Our Jonathan Bartlett (johnnyb) wrote recently at Answers in Genesis: Lawrence Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer surprised the cosmology world in 2007 when they published an essay titled “The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology.” The paper showed that, assuming the truth of the current big bang model, in the far future (hundreds of billions of years from now) many evidences for the big bang itself will be gone, preventing future cosmologists from even being able to detect evidence for it. … The conclusion that Krauss and Scherrer come to after this examination of the present and future state of cosmology is that we live in a very special time in the universe. We live in Read More ›

It’s amazing we perceive as clearly as we do, given the situations that confuse us and the tricks we can think up to confuse ourselves. Here: Our senses are remarkable. They have evolved to enable us to accurately perceive a huge variety of things in very different conditions. However, occasionally our senses let us down, and we fail to perceive the world accurately. The resulting illusions give us great insight into how our senses work, and how they usually manage to do so astonishingly well. Illusions intrigue us. It is fascinating to observe our senses getting things wrong, and to continue to do so, even when we know the nature of the illusion. And it is intriguing to ponder what Read More ›

A friend wrote around to ask what books offer the strongest arguments for evolution and various suggestions came forward, but one person we located offered some general advice worth sharing: For each argument or piece of evidence, ask yourself the following questions: 1. What kind of “evolution” this is supposed to prove or could be used to prove? (“Inherited changes”, “Adaptations to ekological niches”, “Common descent with creature X”, “Universal common ancestry”, “The existence of a mechanism that could account for the emergence of heritable features needed if A & B share a common ancestor”, “Different ecosystems at different times”, “More advanced species on top of the geological column” or something else?) 2. Is it useful in what it aims Read More ›

It would appear so from Stanford Plato: The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003). So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just Read More ›

This paper seeks to achieve it.  The abstract: The theory of evolution continues to be a bone of contention among certain groups of theistic believers. This paper aims to bring some light to the debate about it, by introducing a framework for epistemic appraisal which can provide a realistic and sober assessment of the epistemic credentials of the various parts of evolutionary theory. The upshot is a more nuanced epistemic appraisal of the theory of evolution, which shows that there are significant differences in epistemic standing between its various parts. Any serious conversation about the theory of evolution ought to reflect these facts. Readers, did they succeed?

From ScienceDaily: The first large-scale genetic study of people in Papua New Guinea has shown that different groups within the country are genetically highly different from each other. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their colleagues at the University of Oxford and the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research reveal that the people there have remained genetically independent from Europe and Asia for most of the last 50,000 years, and that people from the country’s isolated highlands region have been completely independent even until the present day. … With approximately 850 domestic languages, which account for over 10 per cent of the world’s total, Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. To Read More ›

Further to word games around the term “Darwinism,” another friend writes to comment on another word game intended to subvert discussions of just how much information Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) can load into a life form within the probability bounds of our universe (micro- vs. macro- evolution): Another popular word game played by Darwinists is to claim that creationists invented the words microevolution and macroevolution. But the words were coined by Russian neo-darwinist Yuri Filipchenko and subsequently used by his student Theodosius Dobzhansky (also a neo-darwinist) in the 1930s: “There is no way toward an understanding of the mechanisms of macroevolutionary changes, which require time on a geological scale, other than through a full comprehension of the Read More ›

Recently, I (O’Leary for News) wrote, Darwinism is somewhat like the traditional notion of the spontaneous generation of life. It is never actually demonstrated, only propounded. In the case of Darwinian evolution by widely publicized piffling examples like Darwin’s finches, which, after all the science media hoopla, remain just finches, with varying adaptations from one cycle of seasons to the next. In response, Tim Standish, Senior Scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute, writes to correct me, pointing out that One difference between Darwinism and spontaneous generation is that spontaneous generation was a testable hypothesis. It may have taken quite a bit of testing before reaching a consensus that it doesn’t happen, but at least that was possible in principle. Darwinism Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Prior to cell division, chromosomes are seemingly a jumbled mess. During cell division, parent cell chromosomes and their duplicates sort themselves out by condensing, becoming thousands of times more compact than at any other time. Researchers have long assumed that genes become “silent” during cell division, not being transcribed into proteins or regulatory molecules. This has left open the question of how genes get properly re-activated after cell division. Now, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University Pennsylvania have found that gene expression actually continues during cell replication. Their findings are published this week in Science. … Although chromosomes are extremely compact during cell division, with sequences for regulatory molecules buried and previously presumed to Read More ›

Recently, we noted the continuing claim that the term “Darwinism” is used only among Christians. Now, the claim is so obviously untrue that it exists to fulfil a need: To put off the day of reckoning for Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism, or the modern evolutionary synthesis, or whatever you want to insert [here]). Darwinians can always find fresh, eager ears, people who want peace with an establishment known for destroying careers otherwise… But it would be a pity not to record some comments that friends have kindly sent. From one: All you have to do is go to Google Scholar and search on Darwinian, Darwinist, Darwinism. Any of those terms will yield multiple results. Exactly. So the characters in our story boil down Read More ›

In response to our recent reprise of “Are viruses alive?”, a friend writes to draw our attention to a passage from Carl Woese (1928-2012), who first identified the archaea as a separate kingdom of life: in a paper: During the past few years, an even more astonishing example has come to light, prompted in part by the attempt to find the cause of colony collapse disorder—the dramatic reduction in the honey bee population (in the United States, losses of adult workers were 23% during 2006- 2007 and 36% during 2007–2008) (124). One of the potential pathogenic causes, the Israeli acute paralysis virus, was found to be able to integrate harmlessly its genome into that of the bee host, and thus Read More ›

From Ian Miles Cheong at Daily Caller: Evergreen State College has settled a tort claim with professor Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying for $500,000 in connection to the 2017 “Day of Absence” protests, which saw anarchy spread throughout the campus earlier this year. “Through a series of decisions made at the highest levels, including to officially support a day of racial segregation, the college has refused to protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence,” their claim stated. Weinstein alleges that he was frequently called a “racist” by his peers for his refusal to support the so-called “Day of Absence,” which demanded white students Read More ›

From Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz, Theistic Evolution and the Absent God: at his blog: As is often the case, I really debated over whether or not to even take up a response to Ted Davis’s recent blog, “Did Darwin Promote Genocide.” In the end, I thought it warranted some consideration. Davis acknowledges that Darwinism was used to justify eugenics. So if we agree to all of these things, why has Davis decided to take up arms (or pen) against Moore? Why bother? In my opinion, it is because there is a more subtle hand at work in this. Because Davis is a defender of evolutionary creationism (a view that seeks compatibility between Darwin’s theory and the Christian Read More ›

Physicalism is a variant of naturalism: “Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. ” (Stanford Plato) Naturalism: “… reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the ‘human spirit’” (Stanford Plato) Philosopher of physics Dr. Bruce Gordon (Houston Baptist University) talks about the tension between Quantum physics and physicalism: Note: Gordon was one of the editors of The Nature of Nature See also: Consciousness as a state of matter Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

The title of my last post was Reality is the Wall You Smack into When You’re Wrong.  In response to that title Seversky pushed back: Can we assume from this [title] that you agree with me that the argument that our minds were shaped for survival but not for truth is a false dichotomy? In other words, if we form false beliefs about reality then, sooner or later, we will run smack into it so natural selection will favor the formation of true beliefs? I was more than a little surprised at Sev’s response, because since Darwin himself, the standard Darwinian line has been exactly the opposite of that which he asserted.  Natural selection selects for fitness, not for truth.  Read More ›