Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At Quanta: Are we looking at the end of physics?

Ah yes, the problem of dead-endedness that Sabine Hossenfelder often writes about. As does Columbia mathematician Peter Woit, on the subject of string theory. But surely much of the nonsense around string theory and the multiverse is in part due to a practical failure—the inability to find even a single particle of dark matter or similar evidence for dark energy. Read More ›

Asked at The Conversation: Could dinosaurs re-evolve?

We are told no. But just a minute. According to the story, some dinos evolved into birds. If so, massive changes ARE possible. It’s not clear why changed circumstances could not cause some of those changes to be reversed. Read More ›

Life is rare in the universe—IF there is no design

It would make a lot of sense for astrobiologists to be fans of intelligent design theory. Eventually, they will fall and hit their heads and realize that. Read More ›

SETI is really one big fat design inference

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) folk should induct ID theorist Bill Dembski into their Hall of Fame because he literally wrote the book on The Design Inference and that's the idea that keeps them going. Read More ›

Karsten Pultz: Review of Denton’s “The Miracle Of The Cell”

Pultz: Denton reveals the extreme specificity of the elements, how the properties—the configuration of electrons—of every single element is clearly tuned to fit the properties of the other elements such that no substitutions seem possible. The chemical characteristics of each element play together in a symphony of awesome fine tuning. Read More ›

Asked at Sapiens: Did Processed Foods Make Us Human?

Well, at least the guy isn’t arguing that processed foods make us inhuman or that turkey dinners kill people. Instead, he tried living off the land in a really big way: (including climbing a tree to eat raw eland marrow). Such experiences led him to come up with an interesting theory of human origins. Read More ›

Ancient fish were “prepared” for life on land

Now how would the sarcoptergians have come to be “already primed for living on land”? Did they know they were going to move to land? Or is there an underlying pattern? Can we call this "preparatory evolution?" Read More ›

“Identical evolution” of isolated groups of early vertebrates confirmed

The authors claim that their find proves the “theory of evolution.” It’s certainly strong evidence for a theory of evolution - but that theory would not be Darwin’s. It would be great to get some insight into how these built-in capacities for identical adaptation are carried from one generation to the next. Read More ›

Moths evade bats using acoustic camouflage on their wings

As before, those who want to attribute these staggeringly complex arms races to natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) are facing a huge probability gap. The processes of nature can’t be both wholly blind and highly intelligent, given time limits. Read More ›

An animal has been discovered that does not need oxygen to live

Devolution, of which this is an example, may be more common than we suppose and will probably have precisely the effect of creating “exceptions” like this. Note that we are told, “they likely steal energy from their host using some type of proteins.” It makes sense that many devolved creatures are parasites. They can afford to throw away equipment if they are using the host’s toolbox anyway. Read More ›