News

Mark Buchanan suggests (08 April 2011) at New Scientist that the “Aliens who hide, survive”. Attempting to explain why, if there are really so many space aliens, none of them have ever contacted us to pick up their legacies or their mail, he offers that – as always – natural selection is the answer: In order to explain the Fermi paradox, Kent turns to natural selection – and suggests that it may favour quiet aliens.He argues that it’s plausible that there is a competition for resources on a cosmic scale, driving an evolutionary process between alien species on different planets. Advanced species, for example, might want to exploit other planets for their own purposes. If so, the universe would be Read More ›

ISI Books, the publisher of The Nature of Nature , is kindly giving Uncommon Descent ten copies for our contests. Buy yours now, by all means, but win one for your dad or your cash-strapped library. First contest is next Saturday, April 16, judged weekly. Here are the multilateral contributing authors to Nature of Nature.

Recently, well-known biologist Lynn Margulis has been in the news, letting Discover Magazine know that Darwinism is vastly overrated as a theory of evolution.

That said, here are a couple of challenges noted for her own theory of endosymbiosis (some life forms evolved by swallowing others (bacteria might have swallowed mitochondria when the latter was an independent life form), which then became part of their inner workings, resulting in greater complexity): Read More ›

Richard Weikart, history professor at the University of California Stanislaus, has just published Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan April 2011) In this book, Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler’s evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler’s immorality flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race. This ethic underlay or influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improve human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination. For your enjoyment: You can look inside Hitler’s Ethic. Podcast with Weikart on this book here. Here’s Larry Arnhart’s review and here’s Read More ›

The National Center for Science Education (= Darwinism) provides a helpful summary of academic freedom bills regarding Darwinism and tax-funded compulsory education: This has been a busy year for creationists. Since January, anti-science legislators in seven states have proposed nine bills attacking evolution and evolution education. Many are so-called “academic freedom” bills, like Tennessee’s HB 368, which allows teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” (For general background on academic freedom acts, go here.But that’s not all. Some of these bills also target such “controversial” theories as global warming, the chemical origins of life, and human cloning. Given Read More ›

In “Neanderthals: Bad luck and its part in their downfall” (New Scientist, 07 April 2011), Mark Buchanantells us, The popular theory has it that humans soon displaced Neanderthals thanks to their superior skills and adaptations. But mathematicians Armando Neves at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Maurizio Serva at the University of Aquila, Italy, now say that the extinction of Neanderthals may have been down to a genetic lottery. The theory is that intermarriage with modern humans did the ‘thals in. We also learn, A strong point of the analysis, says anthropologist Luke Premo of the University of Washington in Pullman, is that it makes few assumptions about unknown factors, including the relative sizes of Read More ›

Recently, we were apprised that the rarest of intellectual qualities, true genius, is merely an overdose of testosterone before birth.

You heard it here first and forgot it here first.

Recently, real news – of another child genius – has been making the rounds

At 12-years-old, Jacob Barnett is a genius. He’s already in college, his IQ is higher than Einstein’s, and for fun he‘s working on an expanded version of that man’s theory of relativity. So far, the signs are good. Professors are astounded. So what else does a boy genius with vast brilliance do in his free time? Disprove the big bang, of course.For a minute, just a minute, try and follow his logic. He explained his thinking recently to the Indianapolis Star:

According to those who study the phenomenon, while child geniuses usually grow up to be intelligent adults, Read More ›

In “Dissolving the Fall,” a chapter in his Saving Darwin, theologian Karl Giberson argues that Darwinian evolution created humans selfish; there was no actual fall of man.

Selfishness … drives the evolutionary process. Unselfish creatures died, and their unselfish genes perished with them. Selfish creatures, who attended to their own needs for food, power, and sex, flourished and passed on these genes to their offspring. After many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature. (P. 12)

Political scientist John West notes in God and Evolution that Read More ›

Here and below, Jeff Brown, offers his thoughts on the new pastiche religion that a writer at New Scientist would like to invent.

Brown, a pastor in Nuremberg, Germany, holds a B.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology. Read More ›

Kerry Sheridan advises that a “US atom smasher may have found new force of nature” (YahooNews, April 7 08:07 am)

Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature that could expand our knowledge of the properties of matter, physicists say.[ … ]

While much remains a mystery, researchers agree that this is not the “God Particle,” or the Higgs-boson, a hypothetical elementary particle that has long eluded physicists who believe it could explain why objects have mass. Read More ›

Howard Van Till was once one of the best-known Christian evolutionists, but since his “What good is stardust?” article in Christianity Today arguing that nature is “fully gifted” and thus God never intervenes, he has increasingly moved toward what some describe as process theology.

He acknowledges his change of views, and has this to say in The Nature of Nature: Read More ›

How can someone who says, almost proudly, that ethics is an illusion of the genes mesh with Christianity, a religion that puts obedience to God’s word and will right at the heart? In fact, it is not as difficult as it seems, so long as you remember that I am offering a naturalistic account of ethics, and Christianity is a supernatural religion. I am saying that if you ask, “Take God out of the equation and can you still get ethics?” my answer is, “Yes, you can, if you are talking about normative ethics, but when you enter the metaethical realm you find that it is all biology and psychology, with no further meaning. The thought that there is something Read More ›

Pro-design Jay Richards has responded to neo-Thomist Ed Feser’s attack on evidence for design in nature. Also: “Thomas Aquinas as ancient evolutionary psychologist”

The Discover interview with non-Darwinist (whatever she may feel forced to claim) evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis:

“All scientists agree that evolution has occurred… The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? … This is the problem I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection… Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create. …I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change — led to new species. I believe it until I looked for evidence. … Read More ›

… allegiance to Darwinism has become a litmus for deciding who does and who does not hold a ”properly scientific’ world view. ‘You must choose between faith in God and faith in Darwin; and if you want to be a secular humanist, you’d better choose the latter.’ So we’re told. We doubt that those options are exhaustive. But we do want, ever so much, to be secular humanists. In fact, we both claim to be outright, card-carrying, signed-up, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred atheists. [ … ] Still, this book is mostly a work of criticism; it is mostly about what we think is wrong with Darwinism. The cry of their heart is to follow anyone or anything but Darwinism, for the sake Read More ›