Intelligent Design

Jurisprudence Professor Robert George and bioethicist Patrick Lee have written a devastating take-down of Bill Nye in an article for National Review titled, Back to Science Class for the Science Guy, after Nye published a video on YouTube, claiming to tell us what science says about abortion. As take-downs go, this one is about as good as it gets, and I warmly recommend it to readers. The authors write: …[H]e (Nye) misrepresents the facts from top to bottom in an embarrassingly transparent effort to hijack science in the cause of pro-abortion ideology. The authors’ conclusion is also worth quoting: At several points in his video, Nye expresses frustration with people who don’t share his support for the moral and legal Read More ›

Okay, this is the last thing I (O’Leary for News) have to say on the subject of doctors and evolution, and fitness for public office: Once, about forty years ago, one of my kids was hit on the head by a car. She was taken immediately to the local ER. I flagged down a cruiser to follow. Even in those days, one could get immediate updates by cruiserphone (… so far okay … so far okay … um, check with medical resident … ) So the cops and I rushed through the ER doors. It wasn’t hard to find her; I could hear her screaming from four emergency rooms away. Later, a medical attendant told me to carry her upstairs Read More ›

When John Ray refused to conform to the 1662 Act of Uniformity—aimed mainly at the Puritans—and so was forced to leave his position at Cambridge University, he roamed Europe for three years doing what he loved: observing nature. Ray and his companions were in for a surprise: unfathomable diversity. They found thousands of different kinds of insects, animals and plants. Every place had a different flora and fauna, and with different interactions. Life did not seem to follow the kind of compact formulas Isaac Newton was discovering for the new physics. With the overthrow of Aristotelianism, physics was becoming more parsimonious in line with Occam’s Razor. But biology was headed in the opposite direction. Were all these organic life forms Read More ›

Why does anyone care what any US Prez thinks about evolution? If it is really a science topic, shouldn’t it be like the Large Hadron Collider or Pluto’s  geography? So how is it the Prez’s business? Why ask him in particular? Doesn’t he mainly deal with domestic and foreign crises? I first wondered about this when I saw four hairstyle models (oh, excuse me!, highly paid US broadcast media reporters) puzzling over former prez  contender Scott Walker’s views on “evolution.” People who, I realized, knew nothing whatever of the issues and would consider it their professional duty not to know anything. Their duty is just to look concerned. You bought, you paid. Fine. Glad you like the hair. If it Read More ›

Some claim we can. We are told, It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it is rather a consequence of our current understanding of theoretical physics. This distinction is crucial. We have not waved our hands and said: “Let there be a multiverse”. Instead the idea that the Universe is perhaps one of infinitely many is derived from current theories like quantum mechanics and string theory. Any time people must talk this way, they have a bad theory. Popular, but bad. But the critical question is, what if they discovered it wasn’t true? Would they just keep the baffle going? Well, let’s see … Follow UD News at Twitter!

While it is doubtful whether Pope Francis’ speech to the United Nations actually ascribed rights to Nature, the Pope clearly denied that humans have the right to harm Nature: doing so harms humanity, he said. I believe this kind of thinking is dangerous for two reasons: it ignores the lessons of history and it will inevitably stymie human development in poor countries. (To give credit where credit is due, though, I was heartened that the Pope saw fit to mention the unborn in his latest speech – something he didn’t do in his speech to Congress.) What did the Pope actually say? For the benefit of readers, here is the relevant passage from Pope Francis’ United Nations speech (Al Jazeera Read More ›

Thinking about taking CHY 431—Structure and Mechanism in Biological Chemistry next semester at the University of Maine? If so you likely will be fed junk evolutionary science like this page:  Read more

… In an historic edict, Pope Francis warned that failing to act would have “grave consequences”, the brunt of which would fall on the world’s poorest people. His words came as a stark reminder that global climate change is among the most pressing moral dilemmas of the 21st century. It joins a long list. He could have added spiralling inequality, persistent poverty, death from preventable diseases and nuclear proliferation to the ethical challenges that define our times. Some are newer than others, but all could plausibly be fixed. The fact we’re struggling with all of them raises a troubling question: does our moral compass equip us to deal with the threats we face … One must apparently pay for more Read More ›

Further to the current blaze of nonsense re the multiverse and the unfortunate news that naturalism is dead, at Not Even Wrong, mathematician Peter Woit notes, re Arkani-Harmed, here, A couple years ago I was struck by a talk of his in which he showed a lot of self-knowledge, describing himself as an “ideolog” (see here). There’s more about this in the Quanta profile: “It’s important for me while I’m working on something to be very ideological about it. And then, of course, it’s also important after you are done to forget the ideology and move on to another one.” The ideologies on display this time include a very speculative picture of a future union of mathematics and theoretical physics:More. ‘Nuff Read More ›

In a 1977 paper published in theJournal of Theoretical Biology, Hubert Yockey used information theory to evaluate the likelihood of the evolution of a relatively simple protein. Yockey’s model system was cytochrome c, a protein consisting of about one hundred amino acids. Cytochrome c plays an important role in the mitochondria’s electron transport chain (ETC) which helps to convert the chemical energy in carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds, in the food we eat, to an electrochemical potential energy in the form of hydrogen ions (or protons) stored within the mitochondria’s inner membrane. Like water pressing against a dam and turning its turbines to generate electricity, the high-concentration hydrogen ions drive the ATP synthase “turbine” to create the high-energy ATP molecule. Like Read More ›

In a new study out of the University of Liverpool evolutionists now say they have found empirical evidence that a genetic complex, involving dozens of protein-coding genes related to altruism, can evolve. Such a finding would be truly ground-breaking given that, at least up until now, the evolution of even a single protein has been found to be scientifically unlikely. It would be astonishing if now evolutionists have overturned a substantial body of work establishing molecular evolution to be effectively impossible. But of course evolutionists have done no such thing. There was no finding of molecular evolution, no new proteins or genes, no empirical evidence, nothing. Just another ridiculous claim made by evolutionists. It’s the same old pattern—evolutionists look at Read More ›

Like many readers, I watched the Pope’s speech earlier today. It was in many ways a beautiful speech, which brought members of Congress to their feet (many with tears in their eyes) in a standing ovation. While the issues it addressed were all vital ones, I was a little disappointed at the issues it didn’t address, or barely mentioned. Perhaps there was a good reason for that. But then I decided that instead of whingeing, I would do something constructive: write an alternative speech that the Pope could have delivered, covering all the issues that I felt he needed to draw people’s attention to. I don’t write speeches for a living, so I apologize to readers if my poor effort Read More ›

We can’t help you. Sign noted in a computer guy’s office somewhere in North America: If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is—you are the patsy. First, what exactly is Darwin’s theory anyway, other than an invite to the approved parties? Here it is: Information can be created without intelligence. That is, natural selection acting on random mutation explains the order of life we see all around us. What can’t survive won’t, and that explains how very complex life forms and structures — including the human mind — get built up. True: Things that can’t survive don’t. But why would that fact alone drive nature to produce anything as simple as a Read More ›

We didn’t think anyone would be so honest about it, but get this from Quanta Magazine: As things stand, the known elementary particles, codified in a 40-year-old set of equations called the “Standard Model,” lack a sensible pattern and seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Arkani-Hamed and other particle physicists, guided by their belief in naturalness, have spent decades devising clever ways to fit the Standard Model into a larger, natural pattern. But time and again, ever-more-powerful particle colliders have failed to turn up proof of their proposals in the form of new particles and phenomena, increasingly pointing toward the bleak and radical prospect that naturalness is dead. … Arkani-Hamed considers his tendency to speculate a personal weakness. “This is not Read More ›

Ah yes ,the time of year in many parts of North America when, everywhere you look, there is a Monarch (an orange butterfly) flap gliding around. They migrate in vast masses from mid-north Canada to Mexico. Now, from New Scientist: Wasps first turned bracoviruses into biological weapons around 100 million years ago. There are now thousands of species of braconid wasp, each of which parasitises a specific butterfly or moth and produces a unique bracovirus carrying a set of genes that is different to those of other wasp species. But sometimes things go awry. Wasps occasionally lay an egg in the wrong host, for instance, in which case the wasp larva may not survive. In such cases, if genes from Read More ›