Naturalism

That guy at Nature who rides “Genetic determinism rides again” was right. Now, from ScienceDaily: For the first time, locations on the human genome have been identified that can explain differences in meaning in life between individuals. This is the result of research conducted in over 220,000 individuals by Professor Meike Bartels and PhD student Bart Baselmans from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The researchers identified two genetic variants for meaning in life and six genetic variants for happiness. The results were published this week in the scientific journal Scientific Reports. The fact that genetic variants for a meaning in life have been found indicates that everyone is different and that differences between people in complex processes such as a meaning Read More ›

Frank Turek tackles intelligent design: One wonders if we could do with more biologists who just looked at the facts of nature without Darwinglasses on. It is certainly a different, more complex picture. Hat tip: Ken Francis See also: Frank Turek: Why does the Bible not talk about dinosaurs?

Bridge Radio podcast: J. Warner Wallace joins BRIDGE Radio again to continue the discussion of his book “God’s Crime Scene.” We talked about irreducible complexity and eight characteristics of design that points to an intelligent designer – God. (51:34 min) More on J. Warner Wallace: J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective, popular national speaker and best-selling author. He continues to consult on cold-case investigations while serving as a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is also an adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University and a faculty member at Summit Ministries. … J. Warner’s professional investigative work has received national recognition; his cases have been featured more than any other detective on NBC’s Dateline, Read More ›

Recently, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offered a parable about whether machines really learn. The tale features a book that “learned” to fall open at the right places. Computer scientist Jeffrey Shallit responded, claiming that machines really CAN learn!, and Dr. Egnor responded to him, pointing out that a baseball glove can “learn” the game if adjustment to circumstances is all we are counting. But he also wanted to make clear to Dr. Shallit, brains don’t learn either. Only minds learn: Shallit implies that the reinforcement and suppression of neural networks in the brain that accompanies learning means that brains, like machines, learn. He is mistaken. Brains are material organs that contain neurons and glia a host of cells and substances. Brains Read More ›

Photographer and philosopher Laszlo Bencze has been rereading Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos (2012), and he writes to say, I’m finding Mind and Cosmos to be a very thought provoking book. In it Nagel sets himself the task of explaining the existence of mind (or consciousness) without resorting to either materialistic evolution or to theism. I suspect that most of us on will feel that he’s missing the obvious answer, theism, but Nagel refuses to accept that. Therefore he goes through some rather elaborate mental contortions in trying to find a path which is “the territory between them.” He kindly sends us his notes from Nagel: The priority given to evolutionary naturalism in the face of its implausible conclusions about Read More ›

“Claims that the Universe is designed for humans raise far more troubling questions than they can possibly answer,” says evolutionary psychologist David P. Barash: Welcome to the ‘anthropic principle’, a kind of Goldilocks phenomenon or ‘intelligent design’ for the whole Universe. It’s easy to describe, but difficult to categorise: it might be a scientific question, a philosophical concept, a religious argument – or some combination. The anthropic principle holds that if such phenomena as the gravitational constant, the exact electric charge on the proton, the mass of electrons and neutrons, and a number of other deep characteristics of the Universe differed at all, human life would be impossible. According to its proponents, the Universe is fine-tuned for human life. This Read More ›

Make what you will of studies but this just in: A study of 788 people in the UK, France and Spain concluded that atheists and agnostics think of themselves as more open-minded than those with faith, but are are actually less tolerant to differing opinions and ideas. Religious believers “seem to better perceive and integrate diverging perspectives”, according to psychology researchers at the private Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium’s largest French-speaking university. … Dr Uzarevic said: ““The idea started through noticing that, in public discourse, despite both the conservative/religious groups and liberal/secular groups showing strong animosity towards the opposite ideological side, somehow it was mostly the former who were often labeled as ‘closed-minded’. Greg Wilford, “Atheists are less open-minded Read More ›

If the measure is blind belief, maybe so: Darwin, for instance, is part of the House of Progress, which is why so many people will accuse you of being a creationist if you offer any criticism of his theory of Natural Selection (amusingly, this happens even to atheists). He was “right,” you see, so any opposition to him or any doubts as to his theory must be mere unthinking reactions. Likewise, look at the treatment of scientists who question the extent, cause, or proper response to climate change: they are simply labeled “deniers” and dismissed, rather than engaged. You see? In the Middle Ages, educated men disputed each other by putting their opponent’s case in the strongest possible light before Read More ›

Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland’s Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology makes clear he doesn’t like it: Rigid adherence to scientism―as opposed to a healthy respect for science―is all too prevalent in our world today. Rather than leading to a deeper understanding of our universe, this worldview actually undermines real science and marginalizes morality and religion. In this book, celebrated philosopher J. P. Moreland exposes the selfdefeating nature of scientism and equips us to recognize scientism’s harmful presence in different aspects of culture, emboldening our witness to biblical Christianity and arming us with strategies for the integration of faith and science―the only feasible path to genuine knowledge. He has said, Strong scientism is the view that some Read More ›

Because silicon can’t, says chemist: WHEN Lee Cronin was 9 he was given a Sinclair ZX81 computer and a chemistry set. Unlike most children, Cronin imagined how great it would be if the two things could be combined to make a programmable chemical computer. Now 45 and the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, Cronin leads a research team of more than 50 people, but his childhood obsessions remain. He is constructing chemical brains, and has ambitions to create artificial life – using a radical new approach. Rowan Hooper, “Why creating a chemical brain will be how we understand consciousness” at New Scientist (paywall) The problem with consciousness is not that we don’t understand how it originates but that Read More ›

Yes, everything is going high tech now, it seems. Intro of topic For around half a century, the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis has provided a unique way of understanding how life has persisted on Earth. It champions the idea that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings evolved together as a single, self-regulating system that has kept the planet habitable for life – despite threats such as a brightening Sun, volcanoes and meteorite strikes. However, Professor Tim Lenton from the University of Exeter and famed French sociologist of science Professor Bruno Latour are now arguing that humans have the potential to ‘upgrade’ this planetary operating system to create “Gaia 2.0”. They believe that the evolution of both humans and their technology could add Read More ›

Science writer David Appell suggests this, in all seriousness, in his review of Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at Physics World: Hossenfelder confronts physicists to ask them why their ideas aren’t working. Michael Krämer, who heads the new-physics group at the LHC and works on supersymmetry, tells her that he is “honestly confused”. He adds, “I thought something must happen. But now? I’m confused.” She travels to the US to show up at the offices of luminaries including Nobel laureates Frank Wilzcek and Steven Weinberg. She considers Weinberg the greatest living physicist – his office in Austin, Texas is half the size of hers, she notes, “an observation that vaporizes what little ambition I ever had to Read More ›

He is the author of a “bad design” book, Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes: Earlier this year writers for Evolution News posted responses to Dr. Lents, who teaches at John Jay College and wrote a recent book, Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. He argues that our bodies demonstrate “poor design” or “suboptimal design” which is best explained by evolution. Lents wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal summarizing his case. He argues in his book that the fact that the openings to the maxillary sinuses (called “ostia”) are situated near the top of the sinuses would prevent gravity drainage of mucus. This, he Read More ›

Recently, we noted the dirtiest fight in physics, over the nature of the universe. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts: A great story on the level of confusion in the world of astronomy and particle physics. My own view is: they’re both wrong. Dark Matter WIMP proponents postulate an invisible particle that has all the properties a theorist needs to solve the problem. If it needs x-ray vision, goes through walls, and travels faster than a speeding bullet–why no problem, it’s supersymmetric you see. The other side says, no particles are needed. We just need a flexible law of gravity. Let’s replace the straight edge with a French curve drafting tool, and we can explain every galaxy Read More ›

Biola physics prof John Bloom offers some thoughts: For example, since the 1930s we have a growing body of data which show that the universe is expanding in a way which implies that everything in it came from a single point and an enormous burst of energy. Thus, it convincingly looks like our universe had a beginning and that something outside of this universe started it. Sound like God? Sure, and Christians can point to Genesis 1:1 and other verses as confirming this interpretation. But if science is restricted to only providing naturalistic answers to explain what we see, then no hypothesis can include God. Therefore, scientists must postulate “imaginary time,” or “a multiverse,” or some kind of preexistent “nothing” Read More ›