News

Ending our religion coverage for the week, from John Farrell at Forbes: It’s Time To Retire ‘Theistic Evolution’ His basic point is that it is all just evolution, and any talk of “theistic” is superfluous. And it’s well past its sell-by date. More. Farrell makes quite clear that there is no essential difference between “theistic” evolution and metaphysical  naturalism (nature is all there is). Of course there isn’t ny difference, except for sponsorship. To say that God created absolutely everything equally and that no design is especially evident anywhere means that an elemental atom is just the same as a human life or a human mind, or for that matter a religious revelation. Catholic chemist Stacy “Science in the Light Read More ›

At Greg West’s follow-worthy blog, The Poached Egg, Wintery Knight summarized cosmologist Alan Lightman on the multiverse (in Harper’s 2015, but worth repeating): If such conclusions are correct, the great question, of course, is why these fundamental parameters happen to lie within the range needed for life. Does the universe care about life? Intelligent design is one answer. Indeed, a fair number of theologians, philosophers, and even some scientists have used fine-tuning and the anthropic principle as evidence of the existence of God. For example, at the 2011 Christian Scholars’ Conference at Pepperdine University, Francis Collins, a leading geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health, said, “To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or Read More ›

  That is, are our brains shaped for fitness, not for truth? From a review in Catholic World Report: We began…by noting that our view of consciousness is the new field upon which the academic and cultural battle between materialism, panpsychism, and transcendentalism is being waged. We now see that the outcome of this battle will not only affect our personal view of life’s purpose, the world, human dignity, and human value, but also the culture’s outlook on these important ideas and ideals. Jesus’ proclamation that ‘the truth will make you free’ (Jn. 8:32) is particularly important here—for if we and the culture falsely underestimate our purpose, dignity, value, and destiny, we will also unnecessarily restrict our freedom and potential Read More ›

From Aeon: Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy (2011) vs. Jules Evans, Policy Director, Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary U London: NW: I suppose this all turns on what you think philosophy is. I see philosophy as an activity of thinking critically about what we are and where we stand in relation to the world, an activity with a long and rich history. Philosophy is concerned with how things are, the limits of what we can know, and how we should live. It is anti-dogmatic and thrives on questioning assumptions. No serious philosophy is likely to leave the philosopher unchanged, but that doesn’t mean that the change will be for the better or Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: After exploring the areas of the brain that fuel our empathetic impulses — and temporarily disabling other regions that oppose those impulses — two UCLA neuroscientists are coming down on the optimistic side of human nature. “Our altruism may be more hard-wired than previously thought,” said Leonardo Christov-Moore, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. The findings, reported in two recent studies, also point to a possible way to make people behave in less selfish and more altruistic ways, said senior author Marco Iacoboni, a UCLA psychiatry professor. “This is potentially groundbreaking,” he said. (Abstract, paywall) More. Presumably, citizens would be force-fed AltrientsTM instead of nutrients. Otherwise, it’s hard to think of a Read More ›

From BBC: Meat and tools, not the advent of cooking, was the trigger that freed early humans to develop a smaller chewing apparatus, a study suggests. This in turn may have allowed other changes, such as improved speech and even shifts in the size of the brain. The authors note that cooking became commonplace much later. They argue that it was the stone tools, not cooking, that made the difference. One of the possible reasons for these changes, cooking, did not become commonplace until 500,000 years ago, the researchers found. This means that it probably did not play a significant role in the evolution of smaller chewing muscles and teeth. They tested their idea on human subjects. The findings suggest Read More ›

Pro ID Steve Meyer. No ID Larry Krauss. As noted here, and live streamed: A discussion of Evolution, Intelligent Design and Creation, featuring Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Meyer and Denis Lamoureux. Live at Convocation Hall in the University of Toronto. Sponsored by Wycliffe College in partnership with Faith Today, Power to Change, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and the Network of Christian Scholars. Questions like these will be posed to the panel: How did the universe originate? Does God play any role in the cosmos? What is the relationship between science and religion? Readers have probably heard of Steve Meyer and Larry Krauss. More. Lamoureux is a Canadian U Alberta religion and science prof, and this story gives some sense of his Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Scientists from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London have found the oldest fossils of the familiar pine tree that dominates Northern Hemisphere forests today. The 140-million-year-old fossils (dating from the Cretaceous ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’) are exquisitely preserved as charcoal, the result of burning in wildfires. The fossils suggest that pines co-evolved with fire at a time when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher and forests were especially flammable. More. From Dispatch Tribunal: The 7mm long fossil pushes back the date of pine tree origin by 11 million years as a previous fossil was dated 129 million years old, making the fossils discovered from Windsor as the oldest known fossils of Read More ›

Worrying on behalf of the Sixth Great Extinction, Patrick Monahan at Science: … That’s why Roy Plotnick, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and lead author of the study, thinks about far-flung scenarios involving future paleontologists. “We really need to look at modern day extinctions as if they were in the fossil record already, in order to make a comparison,” he says. So he and his colleagues searched fossil databases for modern mammal species—both those threatened by extinction and those that aren’t—to see how many modern extinctions would be detectable by relying only on fossils. Humans have recorded fossils for just 9% of the world’s threatened modern mammal species, the team reports this month in Ecology Letters. Nonthreatened Read More ›

So far known: “rope-like structure similar to that of some modern-day fungi” Cambridge Research News: This early pioneer, known as Tortotubus, displays a structure similar to one found in some modern fungi, which likely enabled it to store and transport nutrients through the process of decomposition. Although it cannot be said to be the first organism to have lived on land, it is the oldest fossil of a terrestrial organism yet found. The results are published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. Here (public access). From BBC: Most scientists agree that life moved from the sea to the land between 500 and 450 million years ago. But in order for plants and animals to gain a foothold on terra Read More ›

First Iceball Earth is back (as a theory), now the volcanic vent as well. Seems to be Origin of Life Week around here. From Quanta: The biochemist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules, probably in a pool in the shadow of a volcano. Deamer (Ucal Santa Cruz) … thinks that volcanic landmasses similar to those in Iceland today would have made a hospitable birthplace for his proto-cells. Freshwater pools scattered across steamy hydrothermal fields would be subject to regular rounds of heating and cooling. That cycle could have concentrated the necessary ingredients — including both lipids and the building blocks for RNA — and provided the energy needed to stitch those building blocks into Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Many researchers believe that Earth’s early oceans were very hot, reaching 80̊ Celsius, and that life originated in these conditions. New findings may prove the opposite to be true. Harald Furnes, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Earth Science, has analysed volcanic and sedimentary rocks in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. The volcanic rocks were deposited at depths of 2 to 4 kilometres. “We have found evidence that the climate 3.5 billion years ago was a cold environment,” says Furnes. … Furnes thinks some researchers may have difficulties accepting the new knowledge of an early, cold Earth. A paradigm shift in Earth Science is not to be expected, but he thinks the climate of the early earth Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Today, most researchers agree that the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere happened in two major steps: the first during the so-called Great Oxidation Event about 2.5-2.4 billion years ago, and the second during the Late Neoproterozoic Era around 750 to 540 million years ago. The latter is thought to have been the cause for the emergence of animals during the so-called ‘Cambrian explosion’ around 540 to 520 million years ago. An international team of researchers led by Professor Robert Frei from the Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen has just released a study indicating evidence for the presence of small concentrations of oxygen on Earth already 3.8 billion years ago. The researchers analysed Read More ›

Remember, from last Saturday, “A lot of science writers are tweeting about duck sex now, so that’s a plus.” Now, from Digg: On balance, Neil deGrasse Tyson has done an immense amount of work raising the public’s awareness around science. But peel back the veneer of his good fight against anti-science and you’re left with something that isn’t exactly pro-science. Starting a feud with B.o.B. over why the Earth isn’t flat doesn’t promote science, nor does it “convert” non-believers. Endlessly tweeting about scientifically incorrect things in ‘Star Wars’ isn’t getting anyone to thumb through a research paper. More. Gosh, Digg’s Cool score is pretty high. So is Tyson going to join Dawkins on the C list of retro science stars? Read More ›

Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter debates “Is Evolution Compelling.” Cornelius Hunter versus Michael Ruse, March 11, 2016. Note: Hunter often writes here at Uncommon Descent. We are trying to get vid of Ruse too. See also: Steve Meyer vs. Lawrence Krauss in Toronto this Saturday, live-streamed Follow UD News at Twitter!