Researchers are very pleased: “I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years,” he says. “I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.”
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
At Mind Matters News: 3. Atheist Dillahunty spots fallacies in Christian Egnor’s views
Matt Dillahunty: I find it arrogant to presume that any individual could conclude that there is a being that knows everything and that they know who it is.
Shell beads from Morocco found at 142,000 years ago
It’s fair to say that all clothing is a form of communication. True, we need clothing for warmth and protection but few people would wear tea cozies or aluminum siding, even if they theoretically work. Even back when most clothing was animal products, the type of skin or leather and any adornments thereon could probably tell us a lot. And beads? They serve no purpose except communication.
Trust in science: How the replication crisis got started
Sarah Perry: In my experience, it is the norm, rather than the exception, for cited claims in popular science books and review papers to misstate the claims of their sources.
How animals survive without sexual reproduction
Researchers: “The existence of ancient asexual animal species like O. nova are difficult for evolutionary biologists to explain because asexual reproduction seems to be very disadvantageous in the long run.” But they were able to show it was true.
At Mind Matters News 2. A neurosurgeon’s ten proofs for the existence of God
In a lively debate at Theology Unleashed, Christian surgeon Michael Egnor and atheist broadcaster Matt Dillahunty clash over “Does God exist?” Egnor starts off is opening arguments.
Darwinism’s legacy of confusion in biology
Miller quotes, “Indeed the language of neo-Darwinism is so careless that the words ‘divine plan’ can be substituted for ‘selection pressure’ in any popular work in the biological literature without the slightest disruption in the logical flow of argument. –
Robert G. B. Reid, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, Pp. 37-38” That’s a devastating indictment, given that the whole point of Darwinism was to demonstrate that life could come into existence purely by random processes.
Huge sandstone camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are much older than thought
At 7,000–8,000 years old, they predate the domestication of camels (so far as we know). Ancient people get smarter every time we run into them.
Paper on bacterial mobility (motility) doesn’t invoke “evolution”
Which raises a question: How much outgassing about “evolution” is intended to stifle curiosity and make it sound like we know things we don’t?
At Mind Matters News: Debate: Former atheist neurosurgeon vs. former Christian activist
In a lively debate at Theology Unleashed, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and broadcaster Matt Dillahunty clash over the existence of God. Each gets a chance to state his case and interrogate the other.
New find: Cell growth processes are coupled
So the cell grows in a co-ordinated manner.
Sabine Hossenfelder asks, what’s up with neutrinos?
Hossenfelder has stumbled on a telling fact about science journalism. Often, the genuinely puzzling problem is ignored in favour of some a big whoop de do about an incidental find that doesn’t amount to much and may prove an artifact of data collection.
Rob Sheldon: “It from bit” is winning the cosmology wars
Sheldon: Translating, Ethan is saying that the old 20th century materialism that says “entropy” or “information” emerges from the particles is being replaced by a 21st century view that “entropy” or “information” is fundamental and the material particles emerge from the immaterial field.
At Mind Matters News: Can there be a general theory for fine-tuning?
Swedish mathematician Ola Hössjer, who is working on a general theory of fine tuning, sees the beauty of mathematics in the fact that seemingly unrelated features in cosmology and biology can be modeled using similar concepts.
At The Ness: Science is not Just Philosophy
Wait. If atheist neurologist blogger Steven Novella is right, the science presenters in media must be speaking a different language from the rest of us. The impression that he says they don’t convey (“insight into the ultimate nature of reality”), they in fact do — by a variety of means. That’s okay, of course, until the whipped cream hits the fan.