I have just been listening to a talk on the subject of free will, by the British philosopher Jonathan M. S. Pearce, who contributes to the blog, Debunking Christianity. The talk was given to a meeting of Portsmouth Skeptics in a Pub on 14th June 2012, which was attended by about 50 people. A podcast of the talk is available online here. In this post, I’d like to focus on what I take to be Jonathan’s key argument against free will. After making this argument, he then goes on to critique dualism and put forward scientific arguments against free will. I have already addressed these criticisms in previous posts, so I won’t be rehashing them here. Instead, I’ll just list Read More ›

Over at Evolution News & Views, I have just published a blog post on the recent paper in the journal Cell regarding the molecular clutch of the dynein motor protein: Here at ENV, I have previously described the molecular flagellar clutch of Bacillus subtilis, the grass or hay bacillus, which allows the bacterium to cease motility upon biofilm formation. A new paper, published in the journal Cell, reports on the discovery of a similar clutch associated with the motor protein dynein. Click here to continue reading.

A new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Suderman et al. reports on the discovery of the ability of early life experiences to influence DNA methylation patterns in the hippocampal region of the brain. The researchers examined the methylation patterns of the hippocampus in humans who have been victimised by abuse. There was also a control group of non-abused persons. The results were then compared with rats who, as infants, had been subject to different maternal care. The paper’s abstract reports, Early life experience is associated with long-term effects on behavior and epigenetic programming of the NR3C1 (GLUCOCORTICOID RECEPTOR) gene in the hippocampus of both rats and humans. However, it is unlikely that such effects completely Read More ›

An interesting new paper has just been published in PLoS One, describing the discovery of fossilised sea creatures off the coast of Florida, which purportedly shows that modern deep sea creatures (e.g. sea urchins, starfish) may have appeared far earlier than previously believed. The abstract reports, The origin and possible antiquity of the spectacularly diverse modern deep-sea fauna has been debated since the beginning of deep-sea research in the mid-nineteenth century. Recent hypotheses, based on biogeographic patterns and molecular clock estimates, support a latest Mesozoic or early Cenozoic date for the origin of key groups of the present deep-sea fauna (echinoids, octopods). This relatively young age is consistent with hypotheses that argue for extensive extinction during Jurassic and Cretaceous Oceanic Read More ›

Darwin’s solitary illustration of evolutionary branching has left a lasting impression in the minds of readers. From an ancestral form, speciation occurs and the diversity of descendants increases. This can be visualised as a cone of morphological variation, extending from the source. However, the Cambrian Explosion provides empirical evidence against this concept, as a large number of organisms appear abruptly. (For more, see here) Yet it has been tempting for Darwinists to interpret the Cambrian species in terms of a number of cones of increasing diversity that all have their origins deeper in the Precambrian. This was something Stephen Jay Gould attempted to counter by proposing an “inverted cone” model. But there is a need for a third model to Read More ›

Today’s first set of lectures in Mohamed Noor’s Introduction to Genetics and Evolutioncourse would seem downright bizarre to anyone not familiar with evolutionary thinking. Noor is teaching this course via through the coursera on-line service and the Earl D. McLean Professor and Associate Chair of Biology at Duke University is maximizing accessibility to his material by minimizing the course prerequisites. Non specialists are welcome and many newcomers to evolutionary thought, now seeing what is—or should we say what isn’t—have sunk back in their chairs with blank stares wondering what in the world evolutionists such as Noor are thinking.  Read more

Over at PhysOrg.com, there’s a study being reported highlighting a 520 million year old fossil arthropod with a highly-developed brain. So soon in evolutionary time, and an already developed brain??? (To go beside the very complex eye of the Trilobites) Here’s what one scientist said: “No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals,” said Strausfeld, a Regents Professor in the UA department of neuroscience. Sorry, Darwinists, but IDers would expect it. And, to add insult to injury for our Darwinist brethren, here’s this confirmation of “genetic entropy” and Behe’s QRB “rule”: “The shape [of the fossilized brain] matches that of a comparable sized modern malacostracan,” the authors write in Nature. Read More ›

In Touchstone Magazine, Casey Luskin offers a scathing review of Giberson and Collins’s book The Language of Science and Faith: Each chapter of Language addresses a particular question; thus, the first chapter is titled, “Do I Have to Believe in Evolution?” The very framing of this question is telling. Why not title the chapter “Is There Good Evidence for Evolution?” or “Is Evolution an Option for Christians?” Such a formulation would imply that there is room for Christians to hold different views. But the authors’ formulation implies that a full embrace of Darwin may be required for Christians. Indeed, Giberson published a CNN.com op-ed (April 10, 2011) claiming that “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you.” But God Read More ›

One of the common complaints about Intelligent Design is that it’s a science stopper. Something about how the idea that the conviction that intelligent agents are have produced extraordinarily advanced technology will discourage intelligent agents from producing extraordinarily advanced technology. With that in mind, I thought it’d be worth focusing on a recent, if not ID-related, science development. The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to two men for their work in adult stem cell research – and the awarding of that prize is worth pondering.

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Readers may recall the media hype, back in December 2010, surrounding the claim that a bacterium is capable of utilising arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA. A new study, published in Nature and reported on by Nature News, has discovered that the bacterium “actually goes to extreme lengths to grab any traces of phosphorus it can find.” The Nature News press release goes on to report, The finding clears up a lingering question sparked by a controversial study, published in Science in 2010, which claimed that the GFAJ-1 microbe could thrive in the high-arsenic conditions of Mono Lake in California without metabolizing phosphorus — an element that is essential for all forms of life. […] Dan Tawfik, who studies Read More ›

Our own Denyse O’Leary has published an article in Salvo magazine entitled: “If Peer Review Is Working, Why All the Retractions?” She writes, British author and retired psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple recently flagged an article in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, in which researchers announced that they had calculated that an average of 92 ­minutes per week of exercise reduced subjects’ “all-cause rate of mortality” by 14 percent. They also claimed that “every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum of 15 minutes per day further reduced all-cause mortality by 4 percent.” Later, The Lancet received a letter pointing out that, if the researchers’ findings were correct, a man who exercised for six hours every day would reduce Read More ›

Last week, New Scientist magazine featured a special edition on reality. What particularly caught my attention is the accompanying video appearing on their website, which you can view for yourself here. The description states: Is there such a thing as reality? It’s easy to take reality for granted: after all, science does a reasonably good job at describing the world in an objective way. But what does science have to say about the concept of reality itself? One approach would be to identify what is most fundamental in the universe. Using this reasoning, everything around us can be broken down into molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms, which in turn are made up of smaller and smaller components. Read More ›

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know I like to play poker.  I have read numerous poker books and articles over the years, and the concept of “expected value” is at the core of every one.  Expected value theory helps skilled players calculate whether a particular play will, in the long run, be profitable.    Here’s a simple example.  Suppose I’m playing Texas Hold ‘em and my hole cards are the king of hearts and the three of hearts.  The flop comes and the community cards are the ace of hearts, the four of clubs and the nine of hearts.  My opponent is in front of me and bets out for $10 into a pot of Read More ›

The worm-like molluscs, the Aplacophoria, are not well known to most of us, and they are a difficult group to study because they live in deep waters. Their taxonomy has been somewhat controversial, with little agreement on their relationships with other molluscan groups. However, the consensus has been that they are the “most primordial molluscs to be found on earth”. There is an evolutionary story that helps to promote this understanding: the other molluscan groups appeared during the Cambrian Explosion, and they have armour of some kind. It is reasonable to postulate a simpler kind of mollusc that had no armour – which appears to be exactly what we have in the aplacophorians. New research, however, has brought a change Read More ›