Mung had asked me to do a thread on common descent and common design. So, anyway, I’ll get things started by stating my own thoughts on these ideas. I intend this to be an open discussion, but I also find having a starting idea tends to help get things started. So, as I have maintained Read More…
A contradiction in Charles Marshall’s “white smoker” origin-of-life argument?
Paul Nelson: … unless I misunderstand (always a live possibility), we’re back to postulating a “freak environment,” meaning the OOL explanation is a one-off event after all. The chemical determinism of hundreds of thousands, or millions of alkaline chimneys operating in parallel disappears, and we’re back to one very lucky setting.
Researchers: There were billions of T Rexes
It’s anyone’s guess how much of this will hold up, but positing some numbers to dispute is a worthwhile effort at sleuthing.
Bill Dembski on why Erik Larson says there will be no AI overlords
Abductive reasoning is part of design theory. Interesting that computers can’t do it…
Bruce Gordon and Michael Egnor: Why idealism is actually a practical philosophy
Gordon thinks idealism (= reality is first and foremost a mental phenomenon) is defensible, reasonable, and too easily discarded.
L&FP 40: Thoughts on [neo-?] Reidian Common Sense Realism
We live in a civilisation haunted by doubt and by hyperskepticism. One, where skepticism is deemed a virtue, inviting hyper forms in as champions of intellect. The result has gradually led to selective hyperskepticism that often uncritically takes the word of champions or publicists for Big-S Science, while doubting well founded but unfashionable analyses or Read More…
Rob Sheldon on Larry Moran and the junk DNA
Sheldon: If I recall correctly, the original definition of “functional” was whether that piece of DNA was turned into a protein, which depended on finding a “start” and a “stop” codon. The Human Genome Project reported that some 90% of the human genome didn’t have these “start/stop” features, and hence was “non-functional”. [“Non-functional” underwent considerable revision later.]
Mini VW Beetle spotted in Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s beetle collection
Here. A suitable final resting place, for sure.
Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig offers ten reasons birds are not living dinosaurs
Life would be simpler and more emotionally satisfying if birds were surviving dinosaurs but maybe they aren’t.
Bill Dembski on how a new book expertly dissects doomsday scenarios
Dembski: “At the end of the discussion, however, Kurzweil’s overweening confidence in the glowing prospects for strong AI’s future were undiminished. And indeed, they remain undiminished to this day (I last saw Kurzweil at a Seattle tech conference in 2019 — age seemed to have mellowed his person but not his views).” But Larson says it’s all nonsense.
Measuring the Directedness of Mutations
So, we’ve been talking about directed mutations a bit the last few days, whether reactivating pseudogenes, or recognizing that cells can direct mutations to genes that need mutating. The point that I made to Bob was that there is a middle ground between “general mutation rate” and “mutations going to a specific base pair that Read More…
Larry Moran to write new book: Claims genome is 90% junk
If he wants to pick a fight with ENCODE, grab a seat.
“Follow the science” is becoming a jibe in the age of COVID panic
At ACSH: Rather shamelessly, the Washington Post has also offered tips to stop yourself from spreading “misinformation.” And the Guardian has even recommended “10 ideas to rebuild our broken internet.” Let’s add an eleventh: take your own advice and stop running sloppy stories because they attract eyeballs.
Scott Turner, author of Purpose & Desire, has a new video series on evolution
Readers may remember J. Scott Turner, author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. He was taking a risk even putting things that way (we thought he’d been Canceled a while back) but now he has a new video series out.
Was the pupil of the eye designed?
Macro Pupil Constricting in Slow Motion (1,000 fps) – The Slow Mo Guys