Intelligent Design

From mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: Way back in 2005, soon after the emergence of the “String Landscape” and the ensuing debate over whether this made string theory untestable pseudo-science, Cumrun Vafa in response started writing about the “Swampland”. In contrast to the “Landscape” of effective field theories that are low energy limits of string theory, the “Swampland” is the space of effective field theories that are not low energy limits of string theory. One motivation here is to be able to claim that string theory is predictive, since if you can show a theory is in the Swampland, then string theory predicts that doesn’t describe our world. I wrote a couple blog postings about this back then, Read More ›

From Allan Adamson at Tech Times: Astronomers have been hunting for phosphorus in the universe because of the role it plays in life on Earth. If the element is lacking in other parts of the cosmos, it could be difficult for alien life to exist. A new study presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science meeting now suggests that life as we know it is more unusual than previously thought because the universe substantially lacks phosphorus. More. But then who needs phosphorus when we have imagination?!

I have a question for our materialist friends. Often in these pages we meet an argument like the one Allan Keith makes in this post.  The thrust of the argument is that since humans are the only known intelligent species, design inferences are valid only if they infer specifically to human intelligence.  This argument would preclude inference to a non-human “intelligent agent.”  The obvious purpose of the argument is to derail biological ID, because any indicia of design in living things could not have been the result of human intelligence.  Therefore, all biological design inferences are invalid. David Klinghoffer over at ENV brings this post on NPR’s website to our attention:   In the article, astrophysicist Adam Frank (University of Rochester) asks fellow Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST: Cardiff University philosopher Orestis Palermos was at the center of a stir last week for a claim he made, in an online lecture, that evolutionary biology is as much of a pseudoscience as creationism, because it relies very heavily on ad hoc explanations for data after they have been discovered, rather than making bold universal predictions beforehand that hold up. Critics have been saying this for decades, and it’s encouraging to know that others can see it too. When this happens it is always entertaining to watch the consternation of our fundamentalist Darwinist friends. In response they have, of course, flexed their muscles to shut him up, or at least hide the intro video. It Read More ›

From the editors of Nature: Scholars are anxious because extremists are scrutinizing the results of ancient-DNA studies and trying to use them for similar misleading ends. Ancient DNA, for example, offers evidence of large migrations that coincide with cultural changes in the archaeological record, including the emergence of Corded Ware. Some archaeologists have expressed fears that the extremists will wrongly present such conclusions as backing for Kossinna’s theories. Another problem for archaeologists and historians relates to the potential for abuse of the results of ancient-DNA studies looking at more recent times, such as the Migration Period around the fall of the Roman Empire or the era covered by the Viking sagas. They worry that DNA studies of groups described as Read More ›

From Deborah Byrd at Space: Living earthly microbes inhabit virtually every nook and cranny of our world, including extremely harsh environments like Yellowstone’s hot springs, deep ocean hydrothermal vents and the toxic sludge of polluted areas. Earthly bacteria have also been identified, alive, as high in our atmosphere as 25 miles (40 km) up. Neighboring Venus is a hostile world. Heat trapped by its dense atmosphere makes it hot enough on its surface to melt lead. But a series of space probes – launched between 1962 and 1978 – showed that temperatures and pressures at comparable heights in Venus’ atmosphere (25 miles or 40 km up) don’t preclude the possibility of microbial life. Now an international team of researchers has Read More ›

So there is something to discuss. From Thomas Cortellesi at Quillette: Scientism is often ridiculed as an appeal to excessive reductionism that “restricts human inquiry.” This notion is predicated on a view of science as purely reductionist, a charge that betrays a deep misunderstanding of scientific practice. Science is a way of demonstrating the deep connections between the smallest of parts and the largest of systems. Contrary to how it is often portrayed, the scientific project is not strictly reductionist. Reductionism is the belief that understanding complex phenomena comes ultimately from breaking them down into their simplest parts. This approach is made by isolating variables, refining the precision and accuracy of observations, and extracting from them fundamental laws, which in Read More ›

We must getting somewhere when it is possible to talk about facts for once. From Ruth Kava at ACSH, talking about Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968): Dr. Ehrlich misjudged the promise of technology to increase food production yields. And here I’m speaking of the early efforts of Dr. Norman Borlaug, a founder of ACSH, which led to the so-called “Green Revolution”, providing new hybrids of corn and wheat that staved off starvation for millions. And now we have genetic engineering, technologies that can further improve yields of food crops and husbandry — but of course these weren’t really on the horizon in 1968. So concerned was he about the impending doom that Ehrlich even said he supported enforced birth control Read More ›

This is the cover from New Scientists magazine for March 31, 2018: The materialist editor who wrote the text for the cover is deeply confused about at last two things: He implies that we “know” that inequality is morally wrong in the same way we “know” the earth orbits the sun.  But that is true only if morality is objective and part of that objective morality is that inequality is wrong.  But by definition materialists cannot believe in objective morality, because they reject any transcendent moral code by which to judge moral claims. Under Darwinist principles inequality is the natural state in the struggle of all against all.  After all, in a world of “survival of the fittest,” the “fittest” Read More ›

From Cornelius Hunter at Darwin’s God: Jerry Coyne’s website (Why Evolution Is True) has posed study questions for learning about evolution. Evolutionists have responded in the “Comment” section with answers to some of the questions (see here, here, and here). But when I posted a few relevant thoughts, they were quickly deleted after briefly appearing. That’s unfortunate because those facts can help readers to understand evolution. Here is what I posted:More. Maybe some of you smart boys can spell hellzapoppin. See also: Darwinian fundamentalist Jerry Coyne responds to“Atheist Fairytales”

From Ethan Siegel at Forbes: We do have dark matter in our Solar System, and it ought to have real effects on every other particle of matter around it. If there’s any interaction cross-section between normal matter particles and dark matter particles, then direct detection experiments should have a chance to discover it right here on Earth. And even if there isn’t, the gravitational effects of the dark matter passing through the Solar System, both gravitationally captured and gravitationally free, should affect the orbits of the planets. But until our measurements become more and more precise, there simply isn’t enough of a gravitational effect to result in anything detectable. For the meantime, we have to look to the Universe beyond, Read More ›

From Blakeley B. McShane, David Gal, Andrew Gelman, Christian Robert, Jennifer L. Tackett (22 Sep 2017) at arXiv.org: Abandon Statistical Significance In science publishing and many areas of research, the status quo is a lexicographic decision rule in which any result is first required to have a p-value that surpasses the 0.05 threshold and only then is consideration–often scant–given to such factors as prior and related evidence, plausibility of mechanism, study design and data quality, real world costs and benefits, novelty of finding, and other factors that vary by research domain. There have been recent proposals to change the p-value threshold, but instead we recommend abandoning the null hypothesis significance testing paradigm entirely, leaving p-values as just one of many Read More ›

Remember Gunter Bechly, the paleontologist who got erased from Wikipedia *? At ENST, he says, Based on the Darwinian narrative, we should expect not only that morphological complexity increases gradually in the fossil record, but we should also expect the same for complex animal behavior. This is because according to Darwinists, “Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact, but…it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work” (Dawkins 2009). Charles Darwin himself strictly insisted on gradualism and famously quoted the Latin phrase “natura non facit saltus” (“nature does not make jumps”) no fewer than six times in his Origin of Species. He realized that any kind of significant saltational change would Read More ›

U Chicago prof here: First of all, Weikart doesn’t recognize the irony of his implication that “See? Atheists believe in fairy tales. They’re just as bad as we are!” Well, he might respond that his Christianity is certainly not a fairy tale, because it’s not only based on empirical truths like Jesus Man being resurrected, but also gives us an objective morality and an objective purpose in our lives. But why is his Christianity true and Islam and Hinduism, which inspire different purposes, false? But step back and consider the question: what is that meaning and purpose? As we know, one can discern an infinite number of meanings and life-purposes from just the Bible alone, for its “objective” lessons are Read More ›

From Guillermo Paz-y-Miño C. and Avelina Espinosa at Evolution: Education and Outreach: The controversy around evolution, creationism, and intelligent design resides in a historical struggle between scientific knowledge and popular belief. Four hundred seventy-six students (biology majors n = 237, nonmajors n = 239) at a secular liberal arts private university in Northeastern United States responded to a five-question survey to assess their views about: (1) evolution, creationism, and intelligent design in the science class; (2) students’ attitudes toward evolution; (3) students’ position about the teaching of human evolution; (4) evolution in science exams; and (5) students’ willingness to discuss evolution openly. There were 60.6% of biology majors and 42% of nonmajors supported the exclusive teaching of evolution in the Read More ›