Intelligent Design

At Nature Human Behaviour, we are told that the replication crisis is due to lack of rigid adherence to such a theory: Science, he explains, is about accumulating sets of observations that occur reliably—the Sun appears at different places in the sky depending on the season and time of day; finches have different shaped beaks depending on what they eat. “That’s the raw ingredients,” he says. “To make sense of it requires a framework to say, this is how all these different facts fit together, and this is why.” We explain these observations by developing theoretical models—of how the Earth rotates around the Sun on a tilted axis, of natural selection. Cathleen O’Grady, “The replication crisis may also be a Read More ›

Even if some people would like them to. In case the subject comes up over coffee. For example, ● Finally, physicist Alfredo Metere of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) insists that AI must deal in specifics but humans live in an indefinitely blurry world that is always changing: AI is a bunch of mathematical models that need to be realised in some physical medium, such as, for example, programs that can be stored and run in a computer. No wizards, no magic. The moment we implement AI models as computer programs, we are sacrificing something, due to the fact that we must reduce reality to a bunch of finite bits that a computer can crunch on. Alfredo Metere, “AI Read More ›

From a philosophy prof and chaplain: Let’s now look at an example of a scientific proof and contrast it with an argument from philosophy. An argument from natural science goes something like this (there are even some philosophical moves here, such as the move from effect to cause): “Everything that has a beginning has a cause. The universe had a beginning. Therefore, the universe had a cause.” Most of the effort is usually placed on the second premise to marshal evidence for the universe’s beginning. For example, the second law of thermodynamics (law of entropy) is often invoked. It says that energy in a closed system (a system that doesn’t get energy from the outside) converts from usable to unusable Read More ›

I thought that this video was amusing. This is a public lecture given by a scientist on the subject of Intelligent Design. This is what passes for public discourse today.

How did proteins evolve? It is a difficult question because, setting aside many other problems, the very starting point—the protein-coding gene—is highly complex. A large number of random mutations would seem to be required before you have a functional protein that helps the organism. Too often such problems are solved with vague accounts of “adaptations” and “selection pressure” doing the job. But this week researchers at the University of Illinois announced ground-breaking research that provides a step-by-step, detailed, description of the evolution of a new protein-coding gene and associated regulatory DNA sequences. The protein in question is a so-called “antifreeze” protein that keeps the blood of Arctic codfish from freezing, and the new research provides the specific sequence of mutations, leading to Read More ›

Access Research Network is offering a prize ($50 VISA gift card) for the best response to this question: What do you say to someone when they claim that Intelligent Design is merely an appeal to a god-of-the-gaps?” Send your response to arn@arn.org Here’s the January question: How would you would respond to someone who claims that they believe in evolution rather than God? along with the answers and the winner, to give you some idea what they are looking for. No one’s name is published without their permission. FYI, here’s the winning answer: Response 3: What do you mean by evolution? First I would ask whether they mean chemical or biological evolution. Then I would ask them what they mean Read More ›