Earlier discussed here. The most fulsome one is, of course, in New Scientist: For me the attacks on science were unnecessary and ill-formed. “Where in the brain is metaphor happening?” asks Hilary. “Where is accountability and free will?” These don’t show up in a fMRI scan, she says. In fact metaphor may well show up in scans and so do all sorts of interesting aspects of our inner lives, including areas where we operate theory of mind, the ability to see another person’s point of view. No one is saying that brain scans will explain consciousness, but I can’t understand those who seem to want to mock what neuroscientists are discovering. Some people are afraid that we lose something if we Read More ›

Over at the ID The Future podcast, Casey Luskin has been doing a series on “the top 10 problems with biological and chemical evolution.” Some of the problems he discusses will no doubt be of more interest to certain listeners than to others. However, the segment on junk DNA is particularly worth hearing (about 13 minutes). For those who have been following the debate closely there may not be much new in the segment, but it provides a relatively up-to-date review of some of the recent research, with multiple citations that are useful when talking with a friend or colleague who may still be stuck in the naive and outdated idea that the genome is awash in junk.  Better yet, Read More ›

For years I have been bemused by the website called The Skeptical Zone.  Every few months I go over there and peruse the posts.  And I think to myself, if they are so skeptical, why does practically everything they say line up with the received dogmas and conventional wisdom of the early 21st century Western intelligentsia? Do they not know what the word “skeptical” means?  Are they going for ironical? But in a flash of insight today, I finally figured it out.  The key is in the quote from Cromwell at the top of their homepage that serves as the motto for the site: I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. Read More ›

From Quanta Magazine: Genetically identical fruit flies raised under the same conditions are creating a biological map of what makes individuals unique. For scientists studying individual variation, one of the biggest open questions is why it exists. Is it helpful or harmful to the individual and the population? “We still know very little about the fitness consequences,” said Julia Saltz, a biologist at Rice University in Houston. Some versions of a gene might simply have bad quality control, pumping out a shoddy and inconsistent product. (Scientists refer to this as developmental instability and generally consider it harmful.) Alternatively, perhaps some variability makes for a stronger strain. “If you are more variable, a predator can’t guess what you are going to Read More ›

Well take it any way you want, but from Engadget: According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which is tasked with promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space, space law is the “body of law applicable to and governing space-related activities.” UNOOSA states that the “primary goals of space law are to ensure a rational, responsible approach to the exploration and use of outer space for the benefit and in the interests of all humankind.” And space law “addresses a variety of diverse matters such as … [the] preservation of the space and Earth environment, liability for damages caused by space objects, settlement of disputes, protection of national interests, rescue of astronauts, sharing Read More ›

Jerome Bruner, cognitive psychologist, 96: Through research and observation, Bruner understood that human behavior is always influenced by the world and culture in which we live. His work helped move the field of psychology away from strict behaviorism and contributed to the emergence of cognitive psychology. Bruner eventually turned his attention to developmental and educational psychology, with an interest in how children learn. He argued that the goal of teaching isn’t to pass on knowledge, but to teach students to think and solve problems for themselves. He promoted a so-called “spiral curriculum,” in which students learn basic concepts and then circle back to revisit them again and again as more complicated concepts are added over time. He is credited with Read More ›

Three days ago, I posted a 123-word critique of unguided mechanisms for evolution as an explanation for the genes, proteins and different kinds of body plans found in living things. The critique was taken from Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt (Harper One, 2013), and I invited skeptics to rebut Dr. Meyer’s case, in 200 words or less. When I didn’t get a satisfactory rebuttal, I re-posted it. The critique read as follows: “This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: Read More ›

I invite our readers to review my last post and the exchanges between me and eigenstate (hereafter “E”) in the combox.  I could go through a point-by-point rebuttal of eigenstate’s comments, but it would be pointless, because far from rebutting the central thrust of the post, he did not lay a finger on it.   Here is the central argument of that post:  The immaterial mind exists.  Everyone knows the immaterial mind exists.  Its existence is, indeed, the primordial datum that one simply cannot not know.  Therefore, any denial of the existence of the immaterial mind is not only false; it is incoherent.  Hence, the immaterial mind is not an “explanation” of any sort; it is a datum one must take Read More ›

A. Reciprocating Bill asks a question In a comment to a recent post Reciprocating Bill asked why I believe invoking non-physical mental states “solves the problems of consciousness.” It is an interesting question, but not for the reason Bill intended. It is interesting because it betrays Bill’s fundamental misunderstanding of the argument he purports to be critiquing (I am not picking on Bill in particular; I am merely using his error as a platform to discuss the same error that materialists always make when discussing this issue). In this post I will show how Bill’s misunderstanding stems from his inability to view the world outside of the box of materialist metaphysics in which he has allowed himself to become trapped. Read More ›

My very favorite Steve Martin joke: You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! You say, “Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?” First, get a million dollars. Now you say, “Steve what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!” Only slightly less funny are the materialists who say: You can have everything in the universe for absolutely free. All of you science deniers may be saying to yourself, “wait nothing can’t cause something.” Au contraire; it is a scientifically proven fact that you can have everything in the universe Read More ›

From ESSSAT (European Society for the Study of Science and Theology), “a scholarly, non-confessional organization, based in Europe, which aims to promote the study of relationships between the natural sciences and theological views.” By Philippe Gagnon. Here. Warning: ESSSAT uses a retarded system where one can sort of see the article shaded, without getting rid of the .pdf box. So if you want to know what the guy said, you have to download it, and it could be hanging around in storage memory forever. I knew this review of Dembski’s Being as Communion would be a hit piece when Gagnon put intelligent design in sneer quotes. The term is sufficiently well known that no quotes are needed, a fact he Read More ›

Beginning in the late ’90s, once or twice a year, astronomers operating the telescope at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia would pick up mysterious radio signals. These signals were known as perytons, described in a recent report as “millisecond-duration transients of terrestrial origin.” The researchers believed the perytons were linked to atmospheric activity such as lightning strikes, and they held this belief for around 17 years, until this year, when they installed a new receiver to monitor interference, The Guardian reports. The actual source of the perytons? A microwave. The receiver detected signals at 2.4 GHz within 5 kilometers of the telescope, which the researchers realized were being created by staffers heating up their lunches in the Read More ›

Elizabeth Liddle has announced her departure from UD. If you miss her comments here, it is not because she has been banned. It is because she got caught in flagrante delicto, and this time she was unable to obfuscate her way out of it. I will elucidate. In comment 2 to this post, I alluded to Liddle’s tendency to make diametrically opposing claims as the inclination strikes her. Specifically, I said: Elizabeth Liddle also has problems keeping track of the sewage she spills into the UD combox, sometimes contradicting herself in the same thread: EXHIBIT A: EL @ comment 10 of prior post: But he [i.e., Meyer] is no palaeontologist, and apparently doesn’t see that as a problem. It is Read More ›

If a pop playwright does see that, things are  surely changing, big time. In his new play, The Hard Problem, British playwright Tom Stoppard, writer for Shakespeare in Love proposes the following plot: Above all don’t use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science. Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is ‘the hard problem’ which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and Read More ›

It’s no secret that the biological world contains all manner of complicated and finely-tuned machines and mechanisms. Even evolutionists admit that life has the appearance of design. But it doesn’t stop there. Biology, for instance, rests on a foundation of chemistry, and there too we find all kinds of fascinations. At the atomic level, matter and its interactions have specific and particular properties that result in a vast set of crucial puzzle pieces. There are the positive and negative ions, such as sodium and chlorine, which result in molecules with ionic bonds, such as salt. There are atoms that can accept or donate electrons, such as carbon, which result in life’s macromolecules, such as carbohydrates and fats. Even quantum mechanics, Read More ›