Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categories
Human evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Did Stone Age beads found at 33 kya function as a “social safety net”?

News
March 10, 2020
Human evolution, Intelligent Design
2
However the beads were used, the concept of beads as a medium of exchange, a record of treaties, or a social status marker involves abstraction. They represent an idea. Ideas surely became much more powerful when they were portable. They have a much longer and wider reach when they can be shared and embodied in something other than a given person’s brain. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categories
Animal minds
Intelligent Design
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Michael Egnor: The bird does NOT do math

News
March 10, 2020
Animal minds, Intelligent Design
2
Egnor: Dr. Pepperberg could have been more forthright: Parrots can’t do statistics. No animal (except man) can do statistics, because statistical reasoning is abstract and only human beings are capable of abstract thought. Parrots think concretely—they think of particular things and relations between particular things, but they cannot think without particular things—they can’t think abstractly. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categories
Genetics
Genomics
Human evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
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At Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable: The scientific case for Adam and Eve

News
March 10, 2020
Genetics, Genomics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design
1
"He [Swamidass] is joined by atheist biologist Nathan Lents who has given his support to the book, believing that it may help Christians who hold to a traditional understanding of the Adam and Eve story, to also accept evolutionary science. " Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categories
Darwinism
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Michael Behe: New paper supports my “Darwin Devolves” thesis

News
March 7, 2020
Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
3
The trouble with Darwin Devolves is that it is likely to be both quite right and a big problem for schoolbook Darwinism. Just as it is much easier to—without thinking much—throw something out than fix or adapt it, life forms will far more likely randomly mutate by dumping complex equipment than by reengineering it. It’s not that life forms can’t develop complex new equipment. But such changes probably aren’t an instance of natural selection acting on random mutation. And in these times, that’s the controversial part: design in nature. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categories
Information
Intelligent Design
Origin Of Life
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Davies and Walker on Origin of life: Life as information

News
March 7, 2020
Information, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
3
Walker and Davies, 2013: The manner in which information flows through and between cells and sub-cellular structures is quite unlike anything else observed in nature. If life is more than just complex chemistry, its unique informational management properties may be the crucial indicator of this distinction [13]. Unfortunately, the way that information operates in biology is not easily characterized. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2020
Categories
Intelligent Design
Naturalism
Philosophy
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Science historian asks, What kicked off the ID movement?

News
March 7, 2020
Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy
2
He offers three events that he thinks boosted ID specifically: You can read about the first two for yourself at the link but you may not even have ever heard of the third (the discrediting of the Vienna Circle): ... Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
March 6, 2020
Categories
Naturalism
Tagged
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Why Economics and ID go Hand-in-Hand

johnnyb
March 6, 2020
Naturalism
3

In my previous post about Bob Murphy’s support of ID, some people commented that Bob Murphy, being an economist, doesn’t count much in support of ID. However, those comments would be misplaced. Although Bob Murphy did not get into this in this podcast episode, there is actually a direct connection between ID and economics. First of all, as I have pointed out innumerable times, ID is not a theory of biology or of origins, it is a theory of causation. Biology and origins are application areas, not the core idea itself. Naturalism causes us to have blinders on not just in the case of evolution, but in any number of other academic endeavors as well. When we assume that humans Read More ›

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 6, 2020
Categories
Intelligent Design
Mind
Naturalism
Neuroscience
Tagged
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Michael Egnor:Why the human mind is the opposite of a computer

News
March 6, 2020
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience
2
Egnor: Mental activity always has meaning—every thought is about something. Computation always lacks meaning in itself. A word processing program doesn’t care about the opinion that you’re expressing when you use it. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 6, 2020
Categories
Intelligent Design
Mind
Naturalism
Neuroscience
Tagged
, , ,

The “connectome” means we may never “understand” the brain

News
March 6, 2020
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience
2
In the sense of “There. That’s that.” It’s just too big. Machine learning might help but machines don’t explain their decisions very well. If the brain is immensely complex, it may elude complete understanding in detail. Deep Learning may survey it but that won’t convey understanding to us. We may need to look at more comprehensive ways of knowing Read More ›