Because science writers need simple sound bites and catch phrases: Dennett’s integration of popular evolution theory into his work appeals to many science writers, as this snippet from a BBC news item shows: From an evolutionary perspective, our ability to think is no different from our ability to digest, says Dennett. Both these biological activities can […]
Intelligent Design
Researchers’ claim: Complex molecules emerge without evolution or design
In short, it’s geometry. But what follows?
Particle physicist: Please quit calling the Higgs boson “the God particle”!
As a matter of fact, we don’t often hear the Higgs called the “God particle” now that it’s been clearly identified and given Peter Higgs’s name. That was more common before. It’s almost like something else is bothering Dorigo but we won’t speculate.
“Rube-Bait”: Kevin Williamson vs. David Klinghoffer: Round 2
Recently, we covered Evolution News and Science Today editor David Klinghoffer’s response to a sneer by Kevin Williamson against ID at National Review (where Klinghoffer used to work, incidentally). Klinghoffer cited a number of respectable thinkers who have held Darwinism in little esteem—which led to our publishing a separate and different long list of such […]
Theistic Evolutionists: The Reality Behind the Illusion is Itself an Illusion
. . . and the reality behind that illusion is, well, the initial illusion. Richard Dawkins famously declared that the appearance of design in living things is overwhelming. Theistic evolutionists do not disagree. But, like arch-atheist Dawkins, they assert that the appearance of design is an illusion and Darwinian evolution is the reality behind the […]
Bill Nye’s Knowledge of Science Could Benefit From a Visit to Wikipedia
As long-time readers know, we at UD often disparage Wikipedia for its left-wing bias. Still, you have to give it its due. For a quick lookup of non-controversial facts, it has its uses. Uses to which, apparently, Bill Nye has not put it. If he had looked up Wiki’s entry on Ptolemy’s Almagest (published in […]
It would be different if we had found Darwin’s genes and Darwin’s fossils
Maybe Tutten overstates his case a bit but, in a general way, he has identified the core of the conflict. The very things that should have been the slam dunk for Darwin—the fossil record and the genetic code—seem to want to tell a different story, whether or not the academics want to listen.
Bill Nye’s “Christianity vs. the Big Universe” myth
“The big universe is a problem for Christianity” is a claim something like “They’re out there” (meaning ET). It has nothing to do with facts; it is pure social positioning (or posturing). As with the Cosmos’s series’s “artistic license to lie,” it is a way of indicating that their social position is so powerful that they can misrepresent people.
Eugene Wigner’s treasonous claim: God and mathematics are related
Wigner’s essay was viewed as a sort of “treason” against science, meaning that his thinking did not lead in a naturalist (nature is all there is) direction. Naturalism is often called “materialism.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos and “the artistic license to lie”
One thing readers may not know is that, in a series that leaned heavily on the supposed conflict between religion and science, obvious and widely noted misrepresentations were excused in the service of a “greater truth”
Jonathan McLatchie interviews Finnish scientist Matti Leisola
Jonathan McLatchie In this webinar, biologist Dr. Matti Leisola talks about his journey as a scientist from Darwin to design. See also: Jonathan McLatchie And Gunter Bechly On Conflicting Evidence Re Common Ancestry Matti Leisola: Another gifted scientist poised over the memory hole? and Matti Leisola On Evolution And The Recent Nobel Chemistry Prize Follow […]
Honey bees’ unusual defence: Shimmering
It’s now thought that honey bees “shimmer” in order to protect themselves from hornets: What this essentially does it make is extremely difficult for hornets to swoop in and land on their massive huddle to prey on individual bees. Kastberger and his colleagues noted in their research that shimmering can create what they described as […]
Respectable people who doubt Darwin – a long list
Why then do media rush to cover any doubt about Darwin as some kind of a descent into a panic of ignorance? Because they are struggling for survival themselves in a linked world that may not need them as much any more The longer they behave this way, the more of a certainty that is. Under the circumstances the panic, hence the nonsense, may increase.
Hermit crabs have odd ways of preventing theft and finding new homes…
The hermit crabs learned to move into the shells of dead crustaceans, and their well-being depends on that movable property. Recent research suggests that they have made some unusual efforts, as species, to hang onto the desirable shells: Over the course of evolution, penis size has been subject to female choice and competition with male […]
Winston Ewert: Will the Free Market Help or Hurt Us in an AI-Empowered World?
He argues that we may need new institutions, such as insurance against job obsolescence: I believe that humans are creative enough to come with the new institutions necessary to adapt to a changing world. What I fear is that we will not be allowed to do so. We do not live in an ideal free […]