News

Jack Scanlan, over at Panda’s Thumb, asks, “Does intelligent design have a dualistic assumption, not a theistic one?”

Interesting question, his point being that dualism is not the same thing as theism.

A dualist may hold that nature is governed by a meta-nature, without that latter realm being “God.” Without being God, a meta-nature could exhibit in nature what looks like intelligence (and is). Comments?

There are many types of dualism: Read More ›

…  here’s Jerry Coyne on Giberson and Collins’ Biologos: Finally, Uncle Karl [Giberson] and Francis Collins have a new book! It’s called The Language of Science and Faith (the subtitle is Straight Answers to Genuine Questions), and appears to be based largely on the “frequently asked questions” section of BioLogos. Now Collins wasn’t supposed to be engaged in this Jebus-proselytizing after he took up the reins of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but I’ve seen assurances (I can’t find them at the moment) that his contribution to the book preceded his NIH directorship. I doubt, however, whether the volume will do much for his reputation. Whether the volume “does much for his reputation” depends principally on who needs the Read More ›

In “Chimps lose out by aping others” (New Scientist, 23 April 2011), we learn, Chimps seem curiously unable to use their own initiative to gain the best possible reward if this means behaving in a different way to a dominant group member. However, Hopper is not convinced that this behaviour means that chimps are less clever than we thought. “Copying what a dominant group member does could help the chimps to maintain alliances,” she says, much like the way humans follow fashion trends. News flash: “Troubled pop star turns up as homeless bag lady. Millions of women follow suit.”

According to “Evolution of Human ‘Super-Brain’ Tied to Development of Bipedalism, Tool-Making” ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011),

Scientists seeking to understand the origin of the human mind may want to look to honeybees — not ancestral apes — for at least some of the answers, according to a University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist.

It’s not known how many entomologists agree but,

CU-Boulder Research Associate John Hoffecker said there is abundant fossil and archaeological evidence for the evolution of the human mind, including its unique power to create a potentially infinite variety of thoughts expressed in the form of sentences, art and technologies. He attributes the evolving power of the mind to the formation of what he calls the “super-brain,” or collective mind, an event that took place in Africa no later than 75,000 years ago.[ … ] Read More ›

Brendan O’Neill invites readers to avoid the latest “anti-Bibles”, asking, Why, given their obtuse and ostentatious hostility towards organised religion and spiritual hoo-ha, are the so-called New Atheists so keen to refashion the Bible? What’s with all these secularist versions of ‘the good book’, minus the original’s miracles and resurrections and instead offering us guides to life firmly rooted in scientific fact and what poses as rationalism? This bible bonanza tells us a lot about the New Atheists. About their arrogance, their ignorance about where moral meaning comes from, and, most fundamentally, their allergy to, their utter estrangement from, the idea of transcendence.The first question that any remotely inquisitive person will surely ask about these ‘new bibles’ is this: how massive Read More ›

In the controversies around design, How did the term “skeptic” come to mean “people who believe in multiverses, space aliens, and random creation of meaningful information?” How did the term “fundamentalist” come to mean “people who believe based only on evidence”?

Stopped counting.

Rev. Michael Dowd, in his own words a “religious naturalist” andalso “evolutionary Christian mystic naturalist” wants us to know about “Evolutionary Christianity”:

FEATURING MANY OF TODAY’S MOST INSPIRING CHRISTIAN LEADERS AND ESTEEMED SCIENTISTS—INCLUDING NOBEL LAUREATES, TEMPLETON PRIZE-WINNERS, AND LUMINARIES FROM NEARLY EVERY DENOMINATION.
HOST: Rev. Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution, which was endorsed by 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists and religious leaders across the spectrum.

On the one hand:

Episode 3: Denis Lamoureux – “Beyond the Evolution vs. Creation Debate”Denis Lamoureux, a leading evangelical contributor to the public understanding of evolution, is a professor of science and religion at the University of Alberta. He is a council member of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation, and author of I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution.

– How the “intelligent design” movement dishonors God and distorts science
– Why and how the church is sometimes its own worst enemy, and what to do about it
– How evolution can strengthen and deepen conservative, Bible-centered faith

On the other hand: Read More ›

From Rebecca Boyle at PopSci.com, we learn, “Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves: Like Schrödinger’s cat, teleported light is both dead and alive” (04.15.2011) In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost.The team employed a mind-boggling set of quantum manipulation techniques to achieve this, including squeezing, photon subtraction, entanglement and homodyne detection. The photo above depicts their device, nicknamed the Teleporter, in the lab of Akira Read More ›

In “Pope: Humanity isn’t random product of evolution” (Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, Sat Apr 23), we learn: VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn’t a random product of evolution. Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.” “If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no Read More ›

From Fox News LiveScience, we learn: World’s Largest Atom Smasher May Have Detected ‘God Particle’ (April 22, 2011): A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle.” The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking. And announced on Good Friday, no less … It’s more seasonal, maybe, than Read More ›

Jerry “No, Uncommon Descent did NOT invent him*” Coyne asks:

When is The Chronicle of Higher Education going to put the kibosh on the irrelevant and incoherent tirades of Gnu-Bashers [new atheist bashers – ed.] like Michael Ruse and Jacques Berlinerblau, whose continual attacks on atheists don’t do the journal any good? But in the meantime, one person still mans the Gnu Barricades: David Barash. Barash, a biologist at the University of Washington, has posted his latest on Tuesday, “The emperor’s new nakedness.” Taking his fellow Chronicle “bloggers” to task, he points out what’s really new in New Atheists: their popularity and their unwillingness to respect religious claims (on a related note, read Jason Rosenhouse’s epic new post on atheist “incivility”) …

Anyway, it is an argument that materialist atheists should just be rude.

Okay, so go ahead, new atheists: Be rude.

Some people are so unrude, they won’t even tell you it suits you.

* Can we quell this rumour for once and for all? Read More ›

From New Scientist we learn, “Shamed Harvard scientist is barred from the classroom” (Peter Aldhous, 21 April 2011):

Marc Hauser, the prominent animal cognition researcher found guilty of scientific misconduct by Harvard University last year, is to receive no rapid rehabilitation by his closest colleagues.

He’s the one who made Discover’s Top Ten Retractions list (# 3) fr unsubstantiable claims about monkey minds.

According to The Boston Globe, members of the university’s psychology faculty voted in February not to allow Hauser to teach in the department in the 2011-2012 academic year. Following the vote, Michael Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, decided that he shouldn’t be allowed to teach in other departments, either. Could his upcoming book Evilicious have helped tip the applecart?  Read More ›

Or a storm of worse substance …

Further to Sal Cordova’s earlier post, “Matzke is a Liar”: If Matzke is what those who know him claim, perhaps Barbara Forrest could usefully thank him and ask him to cease his efforts on her behalf. Read More ›

Now, it wouldn’t surprise the Uncommon Descent news desk, but it certainly surprised Canadian blogging queen Five Feet of Fury when Yesterday he told Dennis Miller we need to “redistribute the wealth.” (FREE audio). But here, here, here, here, here, and here, anti-Expelled types have painted Stein as a conservative. Comments? (Note: Five Feet of (“I’m with the banned”) Fury, an unintimidated target of A Guy Named Sue and fearless opponent of politically correct anti-Semites, is not to all tastes – definitely not for PC consumption. But she doesn’t call a straight shot crooked.)

In “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science” (Mother Jones, April 18, 2011), Chris Mooney offers to explain “How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.” For example, Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. “They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs,” says Taber, “and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what Read More ›