Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At last someone is asking: Why are science reporters so credulous?

Another way of putting it is that too many people are — at best — naive about government-led and government-funded science. And science writers can make a living out of avoiding realities and catering to their illusions while retaining a sense of impeccable righteousness. Read More ›

A friend reminds us of what philosopher Michael Polanyi had to say about Darwinian evolution

Doesn’t seem like Oxford liked him much for that. And then there’s what Gertrude Himmelfarb had to say at the same time… Hey, a walk through history when it is fun and instructive. Read More ›

William Lane Craig defends theistic evolution at Peaceful Science

On theological but not necessarily scientific grounds. Some of us would think that if theistic evolution fails a science test, one needn’t bother with the theology. But maybe we misunderstand. Read More ›

Noted at Hillfaith: Atheists’ books show that God must exist

They couldn't have written them without intelligent design of the universe. The blog also notes the impact of Steve Meyer's book, Return of the God Hypothesis, which seems to be giving the Darwinian materialist atheists some serious competition. Read More ›

Francis Collins in the hot seat re COVID-19

Readers may know Collins from his role promoting theistic evolution and/or some ethical issues around accusations of the use of premature babies as guinea pigs. More recently, his recent and unexpected resignation from the directorship of National Institutes of Health has created expected questions around the Institute’s handling of COVID-19. ... If Collins was confronted about that e-mail for the first time — after a year and a half — most U.S. media have way too cozy a relationship with science bureaucrats. Read More ›

A new solution for Hawking’s black hole paradox? “Quantum hair”

Catchy, we gotta admit: In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them. That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed. In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features beyond their total mass, spin, and charge, coined the phrase “black holes have no hair”—known as the no-hair theorem. However, the newly discovered “quantum hair” provides a way for information to be preserved as a black hole collapses and, as such, resolves one of modern science’s most famous quandaries, experts say. Prof Calmet said: “Black holes have long been considered the perfect laboratory to study Read More ›

The New Yorker — oh, so cleverly! — misunderstands the issues around teaching of origins

Essentially, in many places, it is compulsory to teach common ancestry of humans and apes as a dogma and illegal to teach any evidence against it. The progressive vilifies the people who object on any grounds… Read More ›

Woke science journal Lancet goes to war against meat

It’s not our job to have an opinion about meat. But when anti-meat advocacy contributes to a pattern of politically driven departure from facts in a science journal’s publication choices (in this case, Lancet), it forms part of a depressing (and relevant) “Trust the Science!” pattern. Read More ›

L&FP, 54: J C Wright on the haunting “Morlockery” of many today, in the neo-gnostic, nihilistic “Technoplutocracy”

Mr Wright, a noted Science Fiction/Fantasy writer [and married to another, L Jagi Lampwriter Wright] observes a pattern of our times: Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements [–> outdated reference], dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but most particularly in our mass media and social media. Not all Morlocks are technoplutocratic elites, but all elites are Morlocks. “Morlock,” is a strange term, tracing to pioneer Sci Fi writer H G Wells in Time Machine. As Wright describes, “[i]n Wells, the Morlock is a cannibal troglodyte who treats other human descendants [the “fair, childlike Eloi”] as cattle [–> as in, food].” So, he Read More ›

Researchers: Genetic mutation against malaria is not random

Researcher: “I do not think it is a coincidence that the HbS mutation, which provides protection against malaria, originates de novo more frequently in sub-Saharan Africans than in Europeans,” Livnat says. “I also do not think it is a coincidence that it originates more frequently in the gene where it provides this protection compared to the nearly identical nearby delta globin gene, where precisely the same mutation could happen but would not provide protection.” Read More ›