From ScienceDaily: Duplications of large segments of noncoding [junk] DNA in the human genome may have contributed to the emergence of differences between humans and nonhuman primates, according to results presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2017 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. Identifying these duplications, which include regulatory sequences, and their effect on traits and behavior may help scientists explain genetic contributions to human disease. Paulina Carmona-Mora, PhD, who presented the work; Megan Dennis, PhD; and their colleagues at the University of California, Davis, study the history of human-specific duplications (HSDs), segments of DNA longer than 1,000 base pairs that are repeated in humans but not in primates or other animals. In this study, they focused on Read More ›

The 21st century is not turning out at all the way pundits thought. From neurosurgeon Michael Egnor at Evolution News & Views: It is important to understand the aspects of mind that they do share. They share some motor control, some common sensations, and probably share some aspects of imagination — that is, the ability to reconstruct sensory images (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.). This sharing of some aspects of the mind, but not others, is remarkably consistent with classical Thomistic dualism. In Thomistic dualism, the human soul is the composite of three powers: vegetative, sensory, and rational. Vegetative powers are what we today call autonomic physiological control — control of heart rate, control of blood pressure, control of growth, reproduction, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Professor Robin Allaby, in Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, has discovered that human crop gathering was so extensive, as long ago as the last Ice Age, that it started to have an effect on the evolution of rice, wheat and barley — triggering the process which turned these plants from wild to domesticated. In Tell Qaramel, an area of modern day northern Syria, the research demonstrates evidence of einkorn being affected up to thirty thousand years ago, and rice has been shown to be affected more than thirteen thousand years ago in South, East and South-East Asia. Furthermore, emmer wheat is proved to have been affected twenty-five thousand years ago in the Southern Levant — and barley in Read More ›

From a letter published in Nature: Two teams of physicists have subjected Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity to some of the strictest tests so far, and found no deviation from the theory’s predictions. … The team reports agreement between relativity’s predictions and the lunar data that is up to three orders of magnitude better than previously reported. In a separate paper, … authors found that data and theory matched with a precision of up to an order of magnitude better than recorded in previous tests. More. So modern science, say what you want about it – (sexist, racist, imperialist, (apply to your national government’s grievance-monger to have your alternative personal grievance entered on the growing indictment against science…) – accords Read More ›

From David Oakley and Peter Halligan at The Conversation: If the experience of consciousness does not confer any particular advantage, it’s not clear what its purpose is. But as a passive accompaniment to non-conscious processes, we don’t think that the phenomenon of personal awareness has a purpose, in much the same way that rainbows do not. Rainbows simply result from the reflection, refraction and dispersion of sunlight through water droplets – none of which serves any particular purpose. Our conclusions also raise questions about the notions of free will and personal responsibility. If our personal awareness does not control the contents of the personal narrative which reflects our thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions and decisions, then perhaps we should not be Read More ›

  From Michael Chaberek, OP, in Aquinas and Evolution: When a scientist discovers the material or the efficient cause while not finding any other, it does not follow that no other causes exist. It simply means that the scientific explanation does not include those other causes. This is not reductionism, because drawing more abstract and general conclusions about living beings as separate substances (or nature as a whole) is outside of science. Reductionism begins not when scientists speak about material and efficient causes alone, but when they (or anyone else) claim that scientific knowledge is the only possible type of knowledge, or that science explains everything, including the mystery of life. And this is not what the proponents of intelligent Read More ›

Which, in the context, can only mean naturalist efforts to identify free will as an illusion, like consciousness, that evolved to help spread our selfish genes. From Ari N. Schulman at Big Questions Online: For example, let’s say I decide not to commit murder. My decision is rational not only because I have deliberated about the reasons not to do it, but also because my decision flows from a character that has been formed in a rational way. When faced with the choice to murder, my dispositions have already been shaped, e.g., by membership in a society that professes to value human life, by individual reflection, or by both. And if this is the case, then when confronted with the Read More ›

Ask a scholar. From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views, introducing a podcast with German history scholar Richard Weikart, author of Hitler’s Religion In an ID the Future conversation with Todd Butterfield, Professor Weikart reveals the complexity of his topic — Hitler’s true religious views, which are so often subjected to, yes, simplistic caricature. Sometimes you’ll see Hitler portrayed as a Christian, other times as an occultist. Neither is true. You could call him a pantheist. More. Podcast here: On this episode of ID The Future, Tod Butterfield talks with CSC Senior Fellow Dr. Richard Weikart about his recently published book Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. In particular, Weikart explores Hitler’s pantheism and his Read More ›

Sometimes, exchanges at UD come down to truly basic (and hard) issues. This is one such time, where Origenes has challenged prolific objector Critical Rationalist in the Personal Incredulity thread: >>100 Origenes November 25, 2017 at 7:01 pm  CR What is your definition of valid knowledge?>> I have thought this worthy of responding to and of headlining: KF, 106: >> Origines, Generally, I would argue that “knowledge” is used in a weak form sense: warranted, credibly true (and reliable) belief. Drawing out, slightly: Warranted — there is an available account (as opposed to internal to the given knower, who may simply accept a message from reliable sources . . . ) that, properly understood, would justify accepting or treating belief Read More ›

 Notes for the vid are here: George Ellis stated much the same thing when he noted, in Einstein’s denial of free will, that if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options. … More. See also: How can we believe in naturalism if we have no choice? and Nature, as defined today, cannot be all there is. Science demonstrates that.

Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains: Our best theories, like the aforementioned theory of evolution, the Big Bang theory, and Einstein’s General Relativity, cover all of these bases. They have an underlying quantitative framework, enabling us to predict what will happen under a variety of situations, and to then go out and test those predictions empirically. So far, these theories have demonstrated themselves to be eminently valid. Where their predictions can be described by mathematical expressions, we can tell not only what should happen, but by how much. For these theories in particular, among many others, measurements and observations that have been performed to test these theories have been supremely successful. More. “Fossils, genetic inheritance, and DNA prove the theory of evolution” Read More ›

Reader Edward Sisson writes to say, Denyse says in her 2006 article that “Then there was artificial intelligence (AI). Remember, this is supposed to be the “age of spiritual machines,” when computers are becoming indistinguishable from humans. In reality, the human mind works quite differently from a computer, and simply increasing computing power does not produce characteristic human qualities. AI enthusiast Kenneth Silber complains, “This is a disappointing state of affairs.” It sure is, if you are HAL or Deeper Blue.” [No computer has become inherently smarter than its programmers, for the same reasons as characters in a novel do not have more insight than the author. ]” He adds, The current issue of MIT’s Technology Review (Nov/Dec 2017) is Read More ›

Recently, we noted an upcoming Royal Society meeting: Sexual selection in extinct animals. An alert reader writes to say, On linking to the Royal Society website referenced in the Uncommon Descent post, we find this: “Sexual Selection: patterns in the history of life. Theo Murphy International scientific meeting organised by Dr Rob Knell, Dr Dave Hone and Professor Doug Emlen. Sexual selection is potentially an important driver of macroevolutionary processes like speciation and extinction, but this has rarely been tested using the fossil record. This meeting will bring biologists and palaeontologists together to discuss sexual selection’s role in macroevolution, how to detect it in extinct animals and how to measure its influence on the history of life across geological time.” Read More ›

From Phoebe Weston at the Daily Mail: Falling in love is one of life’s great mysteries, but now scientists believe this strange feeling could be key to our evolutionary success. For the first time researchers have found evidence ‘selection promoted love in human evolution’ as it increased the chances of us having families. Scientists studied the Hadza people of Tanzania, who don’t use modern contraception, and found passionate partnerships were associated with having more children. It follows previous research that found love may have evolved to stop male primates from killing their infants. More. From the human history for which we actually have a good deal of evidence (not just from a small, outlier group), “passionate partnerships” were not the main Read More ›

They make the same category error. In 701 BC the Assyrian King Sennacherib invaded the Kingdom of Judah.  The Assyrian army besieged Jerusalem and employed what today we would call psychological warfare tactics to undermine the defense of the city.  II Chronicles 32:16-19 records their tactic: His servants spoke further against the Lord God and against His servant Hezekiah.  He also wrote letters to insult the Lord God of Israel, and to speak against Him, saying, ‘As the gods of the nations of the lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.’  They called this out with a loud voice in the language of Judah to Read More ›