Just recently, I saw a video clip where an obviously self-important Christian history professor was explaining that “evolution” is the fundamental assumption of all biology. I remember thinking, yes, but sciences can and do make progress even when their fundamental assumptions about how things happen are wrong. In fact, that’s quite common, because evidence is what usually leads to progress. And theory only sometimes. The current Darwin toxin in biology’s system makes it very difficult, in my experience, to have any reasonable discussion of evolution as a fact. It’s all about how Darwin was right. On any find, immediately the Darwinist blunders forward and – dismissing where the evidence in any given case – insists “It’s Darwin”. Or, when that Read More ›

Here: No book of this sort can cover every important topic, perspective, and challenge. But we were surprised that there was no discussion of why evolution remains controversial at a societal level. Why, for example, do many in the U.S. remain skeptical of evolution? In this sense, evolution is unique among the sciences (with the possible exception of climate change research) in that the majority of the public do not even believe it is real! Clearly, this situation is not desirable, given that it is largely this same public that, through their taxes, provides the financial support for teaching and research in evolutionary science. How can this challenge be addressed, in the US and elsewhere? On a related vein, we Read More ›

Of course not. Consider what the biologists at war with language are trying to do: Replace “to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z” with “ ‘in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z”. It won’t work because it is not fluent, not even fluid, just stodgy and inconvenient. Historically, such newspeak strategies seldom work because they call attention to the very thing they seek to extinguish: In this case, awareness of design For example, what happens when our local “human picket sign” insists that we all acknowledge global warming? Sure, I acknowledged it. In fact, as I pointed out to her, “A huge dump of global warming fell last night, and now someone Read More ›

David Tyler reports on the beautifully preserved Cretaceous “ buttercup”: Many portrayals of habitats purporting to represent the Age of Dinosaurs have conifer trees and ferns, but very little ground cover. As palaeontologists continue their research, they are coming to recognise that the ecosystems were much more diverse. The earliest flowering plants are represented by pollen grains and considered to be about 130 Ma years old. However, diversity after this was rapid (see here). Recently, a strikingly beautiful fossil has been reported from China, in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. [ … ] ome questions deserve to be asked about the phrase “slower diversification of many families of eudicots”: if the evolution of the angiosperms was an “abominable mystery” to Read More ›

UD commenter markf offers the following: Is there a bright side if you are an atheist?” Oh yes. For example, – no pressure to sit through hour long rambles or harangues once a week in a building with minimal heating and hard seats – easier to enjoy satires on religion – no need to repeat “I was once an atheist but now I know better” every week. In our church there is no pressure to do anything; it’s all voluntary. The seats are soft and the heating is comfortable. The sermons are not rambles or harangues, but insightful messages (often convicting, but necessarily and constructively so) given by a pastor with a Ph.D. in ethics who has been a professor Read More ›

Topic: Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? (Thursday, April 7 – 7:00pm – 9:00pm Eastern time) Facebook page Live webcast: www.ndtv.net One viewer commented … the atheist damage control machine is going full throttle! Craig absolutely wiped the floor with Krauss. It might be the worst debate performance ever versus Craig, adding Check out the “damage control” comments from Lawrence Krauss that Richard Dawkins posted on his website! Krauss on Dawkins’s site PZ Myers added his usual shower of roses too… Other views of the Krauss-Craig debate: Wintery Knight’s summary Possible Worlds Always have a reason Letters to Nature

A theory that attempts to account for the fine tuning of the universe for life may be “deeply flawed,” we learn in Paul J. Steinhardt’s “The Inflation Debate.” Steinhardt is one of the theory’s creators, nevertheless asks, “Abstract: Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?

Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact. The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established during an intense early growth spurt.

But some of the theory’s creators, including the author, are having second thoughts. As the original theory has developed, cracks have appeared in its logical foundations.

Highly improbable conditions are required to start inflation. Worse, inflation goes on eternally, producing infinitely many outcomes, so the theory makes no firm observational predictions.

Scientists debate among (and within) themselves whether these troubles are teething pains or signs of a deeper rot. Various proposals are circulating for ways to fix inflation or replace it.
– Scientific American (April 2011), 304, 36-43 | doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0411-36 (Paywall)

Rob Sheldon notes,

Inflation adds a whole bunch of really unlikely metaphysical assumptions — Read More ›

Proponent of the multiverse and the universe as simulation wins this year’s Templeton Prize
The Prize has been awarded to Martin Rees. As Daniel Cressey tells it in Nature (6 April 2011),

Controversial ‘spirituality’ award goes to a scientist for fourth year in a row.

Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and former head of the Royal Society in London, today received the 2011 prize, worth £1 million (US$1.62 million), which rewards “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

The prize and the foundation have both attracted attacks from high-profile atheist scientists, who accuse them of attempting to insert religion needlessly into science. Rees says that he has no problem with accepting the prize, and he refuses to be drawn on the controversy, saying, “I have no comment on the views other people have.”

He also says he has no religious beliefs but sometimes attends Church of England services.

In 2004 Rees speculated controversially that we are living in a giant computer simulation: Read More ›

A fine tuning and multiverse advocate, Martin J. Rees, today won the 2011 Templeton Prize. The astrophysicist with no religion won the Prize originally “for Progress in Religion.”
The 2011 Templeton Prize was announced today.

LONDON, APRIL 6 – Martin J. Rees, a theoretical astrophysicist whose profound insights on the cosmos have provoked vital questions that speak to humanity’s highest hopes and worst fears, has won the 2011 Templeton Prize.
Rees, Master of Trinity College, one of Cambridge University’s top academic posts, and former president of the Royal Society, the highest leadership position within British science, has spent decades investigating the implications of the big bang, the nature of black holes, events during the so-called ‘dark age’ of the early universe, and the mysterious explosions from galaxy centers known as gamma ray bursters. Read More ›

In “The “Newspeak” of Evolutionary Biology Hopes to Banish the term “Design,” by Design”, Evolution News & Views (April 6, 2011) Casey Luskin tells us The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Now some ID critics today are so fearful of lending any credence towards intelligent design that they are recommending that biologists stop using the word “design” entirely.A recent article in the journal Bioessays by its editor Andrew Moore, titled “We need a new language for evolution. . . everywhere,” suggests that biologists should stop using the term “design.” According to Moore, under “Evolution old-speak” we would say, “Structure X is Read More ›

Here Brent Bozell notes, On NPR, evening anchor Michele Norris mourned that “when you reach back to the era of Rather and Jennings and Brokaw, it seemed like getting an anchor job in the past was much like a lifetime appointment, much like a Supreme Court justice.” Media reporter David Folkenflik answered that “holding one of these jobs is no longer being one of the highest priests of journalism because the notion of authoritativeness has been undermined. Even the New York Times does not command, in some ways, as absolute a voice about what is news and what isn’t anymore.”It is refreshing that Americans today reject the notion that we should bow before the network TV anchormen as the most Read More ›

Paul Feyerabend’s latest book has finally been published in English. The Tyranny of Science, Polity Press (2011) although it was written in 1993. The Tyranny of Science “In this wide–ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are Read More ›

In “Stone Tools Influenced Hand Evolution in Human Ancestors, Anthropologists Say,” (ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011), we learn (repeated twice more in a single short piece), that

New research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has confirmed Charles Darwin’s speculation that the evolution of unique features in the human hand was influenced by increased tool use in our ancestors.

The fact that Darwin speculated this adds greatly to the idea’s credibility, in a way that evidence wouldn’t.

Research over the last century has certainly confirmed the existence of a suite of features in the bones and musculature of the human hand and wrist associated with specific gripping and manipulatory capabilities that are different from those of other extant great apes. These features have fuelled suggestions that, at some point since humans split from the last common ancestor of living apes, the human hand evolved away from features adapted for locomotion toward alternative functions.

The release does not feature the routine searching question format of science stories: Read More ›

I saw this on XKCD this morning, and thought it was hilarious.

“Our understanding of the way the brain works could help us create a better legal system, says Baylor College of Medicine’sneuroscientist David Eagleman,” in “The human brain: turning our minds to the law” (Telegraph 05 Apr 2011): The problem, he says,

is that the law rests on two assumptions that are charitable, but demonstrably false. The first is that people are “practical reasoners”, which is the law’s way of saying that they are capable of acting in alignment with their best interests, and capable of rational foresight about their actions. The second is that all brains are created equal. Everyone who is of legal age and above an IQ of 70 is assumed, in the eyes of the law, to have the same capacity for decision-making, understanding, impulse control and reasoning. But these ideas simply don’t match up with the facts of neuroscience.

Isn’t equality in the eyes of the law somewhat like “We hold these truths to be self-evident … ”? where the equality claimed by the American founders was not based on assumptions about nature at all but on assumption’s about nature’s Author?

———————————————————————————————————

This article, based on Eagleman’s book Incognito, follows the usual pattern of tracts favouring materialist law reform: Asserting, with no evidence, that traditional beliefs about justice are merely a “desire for revenge.”

—————————————————————————

If the argument is that Crazy Jake is not as generously endowed with intellect as Richard Feynman, who doubts it? But – on the traditional assumption that Feynman’s intellect is a gift to him, and not proof of ultimate Darwinian superiority – they are indeed equal in the eyes of the law, though one is considerably better endowed in that way than the other. Rich and poor appear in the same court.

We also learn, Read More ›