Chemistry

Imagine if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time.  Let’s think about what would actually mean. There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry.  If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves Read More ›

  Over on this thread we’ve had a lively discussion, primarily about common descent.  However, one of the key side discussions has focused on the information required to build an organism. Remarkably, some have argued that essentially nothing is required except a parts list on a digital storage medium.  Yes, you heard right.  Given the right sequence of digital characters (represented by nucleotides in the DNA molecule), each part will correctly self-assemble, the various parts will make their way automatically to the correct place within the cell, they will then automatically assemble into larger protein complexes and molecular machines to perform work, the various cells will automatically assemble themselves into larger structures, such as limbs and organs, and eventually everything will Read More ›

From Chemistry World: Nobel prize-winning chemist and past president of the Royal Society of Chemistry Harry Kroto died on Saturday 30 April aged 76. Kroto was awarded the 1996 chemistry Nobel prize, along with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, for the discovery of fullerenes, and was knighted the same year. More. He was also an atheist activist in science, seeming not to recognize any distinction, as the campaign against Royal Society theistic evolutionist Michael Reiss suggested. This item from the New York Times in 2006 gives the sense of it. He shared the Nobel that year with Richard Smalley (1943–2005) who came to the opposite conclusion. Curiously, no one was supposed to mind using science to spread atheism but using Read More ›

Please see the note and apology at the end of this post. —– Over on a recent thread Alicia Cartelli responded to my request that if she had “an idea how abiogenesis works” I would post it as a head post for discussion. I have not yet had time to parse through all this, other than to note that most of what Alicia discusses below was already granted for discussion purposes in my Abiogenesis Challenge. Thus, even if we were to grant the very questionable and optimistic claims, it still does not address the central issues needed for the origin of life, including the issue of information content. That said, I appreciate Alicia taking time to put together the below Read More ›

Over on a recent thread, we witnessed some flailing about with respect to abiogenesis (see comments 374-376). Thoroughly confused about critical distinctions, such as the difference between deterministic forces and contingent possibilities, some seem to think that the fact that “nature forms stars and planets” means that nature can do just about anything. No need to ask any hard questions, kids! Just close your eyes and imagine the possibilities. This is what so much of the materialistic abiogenesis creation story amounts to. I have posted essentially this challenge before, but for Zachriel and anyone else who thinks materialistic abiogenesis is anything more than a laughable made-up story, here it is again: —– For purposes of this challenge, I’m willing to Read More ›

Apparently yes. From Nautilus: Five Things We Still Don’t Know About Water Including: There is something remarkable about the mist surrounding Niagara Falls: The individual droplets move as if they are negatively charged. Together with his colleagues, David Chandler, of the University of California, Berkeley, used a theory capable of describing such rare events, called transition path sampling, to calculate the water evaporation coefficient. They arrived at a value near one. This corresponds fairly well to recent liquid microjet experiments that produce a value of 0.6 for both normal water and heavy water. However, there are a couple of wrinkles. For one thing, it remains unclear why experiments performed under more atmospherically relevant conditions yield much lower values. Also, the Read More ›

Here. … Notices of concern regarding papers in Science2, Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS)3,4,5, Journal of Material Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry and Chemical Science have been published in the past few months and now the first retractions of these papers has been coming into effect – one paper in Science2 and three in JACS. Hey, here’s a solution: Just blame creationists. That way no one need ask what’s broken. Maybe one of Darwin’s frat boys in the combox can compose the PR for us. Alternatively keep up with Retraction Watch Follow UD News at Twitter!

My first post on UD, a mere 6 weeks ago, covered some basic principles about information. Specifically, I addressed the misunderstandings of those who deny that there is anything special about the information contained in, say, DNA, as opposed to a pile of rocks or Saturn’s rings.  We had a very productive discussion, with a number of issues explored.  (Incidentally, I used the word “contain” as a shorthand way of expressing what Mung suggested we call “sequences of symbols” that “represent information.”  I’m fine with that longer formulation, as we are saying the same thing substantively.  Any nuance there isn’t germane to the point of today’s brief post.) As we were winding up the thread, Mung asked if I had any sources of people who espoused Read More ›

At the school where I received my Master of Science degree in Applied Physics, the basic undergraduate cost was $61,000 per year. Thankfully I wasn’t an undergrad there! I remember during commencement, I thought to myself as each undergrad crossed the stage to receive their diploma, “another quarter million dollars for academia.” I could go back and take formal classes to learn more science, but at this point it would only be for indulging in the joys of science, not advancing my occupation in financial management. To me, science is the study of God’s work. If I thought the universe and life were accidents, the product of a random number generator, I’d probably not be interested in studying it any Read More ›

The problem of homochirality in biology does not have prominence in ID literature because it is unglamorous and there is hesitation to endorse homochirality as evidence of design because of the fear there will be some future discovery in chemistry that will over turn it. But the sword of uncertainty cuts both ways, and if uncertainty casts doubt on ID, it casts even more doubt on mindless evolutionism. Right now the problem of homochirality is firmly an argument in favor of ID, and future discoveries could favor the ID case even more not less, so let us not be too quick to de-emphasize the homochirality argument. Life is made of chiral molecules. A chiral molecule can be left-handed or right-handed. Read More ›

In terms of textbook thermodynamics, a functioning Lamborghini has more thermal entropy than that same Lamborghini with its engine and other vital parts removed. But intuitively we view such a destruction of a functioning Lamborghini as an increase in entropy and not a decrease of entropy. Something about this example seems downright wrong… To fix this enigma, and to make the notion of entropy line up to our intuitions, I’m suggesting that the notion of “specified entropy” be used to describe the increase in disorganization. I derive this coined phrase from Bill Dembski’s notions of specified information. In the case of the Lamborghini getting its vital parts removed, the specified entropy goes up by exactly the amount that the specified Read More ›