›

Dr. Michael Behe’s New Blog on Uncommon Descent

With the new technical enhancements behind the scenes on Uncommon Descent, we are now able to add individual blogs.  That said, we are happy to announce that the first individual blog we have added is that of Dr. Michael Behe.  All of his previous posts from his Amazon blog have been imported to his UD blog.   Dr. Behe plans to post on his new blog in the future. If you haven’t read his previous posts, you can now do so more conveniently.  We hope you enjoy it, and find it useful.  I have added a permanent link to his blog under “Intelligent Design Links.” Address:  http://behe.uncommondescent.com

New Cellular Animation: Journey Inside the Cell

Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, narrates a new video illustrating evidence for intelligent design within the cell.  This excellent new video illustrates aspects of the role of information in the cell including protein synthesis. From Evolution News and Views: “This video is going to make things worse for critics of intelligent design,” Dr. Meyer explains. “They will have more difficulty convincing the public that their eyes are deceiving them when the evidence for design literally unfolds before them in this animation.” Narrated by Meyer, the video is a short tour of the molecular labyrinth, the cell’s sophisticated information-processing system, which not only produces machines, but also reproduces itself.

Correlation does not imply causation unless Darwin is involved

You have probably heard the saying, “correlation does not imply causation.” In other words, just because two things are associated, it does not mean that one causes the other. Perhaps this time-honored standard of scientific investigation should be amended based on what is often practiced by Darwinists. I propose, “correlation and Darwinian storytelling imply causation.” This kind of thinking does not pass scientific muster, but it is the kind that is often practiced, particularly when the evolutionary roots of behavior are being studied.

As a case in point, consider the recent study, Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes.1

NewScientist2 reports on the study:

MUSICAL ability is linked to gene variants that help control social bonding. The finding adds weight to the notion that music developed to cement human relationships.

Järvelä thinks musical aptitude evolved because musical people were better at forming attachments to others: “Think of lullabies, which increase social bonding and possibly the survival of the baby.”

And from the original source: Read More ›