Alex Berezow: The point is that hopping aboard a political bandwagon is good for grabbing attention — and subsequently, funding. We are witnessing a similar phenomenon with respect to climate change. No matter how extraneous a topic, researchers try to tie it to climate change.
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
Some at-your-fingertips stats on human–chimp similarity
Casey Luskin: “many non-coding sequences are highly dissimilar, and there are sequences of the human and chimp genomes that are so different that they can’t be aligned for comparison. For example, there are some parts of our genome, such as the human y chromosome, that are radically different from the chimp genome.”
At Mind Matters News, some fun: Would ET intelligences understand the 1974 Arecibo Message?
In early, easily-mocked sci fi, a little green man points his raygun at an unsuspecting passerby and barks “Take me to your leader.” Fast forward: If the little green man didn’t have the technology to figure out who the leader was before landing, he certainly wouldn’t have the technology to get here.
Rob Sheldon on the current trend to non-theist intelligent design (ID) theory
When some people wrote privately to protest that this ET>Big Bang stuff is all just one space bunny too far down the cosmic path, I (O’Leary for News) pointed out in response that Neil deGrasse Tyson (here), Martin Rees (here), and Elon Musk (here) have also suggested that very thing. Well, now theoretical physicist Rob Sheldon writes to offer some thoughts on the new-found popularity.
Jonathan Witt: Why is common descent a better explanation for the history of life than common design?
It’s one of those questions that many never ask because they are so used to hearing the Correct Answer that no other answers surface. And they would not, of course, know objections to the Correct Answer.
At Mind Matters News: Compassion and religion: Darwin’s unscratchable itches
If one’s research is in a hole as deep as evolutionary psychology is when accounting for compassion, why not stop digging? Stop digging? The hole evolutionary psychologists are digging IS the enterprise. Any motive that didn’t merely spread selfish genes would be invisible to them.
Did Francis Collins or Anthony Fauci have any role in the slow torture death of beagle puppies in Tunisia?
As now alleged? Some US legislators want answers. We’ve been warning for some time that “Trust the Science” is going to take a huge — and well-deserved — beating among intelligent people. This’ll help that along.
Berkeley scientist and center director resigns over MIT’s deplatforming of exoplanet scientist
Note how little difference facts of science make in these matters — whether Abbot has anything to say that contributes to our knowledge does not matter of the Woke are displeased. Darwinism was the original Wokeness in science — immune to fact-based critique. The people who thought that that didn’t concern them are now formally wrong. It’s everywhere now.
Sabine Hossenfelder: No way to tell if the universe was fine-tuned for us — Rob Sheldon partially agrees
Sheldon: Even though I agree with Sabine about the fine tuning argument, I disagree strongly with her about the significance of the design we see in the world. “It just is” is not an explanation.
At Mind Matters News: Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang
Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well.
At Evolution News: Three stunners challenge traditional Darwinism
At ENST: Scientists at Flinders University in Australia found that our DNA spreads up to a meter around us without even touching anything. We’re leaving breadcrumbs of genetic code everywhere we go!
Physicist Marcelo Gleiser: Beauty in the universe is an “illusory consequence of our human mathematics”
So what, exactly, is this “false and illusory” view of our universe? Is this short essay another veiled “correct” assault on the fact of the fine-tuning of the universe for life? There seems to be a lot of that out there these days. Orthodox science is now in a deadly conflict with facts… There can only be one outcome.
Researchers study why many life forms discard pieces of their DNA as they develop
Researchers: “A surprisingly wide array of creatures, all the way up to some vertebrates, dump significant stretches of DNA during early development, so the stretches don’t end up in most of their body cells.” [Only in the germ cells they pass on.]
Design theorist Eric Anderson on claims for a self-replicating machine
Anderson: “The Cornell molecubes didn’t build themselves. Instead, they were built by intelligent researchers using other tools and systems — by a separate “factory” so to speak — that was, in turn, built by other tools and systems, and so on. Yet beyond the observation of this uncomfortable regress, there are several additional instructive issues we need to examine if we are to really appreciate what self-replication entails.”
Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne learns s thing or three about censorship – when he’s not doling it out
The explanation for Coyne’s sudden support for academic freedom might be fairly simple: He thought that Cancel Culture would only ever be deployed against people who think that nature shows evidence of design. He never expected it to come for people HE values.