Thinking that the mind is simply the brain, no more and no less, involves a hopeless contradiction.
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
New layer of complexity of the month: Epitranscriptomics
Layers on layers, systems on systems. Puts one in mind of Darwin’s Warm Little Pond, doesn’t it? Legacy science media should ramp up those Pond graphics. And keep the speculation about random events accidentally producing life coming. Speculate HARDER!
Mike Egnor offers to help Darwinist PZ Myers tell boys from girls
For a person who believes so strongly in the power of natural selection, yes, how the genes get together would be a good thing to know. Myers recently asserted that when he meets people, he infers nothing about their sexual identity. Egnor responds to the general question and the particular one in two parts.
Yes, genes from nowhere ARE an “evolutionary problem.”
Glad we are talking about this… No need to believe us (though we did warn you). What’s this about “rampant” order in the genome? “Rampant” is a word we associate with disease; it’s not a word we commonly associate with “order.” On the other hand, an order that frustrates the outworkings of Darwinian evolution in favor of an orderly system that produces needed innovations must seem a lot like a disease to some. 😉
Expert contra Dawkins, why eugenics wouldn’t really work
David Curtis: We can now measure genetic potential directly from genetic markers and what we know from this is that these genetic predictors perform extremely badly. We can also tell that there are many important, very rare genetic variants which we will never be able to identify.
Harvard astronomer is back: Radio bursts could be aliens
The reader who sent this tip notes, “Consider me skeptical but it’s interesting that design inferences are fine so long as it’s just aliens…” Actually, reader, some science personalities will believe darn near anything about anything as long as it IS aliens.
Science media have strange standards for assessing corruption…
Berezow goes on to add something very significant: “The scientific publishing industry is thoroughly corrupt, and AAAS and Science are now also a part of the problem. If and when all government-funded research is mandated to be released free of charge upon publication, journals like Science may go out of business. Good riddance.”
At MercatorNet: For once, a woke “ethicist” gets shut down by people with disabilities
Message to activists for persons with disabilities: Please fight for Peter Singer’s freedom of speech to display his agenda to the world while there is still a slight chance you can legally fight it. Leave the defense of censorship to those well-heeled woke who would also deprive you of your lives. So many of them will be only too happy to oblige in both cases.
Jerry Coyne jumps into the Dawkins eugenics row
Contrary to Coyne’s and Dawkin’s claims, dog breeding is DEvolution for dogs. It usually works that way, as Michael Behe points out in Darwin Devolves. Dogs are bred by humans at the expense of their genetic health.
Richard Dawkins says eugenics works because he assumes we are just like animals
At one fell swoop, Dawkins exposes another frequent weakness of naturalist atheism: direct conflict with facts. Eugenics does not work for humans. Unlike animals, we make personal choices, which could be based on reason and free will or on the apparent lack thereof. And those choices confound the ambitions of others.
At upcoming CSS conference: “Does anyone come to Christian faith by a rational process?”
For example, Günter Bechly: “Altogether, I suggest that the cumulative evidence against materialism and for theism is simply overwhelming. I became a Christian theist not in spite of being a scientist but because of it.”
Jerry Coyne takes a stand: Sex is binary
Jerry may well be brought down by this. Increasingly, “wokeness” rather than correct factual description, will confer academic esteem in science—thanks principally due to the progressivism (that Jerry has always supported) taking hold.
At National Review: There is no “Party of Science”
Now that James mentions it, the war on math and the war on science both got started at universities and the Sokal hoaxes are perpetrated on academic journals, not popular media outlets. It’s a good question whether, today, being the “party of science” is even likely to be a selling point.
Evolution Weekend downplays Darwin, morphs into climate concern, muffles racism issue
Remember, anyone can be a racist if all he must say is: My ancestors were gods, yours were gobs of clay. Absent evidence, he might prevail by force of arms and entrench his view. Darwinism led to racial theories with the trappings of science. That matters and it has never been dealt with honestly because dealing with it honestly endangers the basic ideas of Darwinism.
Was Sagan wrong about “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”? UPDATED!
Deming: Claims that are merely novel or those which violate human consensus are not properly characterized as extraordinary. Science does not contemplate two types of evidence. The misuse of ECREE to suppress innovation and maintain orthodoxy should be avoided as it must inevitably retard the scientific goal of establishing reliable knowledge.