Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The spreading of corona virus

UK’s Daily Mail reports: They also provide a map: A concern is that mild cases are masked under the common cold, and that the incubation period may be up to four weeks or thereabouts, not the fortnight that has been used hitherto. They are not finding a “patient zero” for some of these outbreaks, which is why there is talk of un-traceability and climbing towards pandemic. On the design front there is speculation that the genome has traces of engineering, and that people may have not been incinerating animals in a biological lab near Wuhan, but illegally disposing of them in the bush meat trade. Speculation, not confirmation. It will be interesting to see the criteria by which they might Read More ›

Spoof alert!: Jerry Coyne is interviewed at Dissociated News

Coyne has been a frequent topic on our page in recent months and a reader dug this out from 2013 and sent it in. Michael Egnor imagines an interview with Jerry Coyne on deplatforming opponents: They're still talking about it. After I told them not to. Read More ›

Straw in the wind? Get a load of the insightful review of a string theorist’s Big Book at Nature

In sharp contrast with the classic slobbering review at Time of string theorist Brian Greene’s new book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Penguin 2020), , which resurrects mid-twentieth century attempts to undermine traditional religions via schlock science religion, the Nature reviewer is not impressed. (Kiddos, that was back when Time Magazine mattered, as did newsprint in general.) By contrast, Philip Ball at nature appears appropriately skeptical. Read More ›

String theorist’s philosophy of life – Time’s reviewer laps it up

Some reviewers almost make us forget that string theory was supposed to be science, not religion. Get a load of this review of string theorist Brian Greene’s new book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe (Penguin 2020) Read More ›

Karsten Pultz: A motorhead looks at design in nature

Karsten Pultz: I’m sure if Behe had asked any of the mechanics there at the garage, what they thought about the neoDarwinian hypothesis that complex machinery can be produced by random processes, they would have answered that such an idea is extremely silly, if not right out ludicrous. Read More ›

Eric Holloway: A philosopher explains why thinking matter is impossible

Holloway: Richard Johns's' argument is deeper version of Captain Kirk’s scheme to defeat enemy robots in I, Mudd, a 1967 episode of Star Trek. Kirk posed a paradox that led to circuit meltdown. Read More ›

Michael Egnor: Why the mind cannot just emerge from the brain

Egnor: Thoughts have emotional states; matter doesn’t have emotional states, just matter. So it’s not clear that you can get an emergent property when there is no connection whatsoever between that property and the thing it supposedly emerges from. Read More ›

New layer of complexity of the month: Epitranscriptomics

Layers on layers, systems on systems. Puts one in mind of Darwin’s Warm Little Pond, doesn’t it? Legacy science media should ramp up those Pond graphics. And keep the speculation about random events accidentally producing life coming. Speculate HARDER! Read More ›