Design inference

From ScienceDaily: In almost all adult mammals, testes are located either in a scrotum or in the lower abdomen. But testes initially develop deep inside the abdomen at a position close to the kidneys, as seen in mammalian embryos. The final testicular position is the result of a descent process that occurs during animal development. However, several African species such as elephants, tenrecs, golden moles, elephant shrews, manatees, and rock hyraxes differ from the other mammals by lacking any descent and having testes at their initial abdominal position. It is an open question whether these African species lost the testicular descent process or whether other mammals gained that feature. Thomas Lehmann from the Senckenberg Frankfurt adds: “The evolution of testicular Read More ›

It’s risky. The church splitter (fundamentalism) vs. the church closer (theistic evolution). William Lane Craig writes: Two challenges to this doctrine arise from modern science, one fairly old and the other very recent. … I am currently exploring the genetic evidence that is said to rule out an original pair of modern humans. In talking with genetic scientists, I’ve found that there is enormous confusion about this question today. Popularizers have misrepresented the arguments, thereby inviting misguided responses. The issues are very technical and difficult to understand. I’m just beginning to get my feet wet and don’t want to misrepresent the science. I want to know how firm the evidence is and what it would cost intellectually to maintain the Read More ›

It goes downhill from there. If I were a Darwinian, I would be embarrassed by this stuff. From Jeremy E Sherman at Psychology Today: I’m an atheist with a PhD. in evolutionary theory. I spend much of my time encouraging a new relationship with religion and spirituality modeled on our relationship with fiction. For example, I wish that Christians believed in Christ the way they believe in Santa Claus, as a fictional character based loosely on a historical one, reconfigured to embody a first-cut simplification of Christian values for kids that remains vivid and valued by nostalgic and conscientious adults. Most of the world, for whatever reason, continues to distinguish between apparent truth and admitted fiction. Now, as to Sherman’s main Read More ›

From Nathan H. Lents at Skeptic: From neurosurgeon Michael Egnor at ENST: Lents writes: One of the important drainage-collection pipes is installed near the top of the largest pair of cavities, the maxillary sinuses, located underneath the upper cheeks… Putting the drainage-collection point high within these sinuses is not a good idea because of this pesky thing called gravity. Egnor replies: Lents misunderstands the physiology of sinus drainage. The visible opening (ostium) in the maxillary sinus is not the only, or even the main, route of drainage. There is a complex system of interconnection, often at the microscopic level, between the paranasal sinuses, and Lents betrays an ignorance of sinus physiology in asserting that the large visible opening out of Read More ›

From Nathan H. Lents, author of Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes, at Undark: Of course there’s an explanation (sperm like to develop at lower temperatures). But really: What intelligent designer could have come up with this? It sounds as though Lents has never heard of the concept of “optimal”: best possible solution in given environment, as opposed to best theoretical solution as an abstraction. The fact is that there is no good reason that sperm development has to work best at lower temperatures. It’s just a fluke, an example of poor design. If nature had an intelligent designer, he or she would have a lot to answer for. But since natural selection Read More ›

 Darwin’s Doubt deals with the Cambrian explosion of life forms about 550 million years ago. Philip Cunningham, who forwarded this link, notes, Stephen Meyer joins Michael to discuss the origins of life and the biology’s big bang, the Cambrian explosion. Animal forms come and go, but what links them as “acts of mind” (as Agassiz put it) is a “continuity of ideas,” not, says Meyer, the physical continuity that Darwin asserted. These are wonderful ways of putting things. Meyer also discusses the 2016 Royal Society meeting attended by a “spirited minority” of ID proponents, where one evolutionist put it that “criticism of neo-Darwinism is so early ’90s.” He meant that among scientists behind closed doors, neo-Darwinism itself is so Read More ›

A long time ago, everyone thought that nature was just a big, easily tinkered machine, there was a fad for transporting awesomely successful life forms across the globe (which they would not usually do themselves*). From Daniel Martins at the Weather Network: If you’re wondering what in blazes Canadian beavers are doing so far away from the Frozen North, that is a excellent question whose implications the Argentine government should probably have thought a little harder about. Instead, it seems to have been with a mixture of pride and hopefulness that, in 1946, the government flew 20 beavers from Manitoba first to Rio de Janeiro, then to Buenos Aires, and then on by seaplane to Lake Fagnano, in the interior of Read More ›

From Jonathan Wells at ENST: … Dr. Lents just published his own book titled Human Errors, in which he repeats on page 5 his claim that the human eye is badly designed because the photoreceptor cells “appear to be installed backward.” Over thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins had used this claim as an argument for Darwinian evolution in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker. Since then the argument has been repeated by evolutionary biologists George Williams, Kenneth R. Miller, Douglas Futuyma, and Jerry Coyne, among others. But even before Dawkins published his claim in 1986, scientists writing in standard textbooks on eye physiology had shown why the “backwards retina” is functionally better than its opposite. Those scientists and textbooks included Read More ›

From Marina Koren at the Atlantic: As recently as January of this year, Tarter suggested a rebranding for seti. “Seti is not the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. We can’t define intelligence, and we sure as hell don’t know how to detect it remotely,” she said. Seti “is searching for evidence of someone else’s technology. We use technology as a proxy for intelligence.” Call it sett instead, she said. NASA does not, we are told, recognize SETI as part of astrobiology. Call that prejudice if you like, or call it an unwillingness to be seen spending tax money on a search for little green men when attested phenomena out there await exploration. … With the House bill on the table, Tarter says Read More ›

It seems we cannot escape epistemological questions when we address ID issues. AK opens the squeaky-hinged door yet again in the US National Association of Scholars thread. My comment: KF, 9: >>[AK,] I see your: If they are published in reputable peer reviewed journals, they are scientific findings. We need to distinguish key terms and address underlying issues on logic and warrant. Truth (following Ari who got it right) says of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not — accurate description of reality. As potentially knowing, rational and responsible subjects, we face the challenge that we are finite, fallible, morally struggling (is is not ought) and too often ill-willed. To credibly know objective Read More ›

Yes, four eyes. From Gunter Bechly at ENST: Based on two fragmentary fossils, Smith et al. (2018) just described the new monitor lizard Saniwa ensidens from the 49 million year old Bridger Formation in Wyoming. Both known specimens surprisingly had four eyes! Additional to the normal pair of lateral lens eyes, and the usual parietal third eye of lizards, this new species actually had a forth pineal eye like a lamprey. Not a single other jawed vertebrate has something remotely like this, even though this fossil lizard is the closest relative of the modern monitor lizard genus Varanus and thus deeply nested within modern land vertebrates. What? This sounds almost too weird to be true. Yet since the article was Read More ›

Douglas Axe here: The Power of Common Science (Ep. 153) Guest: Dr. Douglas Axe, Author of “Undeniable” Undeniable. See also: Undeniable: Darwinians stage manage evidence against their view into near oblivion Doug Axe vs Keith Fox: Is design in nature undeniable? and Andrew McDiarmid podcast with Doug Axe, author of Undeniable, “on the Design Intuition and a New Biology” Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

For some time now, GP has had up a post on defending intelligent design. In following its discussion off and on (it’s budget season here), I see that the definition of design is on the table for discussion. I think I can help (and while I am at it — just noticed, contribute to BA’s dissection of the Only Human Intelligence Allowed fallacy), and I think it worthwhile to headline a comment: KF, 310: >> it seems the definition of design is up again as an issue. The simplest summary I can give is: intelligently directed configuration, or if someone does not get the force of “directed,” we may amplify slightly: intelligently, intentionally directed configuration. This phenomenon is a commonplace, Read More ›

From Steve Dent at Engadget: For the first time, scientists have peered into living cells and created videos showing how they function with unprecedented 3D detail. Using a special microscope and new lighting techniques, a team from Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute captured zebrafish immune cell interactions with unheard-of 3D detail and resolution. The tech has already yielded new insights on cell function and could transform our understanding of how organisms function at the smallest scales. … The stunning result, as shown above, is a live window into immune cell function with ten times more detail than ever seen before. In one shot, an orange-tinted immune cell scoops up blue sugar particles, and in another, a cancer cell Read More ›

Recently, Trinity International University’s Henry Center’s online journal Sapientia asked, “Can Science Detect Intelligent Design? An Introduction,” sponsored by Hans Madueme. Design theorist Stephen C. Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, replied at Evolution News & Science Today: Where did the information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information processing system arise? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary origin-of-life research. Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And, as I show in extensive detail in my book Signature in the Cell, no theory of undirected chemical evolution explains the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell. Why? There is simply too much information in Read More ›