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A friend writes to offer this excerpt from British biologist William Bateson (1861–1926): In what follows it will be assumed that the Doctrine of Descent is true. It should be admitted from the first that the truth of the doctrine has never been proved. There is nevertheless a great balance of evidence in his favor, but it finds its support not so much in direct observation as in the difficulty of forming any alternative hypothesis. The Theory of Descent involves and asserts that all living things are genetically connected, and this principle is at least not contrary to observation; while any alternative hypothesis involves the idea of Separate Creation which by common consent is now recognized as absurd. In favor Read More ›

In his first inaugural address, President Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” But has the Obama Administration restored science or abused it? In this talk based on the expanded paperback edition of his book Darwin Day in America (ISI Books, 2015), political scientist John G. West will examine how the Obama Administration has illegitimately invoked “science” to curtail basic freedoms, undercut ethical protections, and circumvent democratic accountability. He also will explore how during the Obama years free speech is being increasingly restricted in the name of science and how science is being misused to attack religion, especially in educational institutions. West will argue that science has produced great blessings, but its current abuse is bad for both Read More ›

(O’Leary for News’ other desk) Smartphone? Should we call it the dumbphone instead? Maybe, if we go by some recent studies. Is there still religious freedom at universities? Not if you go by this story. Should we or someone we love go into debt for university? Let’s look at some decision factors. Who is Edward Snowden and why should we care about him? Governments monitor the Internet to look good, not for our good Net neutrality, what’s next? And Uber Taxi, what about that insurance issue? Government may end up ruling Internet safety but not taxis Net neutrality: The basics—what does it really mean? Is the Internet really just like a telephone service? Follow UD News at Twitter!

Readers will recall that I (O’Leary for News) have been recommending Suzan Mazur’s recent book, The Origin of Life Circus, an indepth look at what is and isn’t working in origin of life research. Much recommended is her interview with Paul Davies’ collaborator at Arizona State University, physicist Sara Walker, who emphasizes the need to address the information aspect of life. Walker politely dismisses claim that maybe life and non-life aren’t much different, and says, Yes, I like to think about life in terms of information flows and how information is being processed. And because information is so widely distributed in biological systems, I think there’s merit to the idea of autocatalytic sets. Living systems are systems, and we really Read More ›

And remains fun! If you “didn’t get” a given sendup of a famous philosopher, produced by software guy Corey Mohler of Portland, Oregon (here too), you  get a brief explanation of the joke – but it works. See, for example, Turing Test Peter Singer investigates a basement flood Philosophy zombie The funniest one must be the dreadful fate of Fallacy Man, slayer of fallacies. Just when you think it couldn’t, it gets worse. Follow UD News at Twitter! Here’s the Turing Test:

That is a classic cultural argument for Darwinism, as here : In trying to make sense of the world around us, our brains have evolved to do some very odd things. The more we learn about our cognitive processes, the more it seems we have inherited a very weird wetware set, filled with bizarre and misleading foibles. While most of the cognitive errors I reference here work against us — especially as investors — today’s example of a cognitive process works strangely in the brain’s favor: Spelling don’t matter. Comprehension remains essentially unchanged, even when all letters of a word are totally mixed up — just so long as the first and last letters are in their proper place. Here Read More ›

Daily Express: The staggeringly complex LHC ‘atom smasher’ at the CERN centre in Geneva, Switzerland, will be fired up to its highest energy levels ever in a bid to detect – or even create – miniature black holes. If successful a completely new universe will be revealed – rewriting not only the physics books but the philosophy books too. It is even possible that gravity from our own universe may ‘leak’ into this parallel universe, scientists at the LHC say. Useful clarification: “Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualised. “This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science. “This is not what we Read More ›

Story. Image A newly discovered crocodilian ancestor may have filled one of North America’s top predator roles before dinosaurs arrived on the continent. Carnufex carolinensis, or the ‘Carolina Butcher,’ was a nine-foot long, land-dwelling crocodylomorph that walked on its hind legs and likely preyed upon smaller inhabitants of North Carolina ecosystems such as armored reptiles and early mammal relatives. Actually, this part’s more for the zoologists: Typical predators roaming Pangea included large-bodied rauisuchids and poposauroids, fearsome cousins of ancient crocodiles that went extinct in the Triassic Period. In the Southern Hemisphere, “these animals hunted alongside the earliest theropod dinosaurs, creating a predator pile-up,” says Zanno. However, the discovery of Carnufex indicates that in the north, large-bodied crocodylomorphs, not dinosaurs, were Read More ›

Here. “As a new TIME book explains, a cosmos with trillions of planets does not guarantee more than one with life.” You think that’s bad news? Here’s worse: You are not alone. That other guy is God. 😉 How Do We Grapple with the Idea that ET Might Not Be Out There? This closes our religion news coverage for the week.

Retired British doctor Jon Garvey wrote an interesting review some months back at Hump of the Camel of William Dembski’s Being as Communion: Evolution, then, is legitimately viewed as an algorithmic search, which is agreed at least by those who produce evolutionary algorithms to simulate it. As is well known, Dembski utilized the then recently-proven “No Free Lunch” theorems to say that, when all factors are considered, no type of search is better than random search, including evolutionary searches. More recently this led him to postulate a Law of Conservation of Information, or actually to consolidate the idea, first put forward by Nobel-prizewinner Peter Medawar in the 1980s. Medawar had shown, as others before him, that in mathematical and computational Read More ›

In Everyone, Even Jenny McCarthy, Has the Right to Challenge “Scientific Experts,” science writer John Horgan challenges colleague Chris “war on science” Mooney: I had a similar reaction when I spotted the headline of a recent essay by journalist Chris Mooney: “This Is Why You Have No Business Challenging Scientific Experts.” Similar, that is, to his reaction to a naive student. He goes on, But the history of science suggests—and my own 32 years of experience reporting confirms—that even the most accomplished scientists at the most prestigious institutions often make claims that turn out to be erroneous or exaggerated. Scientists succumb to groupthink, political pressures and other pitfalls. More than a half century ago, Freudian psychoanalysis was a dominant theory of Read More ›

Here’s an interesting, longish item in New Atlantis (2014): Together with the popular success of psychoactive medications like Prozac and Xanax, the change in the commitments of psychiatry has created ways of talking about mental illness that would have seemed outrageous or even nonsensical less than a century ago. Many of us now blithely accept that depression results from an imbalance of neurotransmitters. While the neurobiological understanding of mental disorders is still at a rudimentary stage, drugs that alter brain chemistry have definite palliative effects, and we increasingly look for and accept explanations of mental illness in neuroscientific terms. We might still take older explanations drawn from psychoanalysis or social psychiatry to hold some value, but we tend to assume Read More ›

… and one that came up was What Hath Darwin Wrought?: “The standard refrain today is that social Darwinism had nothing to do with either Charles Darwin or his biological theory,” says Dr. John West, whose work is highlighted in the documentary. “But ideas have consequences, and it’s clear that Darwin himself understood that fact. I think many viewers will be surprised when they learn just how closely Darwin’s own views are connected to the rise of social Darwinism—and just how much of a continuing impact social Darwinism has on Darwin’s followers today.” Trailer: As a rule, Darwin is never responsible for what he believed. Quite the opposite, a move is made every year, it seems, in the United States, Read More ›

As Mazur tells it in The Origin of Life Circus, In a couple of e-mails to me in January 2013, Andrew Pohorille, the senior-most scientist at NASA working in the origin of life field, objected to my story, “The RNA World’s Last Hurrah?”, “The RNA World’s Last Hurrah?”, in which I interviewed Paul Davies’ collaborator at Arizona State University, physicist Sara Walker. … Pohorille seemed furious at story comments doubting the RNA world, although the Walker interview was a Q & A, and I’d quoted the “experts” and linked my interviews with them: biochemist Pier Luigi Luisi, wh characterized the RNA world as a baseless fantasy; theoretical biologist Stu Kaffman hadn’t worked; and Walker, who told me “most of the Read More ›

The discussion around people being forced to support the BBC just to have the right to operate a TV was, I think, interesting and healthy (though I started it somewhat accidentally). I simply couldn’t understand how otherwise presumably intelligent people would fail so simple a proposition as this: If government says you cannot even have a TV if you don’t support some approved broadcasting service, that IS coercion. Now, as a Canadian who has received about 500 extreme weather warnings since I moved to Ottawa, I would hardly object to a minimum charge to defray the cost of warning residents against letting the main drain bust. Or flash freezing their buns.  A basic, specific EMS-type service. But the Brit-style compulsory Read More ›