From Michael Egnor at Mind Matters Today: The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning. That is, in fact, what makes thought so remarkable and also what makes computation so useful. You can think about anything, and you can use the same computer to express your entire range of thoughts because computation is blind to meaning. Thought is not merely not computation. Thought is the antithesis of computation. Thought is precisely what computation is not. Thought is intentional. Computation is not intentional. A reader may object at this point that the output of computation seems to have meaning. After all, the essay was typed on a computer. Yes, but all of the Read More ›

From design theorist William Dembski at Mind Matters Today: The computational literature on No Free Lunch theorems and Conservation of Information (see the work of David Wolpert and Bill Macready on the former as well as that of Robert J. Marks and myself on the latter) imply that all problem-solving algorithms, including such a master algorithm, must be adapted to specific problems. Yet a master algorithm must also be perfectly general, transforming AI into a universal problem solver. The No Free Lunch theorem and Conservation of Information demonstrate that such universal problem solvers do not exist. Yet what algorithms can’t do, humans can. True intelligence, as exhibited by humans, is a general faculty for taking wide-ranging, diverse abilities for solving Read More ›

Such acell might shed some light on the origin of life, researchers hope. From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations: Not to be outdone by Dutch, German and other Europeans now officially dabbling in synthetic cell research, America’s National Science Foundation has thrown its hat into the ring on funding synthetic cell development, per its April 18, 2018 letter to colleagues inviting proposals on the design and engineering of synthetic cells and cell components ($100K for relevant conferences, $300K re multicomponent subsystems, and up to $1M for research on the “pseudo-cell”). In May, following its call for proposals, NSF co-sponsored a synthetic and artificial cells roadmap meeting in Alexandria, Virginia with a handful of scientists already working in the field presenting and Read More ›

From Ruth M. Bancewicz at Science + Belief, on key points offered by Dutch philosopher Professor René van Woudenberg at a recent Faraday workshop, including: There are all sorts of ways in which scientists find some theories more satisfying than others, but science itself is not always a deciding factor in the decision. Logic, reason, experience, intuition, aesthetics, personal preference – all of these can play a part. As time goes on, and more data are gathered, we can become more certain which theory is an accurate reflection of reality. Eventually some theories have so much data behind them – gravity or the common ancestry of all living things, for example – that they are treated almost as facts. More. Read More ›

From Carl Sagan: Consider this claim: as I walk along, time – as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process – slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It’s easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here’s another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here’s a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They’re all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum Read More ›

All that follows is WJM’s: Modern physics has long ago disproved the idea that “matter” exists at all. Timothy’s position might as well be that because we all perceive the sun moving through the sky from east to west, it is a fact that it is the sun that is doing the moving. Just because we perceive a world of what we call “matter” doesn’t change the fact that we know no such world actually exists regardless of what our perception tells us. What we call “matter” is a perceptual interpretation of something that is not, in any meaningful sense, “matter”. We know now (current science) that matter is, at its root, entirely “immaterial”, despite what our macro sensory perceptions Read More ›

Some things can’t change. From a piece at ENST, A Classic Evolutionist’s Error, Berra’s Blunder Revs Up Again Tim Berra had tried to compare biological evolution to the evolution of the Corvette. In his book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Johnson aptly pointed out the intuitively obvious difference: Of course, every one of those Corvettes was designed by engineers. The Corvette sequence — like the sequence of Beethoven’s symphonies to the opinions of the United States Supreme Court — does not illustrate naturalistic evolution at all. It illustrates how intelligent designers will typically achieve their purposes by adding variations to a basic design plan. Even if comparisons can be made, one cannot logically use designed things to explain un-designed things. Read More ›

In response to my last post A-Mat timothya writes: “If You are Going to Reject Something, At Least Take the Time to Understand What You Are Rejecting” Absolutely agree. Evolutionary biology would be a good place to start. Timothy, it is easy to be a smartass.  Making cogent arguments, not so much.  You appear to be suggesting that those who disagree with evolutionary biology do not understand it.  That is a mere assertion (an unspoken one at that).  If you are going to make an argument, as opposed to a splenetic grunt, you will need to demonstrate where an ID proponent failed to understand an evolutionary concept he rejected.    

The post by News here about how an atheist believed that miracles are impossible because “science,” reminded me of the atheist who responded to one of my posts a few weeks ago.  He said he cannot believe in an immaterial mind because in his view the interaction problem is hopeless for dualists.  The problem of course is that the atheist was attacking a strawman caricature of what most dualists believe, not actual dualism.   It is as if our A-Mat thinks all dualists hold to a sort of hyper-Cartesian  substance dualism in which an immaterial homunculus  sits in a material seat in the brain (perhaps in the pineal gland) and pulls levers to operate the body, and his knock-down objection to that theory Read More ›

And Big Science is afraid to confront it. From Katherine Timpf at National Review: A course that will be taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges next year will teach students that “objectivity” and “meritocracy” are examples of “white mythologies” and “social constructs.” … The idea that objectivity is somehow a myth, or that it has anything even remotely to do with “whiteness,” is so absolutely stupid that I feel like I don’t even have to spend time explaining why. Objectivity isn’t a myth. For example: … Truly, it is odd how often I see stories like this, because people on the left are always the ones claiming to stand for science. They often accuse the Right of refusing to Read More ›

From Amy K. Hall at Stand to Reason: Recently, when I asked an atheist why he was an atheist, the first reason he gave was that “science has disproved God.” When I asked what he meant by that, he started listing miracles in the Bible—such as the virgin birth—that were impossible for him to believe “because of science.” This is simply a misunderstanding of what a miracle is and, therefore, how one can evaluate it. Yes, people have used the methods of science to study the natural workings of the reproductive system and have very accurately said that virgins do not get pregnant naturally, but of course, no Christian ever claimed they did! We agree on how the reproductive system Read More ›

From Amy K.Hall at Stand to Reason: Are naturalistic assumptions necessary for doing science? In the video below (or see the transcript here), Stephen Meyer argues that not only is naturalism not necessary, but in fact, it was a Christian worldview that gave rise to modern science. More. From Transcript: The first thing to say is that science did not arise because of a set of naturalistic presuppositions. It actually arose because of a conviction that there was a lawful order in nature, that human beings could discern and understand it because they’d been made in the image of the creator of that order, and that also they needed to go investigate. While they might expect that there’s a rational Read More ›

From J. Warner Wallace at Cold Case Christianity: Yesterday I posted a number of scientific consistencies found in the Old Testament. While I think there are good reasons why God might not reveal advanced scientific details in Scripture, I do expect God’s Word to be scientifically consistent with the world we experience. One interesting scientific consistency seems to exist in the ancient book of Job. One of the examples he offers, citing Job 38:31-32, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?”: The text refers to three constellations, Pleiades, Orion and Arcturus (the fourth, Mazzaroth, is still unknown Read More ›

On July 11, the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence officially launched and design theorist William Dembski offered some thoughts: The Walter Bradley Center, to the degree that it succeeds, will not merely demonstrate a qualitative difference between human and machine intelligence; more so, it will chart how humans can thrive in a world of increasing automation. … Yet the Walter Bradley Center exists not merely to argue that we are not machines. Yes, singularity theorists and advocates of strong AI continue to vociferate, inflating the prospects and accomplishments of artificial intelligence. They need a response, if only to ensure that silence is not interpreted as complicity or tacit assent. But if arguing, even persuasively, with a Ray Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at Salvo: Minority Reporter: A Finnish Bioengineer Touches the Third Rail Randomness and chaos are much easier to market today than order, meaning, and purpose. The songs write themselves. Serious scientists, therefore, can find themselves in conflict with a view that is not so much an argument as an attitude to life, not so much a marshalling of evidence as a demand that posturing overrule evidence. Case in point: Matti Leisola, a gifted Finnish bioengineer, started out as a good Darwinist. But he could not avoid the massive pushback from the evidence of design he . . . More. Yes, it’s mostly paywalled. It describes the situation of a scientist who thinks that nature shows evidence of Read More ›