Not Even Wrong has the story: Just about ten years ago, my April 1 posting here was a fantasy about the Stanford ITP getting major funding from the Templeton Foundation, using it to fund a program on the multiverse, and renaming themselves the Stanford Templeton Research Institute for Nature, God and Science. The last part hasn’t yet come true yet, but I just noticed the announcement last year of a $878K Inflation, the Multiverse, and Holography grant from Templeton to the SITP, the third part of “A three component Templeton Initiative at the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.” To get some idea of the scale of this funding, note that the entire NSF budget for theoretical HEP is about $12 Read More ›

I have written a “Theological Supplement” to my new Discovery Institute Press book “In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition.” It is theological, not scientific, so it is not part of the new book, and some may feel I should not even be introducing it here at UD. But here is how I introduced the supplement in my new book (in Section 9.4) and explained why I felt the supplementary essays were relevant to the topic of ID, even though they are explicitly (non-fundamentalist) Christian essays. I would especially like to encourage some of our angry ID critics here to take a look. You may be surprised to find you like it more than you expected; Read More ›

In the still active discussion thread on failure of compensation arguments, long term maverick ID (and, I think, still YEC-sympathetic) supporter SalC comments: SalC, 570:    . . .  I’ve argued against using information theory type arguments in defense of ID, it adds way too much confusion. Basic probability will do the job, and basic probability is clear and unassailable. The mutliplicities of interest to ID proponents don’t vary with temperature, whereas the multiplicities from a thermodynamic perspective change with temperature. I find that very problematic for invoking 2LOT in defense of ID. Algorithmically controlled metabolisms (such as realized in life) are low multiplicity constructs as a matter of principle. They are high in information content. But why add more jargon Read More ›

From the excellent Nautilus, like we said: But trawling the Internet, I found a strange paradox: While memes were everywhere, serious meme theory was almost nowhere. Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist who coined the word “meme” in his classic 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, seemed bent on disowning the Internet variety, calling it a “hijacking” of the original term. The peer-reviewed Journal of Memetics folded in 2005. “The term has moved away from its theoretical beginnings, and a lot of people don’t know or care about its theoretical use,” philosopher and meme theorist Daniel Dennett told me. What has happened to the idea of the meme, and what does that evolution reveal about its usefulness as a concept? It Read More ›

To “the Singularity”? Science writer John Horgan interviews Neuroskeptic (Discover) It’s a wonder anyone is asking. Aren’t we still baffled as to what consciousness is? Perceptronium vs. the immateriality and consciousness? We might usefully decide first what we are trying to upload. See also: Why the human mind continue to baffle

The importance of information: For life to have begun, something that could encode information and replicate itself was necessary. A molecule—or perhaps a group of molecules—would have done the trick. Once these substances could replicate themselves, it’s believed that natural selection would have stepped in to create new versions of the ‘Great Starter’. Then it just degenerates into the usual big media Darwinsludge: According to Lane, the environment that created life would need to be ‘continuously’ producing the building blocks of RNA in ‘large numbers’. ‘Any form of replication is doubling,’ says Lane. ‘So you need an environment that will feed you.’ ‘This is one of the problems with a soup,’ says Lane, referring to Darwin’s 1871 theory that life Read More ›

Mainly about the history of intelligent design of dogs, for better or worse. Fascinating stuff about the turnspit dog. Also. here: In order to understand how a breed can go extinct, first we need to get into what a breed is. And in order to get into that, we need to get into what a dog is. According to the fossil record, the canine was first domesticated between 11,000 and 32,000 years ago. One theory is that ancient humans trapped the pups of ancient wolves, raised them as pets, and used them to hunt. This theory is known as the “hunter hypothesis.” Another popular theory is known as the “scavenger hypothesis.” From an expert opinion in National Geographic: Most likely, Read More ›

Universities entice potential students with all sorts of easy loan packages, hip orientations, and perks like high-tech recreation centers and upscale dorms. On the backside of graduation, such bait-and-switch attention vanishes when it is time to help departing students find jobs. College often turns into a six-year experience. The unemployment rate of college graduates is at near-record levels. Universities have either failed to convinced employers that English or history majors make ideal job candidates, or they have failed to ensure that such bedrock majors can, in fact, speak, write and reason well. The collective debt of college students and graduates is more than $1 trillion. Such loans result from astronomical tuition costs that for decades have spiked more rapidly than Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: When children are unmotivated at school, new research suggests their genes may be part of the equation. A study of more than 13,000 twins from six countries found that 40 to 50 percent of the differences in children’s motivation to learn could be explained by their genetic inheritance from their parents. The results surprised study co-author Stephen Petrill, who thought before the study that the twins’ shared environment — such as the family and teachers that they had in common — would be a larger factor than genetics. Instead, genetics and nonshared environment factors had the largest effect on learning motivation, whereas the shared environment had negligible impact. Talk about unbelievable burble. It must have been a happy Read More ›

From New Scientist: Big money is being spent on initiatives like the European Union’s Human Brain Project. Will people hoping to learn about consciousness be disappointed? Absolutely. From what I hear, some of that project’s neuroscientists are disappointed because it isn’t nearly strong enough in asking cognitive questions. It is asking the basic, materialistic questions – such as which cells connect with what, or which chemicals are diffusing – but these basic questions aren’t the only important ones. More. See also: Why studies of the human mind go nowhere.

Here. John Gilmore talks with William Dembski American mathematician, philosopher, theologian and author on the subject of intelligent design, specifically the concept of specified complexity.

So says Jet Propulsion Lab: As NASA missions explore our solar system and search for new worlds, they are finding water in surprising places. Water is but one piece of our search for habitable planets and life beyond Earth, yet it links many seemingly unrelated worlds in surprising ways. “NASA science activities have provided a wave of amazing findings related to water in recent years that inspire us to continue investigating our origins and the fascinating possibilities for other worlds, and life, in the universe,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for the agency. “In our lifetime, we may very well finally answer whether we are alone in the solar system and beyond.” The chemical elements in water, hydrogen and oxygen, Read More ›

… have a really hard time figuring out why anyone tries to be good? The current barf is The carriers of the evolutionary process are populations. Populations consist of reproducing individuals, such as cells, viruses, plants, animals, and people. Offspring inherit fundamental information from their parents. This information is encoded in genomes, if we focus on genetic evolution. Occasionally modifications arise. These new genetic variants are called “mutants.” Mutation generates new types, new molecular ideas. This constitutes the first half of the evolutionary process. The second half is “natural selection.” The mutations might affect reproductive rates. Some mutant genes spread faster in the population than others. Nature becomes a gigantic breeder selecting for advantageous traits. Survival of the fittest is Read More ›

Yeah. Here. You wouldn’t even think the concept still existed, if Darwin were right: The fact is that we don’t “make” anything of our compulsions, or use them to “realize the self”. We have no ability to “realize” our self; all we can do is rationalize what we do and re-brand it as “freedom” so people don’t get scared. So Eagleton’s simply engaging in nonsense when he says stuff like this: Freedom is not a question of being released from the forces that shape us, but a matter of what we make of them. The world, however, is now divided down the middle between off-the-wall libertarians who deny the reality of such forces, and full-blooded determinists such as the US Read More ›

Here. REMEMBER PLUTO? TINY lonely rock orbiting the sun at the edge of the solar system? And then, in 2006, researchers summarily defrocked the little world of its status as a planet. Poof! Gone. This kind of thing has happened before. Many decades ago, paleontologists similarly decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the existence of the beloved Brontosaurus. Instead, they said that the noble thunder lizard was just an Apatosaurus. Poof. But mourn the Brontosaurus no longer! A team of heroes may have rescued it from paleontological purgatory. By cross-referencing the digitized bones from hundreds of long-necked cousins, a team of European scientists now says that they’ve identified enough unique anatomical details to reinstate the Brontosaurus at the Read More ›