News

From board member Barbara Cargill via Evolution News & Views: On Friday, April 21, the State Board of Education voted on the final language for the streamlined TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). Some news reports have given erroneous information about the revised standards. The streamlined TEKS in biology continue to call for critical thinking in the study of theories such as evolution. They specifically call for students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for common ancestry and Darwinian natural selection. They further call for students to “compare and contrast scientific explanations for cellular complexity.” And they call on students to “examine scientific explanations of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record” and “examine scientific explanations for the origin Read More ›

These people are really reaching. From Alison Klesman at Astronomy Magazine: In a study led by Ruari Mackenzi and Tom Shanks at Durham University’s Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy and published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the group explores the possibility that a “supervoid” of space — an area lacking a significant number of galaxies and other matter — is responsible for the Cold Spot. Both regular matter and dark matter tend to clump together in space, forming structures such as clusters and walls in some areas, while leaving voids without much material in others. This effect is exacerbated by the expansion of the universe, and causes the CMB coming from the direction of a void to Read More ›

From Wayne Rossiter, at Shadow of Oz: I simply reject this notion that the entire discussion can be cast in the framework of what is and what is not science, or what science can and cannot do. If a TEist believes in a supernatural Jesus, they’re not anti-science. But neither is a Christian who believes that angels fought alongside Elisha. Such claims are not rejections of the fundamental laws and mechanics of nature. They are claims that our history is more than this. To say that there are things science cannot explain is not to say that science is to be rejected. What if it’s not a war between science and faith, but a shared partnership between the natural and Read More ›

Yesterday, we heard from the people who think they know why we might never hear from alien civilizations. Today’s turn goes to Santhosh Mathew at the Guardian, who wonders if religion will survive if we do hear from them: The interaction with alien life is not just being discussed in the domain of philosophy any more, it has entered into the traditional scientific realm. Realising this possibility, Nasa, in 2014, gave $1.1m to the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution, to support an initiative to study “the societal implications of astrobiology”. Nasa was criticised by some for providing money to an organisation rooted in Christian theology. Yes. That’s because it sounds to many of us like a solution in Read More ›

From Meghan O’Gieblyn at the Guardian: After losing her faith, a former evangelical Christian felt adrift in the world. She then found solace in a radical technological philosophy – but its promises of immortality and spiritual transcendence soon seemed unsettlingly familiar … Transhumanism offered a vision of redemption without the thorny problems of divine justice. It was an evolutionary approach to eschatology, one in which humanity took it upon itself to bring about the final glorification of the body and could not be blamed if the path to redemption was messy or inefficient. Tip: As soon as they mention “evolutionary,” find your keys. Encounters with God are not “evolutionary.” Within months of encountering Kurzweil, I became totally immersed in transhumanist Read More ›

From Jack Kerwick at Townhall: Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk, it is nonetheless true that one especially significant contribution that Christianity made to the world is that of science. No one has better established this than Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion who makes his home at Baylor University, the school from which I received a master’s degree in philosophy. Stark’s The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, though published 12 years ago, is worth revisiting, particularly at this time when, not unlike at Christmas, journalists and others in the media presume to address the topic of Jesus. Read More ›

From Jerry himself at Why Evolution Is True: Reader Mark called my attention to the fact that John Templeton Foundation (JTF) has bestowed its annual Templeton Prize on someone who’s not only a deeply misguided religious philosopher, but also has promoted intelligent design and criticized naturalism. Thanks to Jerry for spelling that out… Having made clear that he does not attend the same Bible Study as Plantinga, Coyne then says, All of this casts doubts on Templeton’s claim to be increasingly down with science, for, after all, Plantinga is pretty much an intelligent design creationist. Although he’s waffled on this a bit in the past, he seems to have settled on ID creationism. I’ll quote Michael Ruse from The Chronicle Read More ›

This is the sort of stuff we expect to read in Stranger Than You Think News.  But here it is, soberly, from Ewen Callaway in Nature News: Ancient humans settled in North America around 130,000 years ago, suggests a controversial study — pushing the date back more than 100,000 years earlier than most scientists accept. The jaw-dropping claim, made in Nature1, is based on broken rocks and mastodon bones found in California that a team of researchers say point to human activity. Their contention, if correct, would force a dramatic rethink of when and how the Americas were first settled — and who by. Most scientists subscribe to the view that Homo sapiens arrived in North America less than 20,000 Read More ›

Still another reason? From Leah Crane at New Scientist: Grimaldi assumed that signals from an extraterrestrial emitter might get weaker or be blocked as they travel, so they would only cover a certain volume of space. It’s relatively simple to calculate the probability that Earth is within that space and so able to detect the signal. “Not all signals can be visible at the same time – only those that intersect with the Earth,” says Grimaldi. He found that even if half of our galaxy was full of alien noise, the average number of signals that we would be able to detect from Earth is less than one (Scientific Reports, doi.org/b562). This implies that, even if there are lots of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: From sediment samples collected at seven archaeological sites, the researchers “fished out” tiny DNA fragments that had once belonged to a variety of mammals, including our extinct human relatives. They retrieved DNA from Neandertals in cave sediments of four archaeological sites, also in layers where no hominin skeletal remains have been discovered. In addition, they found Denisovan DNA in sediments from Denisova Cave in Russia. These new developments now enable researchers to uncover the genetic affiliations of the former inhabitants of many archaeological sites which do not yield human remains. … “By retrieving hominin DNA from sediments, we can detect the presence of hominin groups at sites and in areas where this cannot be achieved with other methods,” Read More ›

From Jesse Singal at New York Mag: Perhaps no new concept from the world of academic psychology has taken hold of the public imagination more quickly and profoundly in the 21st century than implicit bias — that is, forms of bias which operate beyond the conscious awareness of individuals. That’s in large part due to the blockbuster success of the so-called implicit association test, which purports to offer a quick, easy way to measure how implicitly biased individual people are. When Hillary Clinton famously mentioned implicit bias during her first debate with Donald Trump, many people knew what she was talking about because the IAT has spread the concept so far and wide. It’s not a stretch to say that Read More ›

From Colin Barras at New Scientist: It’s not the size of your brain, it’s how you organise it. The most recently discovered species of early human had a skull only slightly larger than a chimpanzee’s, but its brain looked surprisingly like our own – particularly in an area of the frontal lobe with links to language. This could back suggestions that these mysterious early humans showed advanced behaviours, such as teamwork and burial, even though we still don’t know exactly when they lived. More. Throughout the animal kingdom, the relationship between a brain and intelligence is much more complex than is sometimes supposed. See also: Why is the recent dating of Homo Naledi to 250 kya a problem? We should Read More ›

From Ann Gibbons at Science: A remarkably complete skeleton introduced in 2010 as “the best candidate” for the immediate ancestor of our genus Homo may just be a pretender. Instead of belonging to the human lineage, the new species of Australopithecus sediba is more closely related to other hominins from South Africa that are on a side branch of the human family tree, according to a new analysis of the fossil presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.More. When you get kicked out of the human family, it’s not like there is a ceremony or anything. Or is there? See also: Choosing between Sediba and Naledi as human ancestor? Follow UD News Read More ›

From Anil Ananthaswamy at New Scientist: Welcome to one of the more provocative-sounding explanations of how the brain works, outlined in a set of 26 original papers, the second part of a unique online compendium updating us on current thinking in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. In 2015, the MIND group founded by philosopher Thomas Metzinger of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, set up the Open MIND project to publish papers by leading researchers. Unusually, the papers were published in open access electronic formats, as an experiment in creating a cutting edge online resource – and it was free. The first volume, spanning everything from the nature of consciousness to lucid dreaming, was a qualified success. The Read More ›

From Wesley J. Smith at First Things: Science is never truly settled. Indeed, challenging seemingly incontrovertible facts and continually retesting long-accepted theories are crucial components of the scientific method. Examples of perceived truths overturned by subsequent discoveries are ubiquitous. Here’s just one: So-called junk DNA that does not encode proteins was, until relatively recently, thought by a large majority of scientists to have no purpose, and was even used as evidence of random and purposeless evolution. But continuing investigations in the field led to the discovery that most “junk DNA” actually serves important biological functions. Think what might have happened if scientists seeking to continue exploring this area of inquiry had been warned away because of the “scientific consensus.” What Read More ›