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Could the 2.1 billion-year-old organism have been like a slime mold?

The behavior of the slime mold (if that's what it is) sounds altogether too modern for Dr. Cohen’s liking. That’s understandable. See, for example, “Is an amoeba smarter than your computer? (yes, in certain respects, it is) The trouble is, many forms of behaviour, like nest-sharing and parental care, have been found earlier than expected. We shall see. Read More ›

Latest from Daytime Soaps 120,000 BC season: Inbreeding may have caused Neanderthal extinction

Well, now that our writer mentions it, we don’t really have thousands of Neanderthals for a big sociological study. It’s interesting, of course, and the main thing is, we can probably get more information as we continue to dig. Read More ›

The “purely evolutionary perspective” is a waste of time

Only a “purely evolutionary perspective” would fail to see that the primary reasons for the survival of old women are intelligence and culture. Some old women are useful; some are not. But intelligence causes most of them not to avoid stupid situations where they just get killed (the way an animal might). And cultural values, carefully nurtured by the old women themselves, cause their survival to be valued. Treat this sort of evolutionary biology the way you would treat grievance studies. Be polite. Read More ›

At Forbes: The “miracle” hope for finding the dark matter of the universe is dead

The WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive particles) model has just not worked out: We understand how the Standard Model particles behave. We have solid predictions for how they should interact through all of the fundamental forces, and experimental confirmation of those theories. We also have extraordinary constraints on how they’re permitted to interact in a beyond-the-Standard-Model fashion. Because of our constraints from accelerators, cosmic rays, decay experiments, nuclear reactors and more, we’ve been able to rule out many possible ideas that have been theorized. When it comes to what might make up the dark matter, however, all we have are the astrophysical observations and our theoretical work, in tandem, to guide us. The possible theories that we’ve come up with include Read More ›

Richard Dawkins’s Darwin Day lecture, 2019

What, him again? And no new, ground-breaking book? Richard Dawkins is one of the best known scientists in the world. He is author of ‘The Selfish Gene’, which upturned our understanding of natural selection, and in 2017 was named the most influential science book of all time. He is also author of ‘The God Delusion’, which caused a global sensation upon publication in 2006. He has chaired almost every event in the Darwin Day Lecture series since its launch in 2003. Humanists UK president Professor Alice Roberts takes over the chair of the lecture at this event, and introduces Richard Dawkins as he delivers the Darwin Day Lecture for the first time. More. Somehow this stuff hasn’t aged well. Dissent Read More ›

Jerry Coyne on how mathematician John Lennox embarrasses himself

We recommend you listen to the podcast, watch the video, and ignore Jerry. In fairness, he has got at least as far as realizing that anti-Semitism is a problem among the raging Woke. We can’t ask for more than that just now. It's hard for a Darwinian to understand a mathematician anyway. We've seen it a few times before. Something about things adding up. Read More ›

Detroit: Become Human – Adam Nieri on the twin pillars of the AI religion

Nieri looks at them as the narrative of the sci-fi game Detroit: Become Human develops them:  A Closer Look at Detroit: Become Human, Part I Gaming culture provides a window into our culture’s assumptions about artificial intelligence (Adam Nieri) In the game, Detroit has transcended its current economic despair, emerging as the epicenter of the android revolution. Cyberlife, headquartered there, has become the first company to engineer and produce fully autonomous, general purpose AI androids for consumers. A Closer Look at Detroit: Become Human, Part II Adam Nieri: One pillar, if you like, of the worldview of the “Church of AI” is the belief that our embrace of artificial intelligence is a step on the road to a higher form Read More ›

Journalist: ET can be common ground between atheists and ID theorists

Knowledge of the sheer massive intricacy of design in nature grows by the day and the only possible response can now be attacking anyone who wants to discuss it seriously. True, the space aliens won’t run afoul of the No Divine Foot rule but if that’s the only problem they solve, they’re not going to shed much light on the nature of nature. Read More ›

Human Zoos documentary discussed on Chicago TV

Airing Human Zoos: America’s Forgotten History of Scientific Racism is noteworthy in itself. For various reasons. legacy media have never been willing to take the legacy of explicitly Darwinian racism seriously, much as they feature disconnected and useless rants about racism. Read More ›