Lawrence Krauss just finished his opening statement in the “What’s Behind It All? God, Science,and the Universe,” and he once demonstrated what drives evolutionary thought. His arguments from dysteleology said it all. The universe, the physicist from Arizona State University explained, is inhospitable. It is not user-friendly, and in most places, would kill you instantly. And we all know that a Creator would never do such a thing.  Read more

Pro ID Steve Meyer. No ID Larry Krauss. As noted here, and live streamed: A discussion of Evolution, Intelligent Design and Creation, featuring Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Meyer and Denis Lamoureux. Live at Convocation Hall in the University of Toronto. Sponsored by Wycliffe College in partnership with Faith Today, Power to Change, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and the Network of Christian Scholars. Questions like these will be posed to the panel: How did the universe originate? Does God play any role in the cosmos? What is the relationship between science and religion? Readers have probably heard of Steve Meyer and Larry Krauss. More. Lamoureux is a Canadian U Alberta religion and science prof, and this story gives some sense of his Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Scientists from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London have found the oldest fossils of the familiar pine tree that dominates Northern Hemisphere forests today. The 140-million-year-old fossils (dating from the Cretaceous ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’) are exquisitely preserved as charcoal, the result of burning in wildfires. The fossils suggest that pines co-evolved with fire at a time when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher and forests were especially flammable. More. From Dispatch Tribunal: The 7mm long fossil pushes back the date of pine tree origin by 11 million years as a previous fossil was dated 129 million years old, making the fossils discovered from Windsor as the oldest known fossils of Read More ›

Worrying on behalf of the Sixth Great Extinction, Patrick Monahan at Science: … That’s why Roy Plotnick, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and lead author of the study, thinks about far-flung scenarios involving future paleontologists. “We really need to look at modern day extinctions as if they were in the fossil record already, in order to make a comparison,” he says. So he and his colleagues searched fossil databases for modern mammal species—both those threatened by extinction and those that aren’t—to see how many modern extinctions would be detectable by relying only on fossils. Humans have recorded fossils for just 9% of the world’s threatened modern mammal species, the team reports this month in Ecology Letters. Nonthreatened Read More ›

So far known: “rope-like structure similar to that of some modern-day fungi” Cambridge Research News: This early pioneer, known as Tortotubus, displays a structure similar to one found in some modern fungi, which likely enabled it to store and transport nutrients through the process of decomposition. Although it cannot be said to be the first organism to have lived on land, it is the oldest fossil of a terrestrial organism yet found. The results are published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. Here (public access). From BBC: Most scientists agree that life moved from the sea to the land between 500 and 450 million years ago. But in order for plants and animals to gain a foothold on terra Read More ›

In graduate school I had an evolution professor who made the absurd claim that he had solved the protein folding problem—one of the most challenging conundrums in molecular biology. And did he have any examples? No, that was left to the student. It was embarrassing. At another time he referenced a proof of evolution. But again, it was a hollow claim. Unfortunately this sort of phony science is what evolution is all about. The latest example is in how evolutionists are handling epigenetics.  Read more

First Iceball Earth is back (as a theory), now the volcanic vent as well. Seems to be Origin of Life Week around here. From Quanta: The biochemist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules, probably in a pool in the shadow of a volcano. Deamer (Ucal Santa Cruz) … thinks that volcanic landmasses similar to those in Iceland today would have made a hospitable birthplace for his proto-cells. Freshwater pools scattered across steamy hydrothermal fields would be subject to regular rounds of heating and cooling. That cycle could have concentrated the necessary ingredients — including both lipids and the building blocks for RNA — and provided the energy needed to stitch those building blocks into Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Many researchers believe that Earth’s early oceans were very hot, reaching 80̊ Celsius, and that life originated in these conditions. New findings may prove the opposite to be true. Harald Furnes, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Earth Science, has analysed volcanic and sedimentary rocks in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. The volcanic rocks were deposited at depths of 2 to 4 kilometres. “We have found evidence that the climate 3.5 billion years ago was a cold environment,” says Furnes. … Furnes thinks some researchers may have difficulties accepting the new knowledge of an early, cold Earth. A paradigm shift in Earth Science is not to be expected, but he thinks the climate of the early earth Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Today, most researchers agree that the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere happened in two major steps: the first during the so-called Great Oxidation Event about 2.5-2.4 billion years ago, and the second during the Late Neoproterozoic Era around 750 to 540 million years ago. The latter is thought to have been the cause for the emergence of animals during the so-called ‘Cambrian explosion’ around 540 to 520 million years ago. An international team of researchers led by Professor Robert Frei from the Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen has just released a study indicating evidence for the presence of small concentrations of oxygen on Earth already 3.8 billion years ago. The researchers analysed Read More ›

Remember, from last Saturday, “A lot of science writers are tweeting about duck sex now, so that’s a plus.” Now, from Digg: On balance, Neil deGrasse Tyson has done an immense amount of work raising the public’s awareness around science. But peel back the veneer of his good fight against anti-science and you’re left with something that isn’t exactly pro-science. Starting a feud with B.o.B. over why the Earth isn’t flat doesn’t promote science, nor does it “convert” non-believers. Endlessly tweeting about scientifically incorrect things in ‘Star Wars’ isn’t getting anyone to thumb through a research paper. More. Gosh, Digg’s Cool score is pretty high. So is Tyson going to join Dawkins on the C list of retro science stars? Read More ›

Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter debates “Is Evolution Compelling.” Cornelius Hunter versus Michael Ruse, March 11, 2016. Note: Hunter often writes here at Uncommon Descent. We are trying to get vid of Ruse too. See also: Steve Meyer vs. Lawrence Krauss in Toronto this Saturday, live-streamed Follow UD News at Twitter!

After reading about how AlphaGo managed to trounce Lee Se-Dol 4-1 in a series of five games of Go, I had a feeling of déjà vu: where have I read about this style of learning before? And then it came to me: pigeons. Both computers and pigeons are incremental learners, and both employ probabilistic algorithms (such as the various machine learning algorithms used in artificial intelligence, and the computation of relative frequencies of positive or negative reinforcements, which is what pigeons do when they undergo conditioning) in order to help them home in on their learning target. Of course, there are several differences as well: computers don’t need reinforcements such as food to motivate them; computers learn a lot faster Read More ›

Pro ID Steve Meyer. No ID Larry Krauss. As noted here, and live streamed: Note: The University of Toronto has been fairly open-minded in hosting these types of events. One remembers – with some distress – a disgraceful scene at U Texas Amarillo (2013) where the admin totally caved to some nondescript Darwin troll displaying his asshat. But, come to think of it, Toronto is a world class city (Economist ranks it best place to live) and it is a long way from Amarillo. Maybe it should stay a long way away. Presser below: Lawrence M. Krauss, Stephen C. Meyer and Denis O. Lamoureaux discuss origins of the universe in public event News Release Thursday, March 17, 2016 FOR IMMEDIATE Read More ›

From 3 Tags: Scientists have sequenced the oldest human DNA ever, extracted from 430,000-year-old samples of fossilised tooth and a thigh bones, found in Spain’s Sima de los Huesos, which translates to “pit of bones”. In doing so, the team from Germany has found evidence that the ancient ancestors of modern humans must have split from the ancestors of Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years earlier than we thought, which means it might be time for us to redraw the human family tree. Located in the Cueva Mayor-Cueva del Silo cave system in north-central Spain, the Sima de los Huesos archaeological site contains the largest and oldest collection of human remains ever discovered, with more than 6,500 fossilised bone fragments Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Views: Stump your Darwinist friends by asking them to explain, in evolutionarily adaptive terms, biological features like the precise pattern of the maple leaf or of an angiosperm flower. “That’s a fantastically serious challenge to Darwinism,” says Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton in this brief but delightful video conversation — a “nightmarish scenario.” Why? Because Darwinism by definition must justify such features, including the taxa-defining novelties, as having been seized upon by natural selection because they were adaptive. I mean, that pattern specifically and not some other. It’s the specificity that’s the problem. More. Worse, Denton is too old to be denied a degree or fired. Note: Some friends will find the challenge Read More ›