Mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski explains the theory of intelligent design and examines its successes and challenges over the past decades. (2021)
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
Monarch butterflies: “Remarkable” instance of concurrent evolution
“It’s remarkable that concurrent evolution occurred at the molecular level in all these animals,” said UCR evolutionary biologist and study lead Simon “Niels” Groen. “Plant toxins caused evolutionary changes across at least three levels of the food chain!”
How did a mammoth tusk from well over 100,000 years ago end up deep in the ocean?
Whatever happened, the find shows that a fully terrestrial mammal can get buried in ocean sediment. So, he asks, what about some of the papers that show apparent transitional terrestrial whale fossils that are buried in deeper sea conditions? How do we know that some of these fossils had anything to do with the ocean. No doubt the ocean holds more secrets.
At Mind Matters News: Astronomer: Hunt for ET can unify science and religion
Fewer scientists seem to think we can do without any source of intelligence for the creation of the universe. Hence the idea that advanced ET created it.
In time for American Thanksgiving: Stephen Meyer on “the frailty of scientific atheism”
Materialist atheism is — you read it here first — slowly being destroyed by panpsychism. Panpsychism (everything is conscious) makes more sense. Recall Egnor’s Principle: If your hypothesis is that even electrons are conscious, your hypothesis is likely wrong. But if your hypothesis is that the human mind is an illusion, then… you don’t have a hypothesis. That’s slowly killing “scientific” atheism.
Paleontologist Gunter Bechly on what the fossil record actually says
“There are multiple trade secrets among paleontologists. Chief among them is that Darwin’s insistence on gradualism was motivated by his understanding that the dramatic jumps found in the fossil record imply intervention. Darwin hoped that time would reveal his desperately needed transitional fossils. It has not… “
At Mind Matters News: If reality is fundamentally mathematical, why the war on math?
Perhaps we all need to recall something: The Iron Ring of the Canadian engineers is forged from the steel of a bridge that collapsed and cost 75 lives. That ring is intended as a warning, not a training manual. It turns out that in the real world, right or wrong answers in math do matter.
Surprise! Cue Shock! Study finds “bias” in biomedical journals
The rest of the news release goes on to minimize the problem and soften the blow — not the usual approach in media (for good reason). Lost somewhere in the snow: “Some of these authors, the researchers said, are also on the editorial boards of the journals.”
What the Miller-Urey experiment got wrong
Miller and Urey produced simple amino acids but then nothing happened. Apparently, the containers you use to try to make life in a test tube matter. When life got started, they always used Teflon.
Horizontal gene transfer: Bacteria apparently despise the selfish gene
Researchers: “Cooperation is ubiquitous in bacterial populations. Bacteria produce and share public goods, providing indiscriminate benefits to their neighbors at cost to themselves.” It makes sense but it isn’t yer old biology teacher’s evolution.
At Mind Matters News: British government moves to protect octopuses from cruelty
Researchers are probing why some invertebrates are as smart as vertebrates. It seems that there is no straightforward evolutionary path to smartness.
Here’s a new short on epigenetics
A short movie which describes why the identical twins Lucky Lyle and Troubled Tim end up with totally different personalities. Is it environment or genetics? Or perhaps both?
Eric Cassell on the mystery of Monarch butterfly migration
There exists no evolutionary model that satisfactorily explains its origin. That by itself does not prove that gradual evolution didn’t produce such programming, but the lack of such a model should at least give the open-minded pause for reflection.
At Mind Matters News: Does science disprove free will? A physicist says no
Apart from simple laws governing neurons, we have no clue what laws the mind follows, though it does show complex nonlinear dynamics.
Laszlo Bencze offers a thought experiment on whether a random mistake can create information
Bencze: Even in this rare case of a random mistake seemingly creating information (Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, The Man-Moth), the ability of an intelligent agent to notice and respond was critically important.