Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The CORRECT way to understand the mysterious Utah monolith

Why rush to conclude intelligent design?, asks philosopher and photographer Laszlo Bencze. He writes us to recommend a proper Darwinian view of the problem, a sort of desert version of Darwin’s “warm little pond” origin of life. Read More ›

Darwin’s notebooks apparently stolen – But wait!

A proper Darwinian response would say that the books evolved away from the Library “daily and hourly” during those twenty years. Seriously, we sure hope they get them back. Read More ›

Gizmodo asks experts to name the biggest science frauds of the past 50 years

Dr. Hesselmann's probably right but how depressing. In a world where so much research that doesn’t involve fraud fails replication, it’s just a fact that most published research papers in many fields are probably wrong or at least sloppy. So why bother with fraud? But not exactly a good look for science. Read More ›

Film clip on the probability of a protein forming by chance passes 500k views

xcerpt: Putting the probabilities together means adding the exponents. The probability of getting a properly folded chain of one-handed amino acids, joined by peptide bonds, is one chance in 10^74+45+45, or one in 10^164 (Meyer, p. 212). This means that, on average, you would need to construct 10^164 chains of amino acids 150 units long to expect to find one that is useful. Read More ›

Futurist George Gilder: Humans don’t treat physical and chemical forces or clock pulses the way computers do

As one of the fundamental dimensions of the universe, time doubtless has a regular flow. But people stuck behind a flock of Canada geese crossing a road don’t experience time in the same way as people rushing to complete a report in time for the Big Board Meeting in two hours. Read More ›

A NASA astrobiologist’s bold suggestion: Let’s make ET ourselves

Astrobiologist: What if a significant percentage of those planets and moons require only a few hundred kilogrammes of ‘the right chemical stuff’ to spark their own, unique biotic revolutions? Read More ›