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Michael Denton’s new book: Nature is fine-tuned for human existence

Denyse O'Leary
May 10, 2022
Books of interest, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design
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Michael Denton has a new book out, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence

Currently:

From the publisher:

For years, leading scientists and science popularizers have insisted humans are nothing special in the cosmic scheme of things. In this important and provocative new book, renowned biologist Michael Denton argues otherwise. According to Denton, the cosmos is stunningly fit not just for cellular life, not just for carbon-based animal life, and not even just for air-breathing animals, but especially for bipedal, land-roving, technology-pursuing creatures of our general physiological design. In short, the cosmos is specifically fit for creatures like us. Drawing on discoveries from a myriad of scientific fields, Denton masterfully documents how contemporary science has revived humanity’s special place in nature. “The human person as revealed by modern science is no contingent assemblage of elements, an irrelevant afterthought of cosmic evolution,” Denton writes. “Rather, our destiny was inscribed in the light of stars and the properties of atoms since the beginning. Now we know that all nature sings the song of man. Our seeming exile from nature is over. We now know what the medieval scholars only believed, that the underlying rationality of nature is indeed ‘manifest in human flesh.’ And with this revelation the… delusion of humankind’s irrelevance on the cosmic stage has been revoked.”

David Klinghoffer, “The Miracle of Man: New Book by Michael Denton” at Evolution News (May 10, 2022)
Comments
What people?
Physicists
How is this botheredness manifesting itself?
These scientists make up nonsense to explain it.jerry
May 11, 2022
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FH; “In such a sparse and stable environment, one might expect stasis“ One column of evolution theory is change by accidental mutation, and stable environments are of no consequence relative to accident. Your stab in the dark accidentally nicked Darwin’s spinal column.Belfast
May 11, 2022
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Silver Asiatic
I was very surprised when I saw that.
Why? Bacteria have been around for over three billion years. I'll concede that the evidence left by those early microbes doesn't allow us to know details of their precise metabolism though there are clues (banded iron formations, frinstance).Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Whatever the issue that affects your commenting, the issue that nobody who has any admin responsibility cares is unfortunate. It is suspicious you appear to be the only one having this issue; if it were just a glitch we'd expect it to affect commenters randomly. I have no idea what the wordfence plugin is supposed to do anyway. I'd never heard of it till glancing at their website just now and their blurb is unintelligible technobabble.Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Fred Hickson: What I don’t understand is how you are able to post comments to say you are blocked. I get blocked from particular posts/threads. It doesn't mean I can't post to other threads. The block always comes from a WordPress extension called WordFence. And I have posted excerpts from WordFence's website implying that they do enable blocking particular commenters. In the end, Barry Arrington never comments on my complaints to confirm or deny that there is any kind of censorship. He's completely allowed to censor people if he wants; it's his site and he can do what he pleases. But I do think it would be honourable to admit any kind of exclusions being supported. If it is. The thing that really bothers me is Kairosfocus who has lived through political and social times of suppression and censorship but doesn't seem to be interested in the slightest at seeing if there is some problem with the website settings.JVL
May 11, 2022
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LCD
FH: Dawinism is true: Here is the proof - Lenski bacteria. LCD: Bacteria turning into bacteria don’t prove darwinism but ID. FH: Bacteria have been around over 3 billion years.
I was very surprised when I saw that.Silver Asiatic
May 11, 2022
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FH
How well does this argument work with anyone not vehemently and ideologically opposed to evolutionary theory?
For people who are open to it, it works very well.Silver Asiatic
May 11, 2022
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Anyway, back to Richard Lenski and his LTEE. I note there have been some savage attacks on innocent strawmen before we've begun to establish how the experiment is run and what it has shown so far. Twelve pure breeding strains if Escherichia coli were chosen to seed flasks of nutrient kept at 37°C which are then randomly sampled and used to seed new flasks of nutrient and the cycle being repeated indefinitely (so far for thirty years). In such a sparse and stable environment, one might expect stasis due to purifying selection or if you are convinced by John Sandford's genetic entropy, extinction. As the environments are identical, you might not expect the strains to diverge genetically. Samples are also kept frozen and recorded and with cheap DNA sequencing, any mutations can be observed and logged, comparisons made across strains. Clear so far?Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Jerry:
At the end he said how fine tuned our universe is for life and how this bothers people.
Bothers people? What people? How is this botheredness manifesting itself?Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Silver AsiaticMay 11, 2022 at 9:50 am
Bacteria supposedly needed to evolve into every biological organism on earth in order to survive and reproduce.
Who ever supposed this. There is another domain of life, the Achaea, and there was an event, symbiogenesis, that resulted from an archaeon engulfing a bacterium which set Eukaryotes off on their journey.
The entire evolutionary enterprise collapses on that point alone.
How well does this argument work with anyone not vehemently and ideologically opposed to evolutionary theory?Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Fred Hickson
LCD: …bacteria remain bacteria…
Bacteria have been around for over three billion years and are still around
:lol: i was serious about that Logic 101 course. FH: Dawinism is true: Here is the prove Lenski bacteria. LCD: Bacteria turn into bacteria don't prove darwinism but ID. FH: Bacteria have been around over 3 billion years. LCD: :) Exactly my point, then why you bring evidence of ID (stasis and adaptation of bacteria ) as evidence for darwinism( that claim that bacteria turn in different eukaryotes and in the end into FH itself over time )? FH: You,you ...are crazy. LCD: OK. :)Lieutenant Commander Data
May 11, 2022
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I am a big advocate of the Teaching Company and their Great Courses. They recently were almost giving away courses at about 50 cents a lecture. So I bought a bunch. One was titled
Life in Our Universe Laird Close, Ph.D. Professor, The University of Arizona
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/life-in-our-universe I was listening to the second lecture where he shows how the elements were formed. At the end he said how fine tuned our universe is for life and how this bothers people. I almost flipped out as these lecturers are usually very cautious in what they say. When I look at the transcript, I will copy the exact words and post them here.jerry
May 11, 2022
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@ JVL What I don't understand is how you are able to post comments to say you are blocked. In the past UD has been very effective at banning ID skeptics even up to the pint of disappearing all comments and blocking IP addresses. Is it that you are being blocked from a thread? The software here is WordPress which gives different permissions to people with different status. Barry Arrington has all the superpowers but may have delegated "Author" or "Editor" status to others. If you find your problems all relate to threads opened by the same author, there is your problem.Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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JVL- you don't have anything to say. You are just dishonest and ignorant of science and biology.ET
May 11, 2022
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Blocked again! Kairosfocus thinks it's not a problem. Someone who is vigilant against censorship and prevention of some views being heard chooses to bow down to the site's security software because it's too hard to figure out what's going on. Lovely.JVL
May 11, 2022
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chuckdarwin:
A few years back when Lawrence Krauss demolished Stephen Meyer in a debate on ID, Krauss brought up a point that needs to be reiterated. The universe isn’t fine tuned for us, we are fined tuned for the universe by evolution….
Total nonsense. Neither you nor Krauss has a scientific explanation for our existence.ET
May 11, 2022
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Fred Hickson:
There’s a long running experiment set up by Richard Lenski that shows how evolution fine tuned the organism (rather a population of organisms) to their niche environment.
That experiment is showing us the severe limits of evolutionary processes. No new proteins. No new protein complexes.ET
May 11, 2022
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FH at 10 Richard Lenski? Conclusion before examination? Lenski only "discovered" something he chooses to ignore because the answer must always be evolution. Bacteria have the built-in ability to swap genetic material through horizontal gene transfer. Where did they get that ability? Certainly not from evolution since it was pre-existing.marker
May 11, 2022
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Bacteria supposedly needed to evolve into every biological organism on earth in order to survive and reproduce. The entire evolutionary enterprise collapses on that point alone.Silver Asiatic
May 11, 2022
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What Lenski showed ...
in his own terrific 60,000-generation evolution project, Lenski discovered the devastation wreaked by unguided, random mutation plus selection. Degradation of genes is orders of magnitude faster than constructive changes. https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/train-wreck-of-a-review-a-response-to-lenski-et-al-in-science/
Silver Asiatic
May 11, 2022
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LCD: ...bacteria remain bacteria... Bacteria have been around for over three billion years and are still around.Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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It is unfortunate, but you will likely be pilloried for referring to Lenski, et al.’s work on this blog….
Or maybe just pixelated. However, I think I can defend Prof. Lenski and his LTEE as an iconic demonstration of how variation and selection result in change even in the drastically simplified niche of the experiment. (Given chance ;) )Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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Fred Hickson There’s a long running experiment set up by Richard Lenski that shows
that shows: 1. that bacteria remain bacteria and adapt to new environment -ID prediction confirmed . Is Lenski ID promoter? 2. if scientists are forced to do experiments then this is the sign that they don't know all the secrets of the intrinsic mechanism of a simple bacteria yet and also show that this advanced technology based on cyphers/codes it's wrongly interpreted through a chemical framework and terminology (dna is translated to protein) when the real framework is the biosemiological ones.(cypher is decoded into function ).Lieutenant Commander Data
May 11, 2022
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FH/10 It is unfortunate, but you will likely be pilloried for referring to Lenski, et al.'s work on this blog....chuckdarwin
May 11, 2022
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"The earth isn’t fine tuned for life, life is fined tuned for the earth by random chance …. " I don't think that works very well.Silver Asiatic
May 11, 2022
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Except evolution doesn’t tune anything.
There's a long running experiment set up by Richard Lenski that shows how evolution fine tuned the organism (rather a population of organisms) to their niche environment.Fred Hickson
May 11, 2022
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"we are fined tuned for the universe by evolution" Except evolution doesn't tune anything. Andrewasauber
May 11, 2022
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Heading from Chapter 1.
There is, however, one scientific conclusion which I wish to put forward as a positive, and I trust, fruitful outcome of the present investigation. The properties of matter and the course of cosmic evolution are now seen to be intimately related to the structure of the living being and its activities; they become, therefore, far more important in biology than has been previously suspected. For the whole evolutionary process, both cosmic and organic, is one, and the biologist may now rightly regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric.”
Lawrence Henderson - The Firness of the Environment- 1913.           ID from a hundred + years ago. jerry
May 11, 2022
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An apparent external context that manifestly supports and validates the nature of the observer (subject) is exactly what one would expect to find under idealism/mental reality theory.William J Murray
May 11, 2022
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ID is Science+ ID is not against Evolution. It’s just how it happened that is under debate. So far no one has presented any natural mechanism that can explain how it happened or how life originated. So far no one can explain why the universe is exactly why it is. No one can explain why Earth is so unique. That is the interesting thing that is currently incontrovertible. All that is presented by modern science as explanations are logical fallacies. Just ordered the Kindle version.jerry
May 11, 2022
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