Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Jerry Coyne on Cancel Culture’s hit on medical science

The new terminology would make it hard for most family doctors to talk plainly about typical health issues around, say, obesity or substance abuse very clearly. One doesn’t get the impression from the Woke rhetoric that the patient can decide to make changes that lead to better health. Yet people in all social groups do that every day. Anyway, Coyne is way more useful fighting this than fighting design in nature. Read More ›

Casey Luskin on the unique origins of humanity in the fossil record

DI Channel: Does the fossil record prove humans developed from ape-like ancestors? Or does it reveal that humans had a unique origin? In this lecture, geologist Casey Luskin offers some surprising evidence about the fossil history of humanity. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Neuroscientist: Nervous systems alone do not cause consciousness

One-celled intelligence aside, it’s unclear how Antonio Damasio’s ladder of consciousness, built on self-balancing and death avoidance, gets us the human mind. Read More ›

A thoughtful critique of Philip Goff’s panpsychism

Umar Nasser: I was quite disappointed at his treatment of dualism. I felt like he listed some objections against it but didn't really seek to give counter-objections, as it might hold up too well as compared to his preferred option of panpsychism [everything is conscious to some degree]. Read More ›

Researcher: Biology transcends the limits of computation

Marshall: The present paper uses information theory (the mathematical foundation of our digital age) and Turing machines (computers) to highlight inaccuracies in prevailing reductionist models of biology, and proposes that the correct causation sequence is cognition > code > chemicals. Read More ›

Researchers: Unusual island life forms may have been genetically pre-coded to vary

"Choi et al., publishing in PNAS, have proposed a very un-Darwinian account of how “spectacular adaptive radiations” occur on oceanic islands such as Hawaii. This has been a “paradox of evolutionary biology,” they admit. Maybe the diversity is an outworking of “ancient polymorphisms” of ancestors with a rich gene pool." As a hypothesis, it has everything going for it but Darwinism. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Jonathan Bartlett Coming to the Defense of Classical Logic

Bartlett: It seems odd that classical logic would need defending, but, in modern times, this seems to indeed be the case. Many modern scholars see the need for demoting the place of classical logic and viewing it as an aspect of western cultural imperialism. In reality, classical logic is a gift to civilization. It was created in the classical west, but its benefit is that it belongs to everyone and can be equally wielded by anyone who chooses to do so. Read More ›

Casey Luskin on Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Luskin: "Evolution moulded our minds and bodies to the life of hunter-gatherers” (p. 378) — then there’s no reason to expect that we should need to evolve the ability to build cathedrals, compose symphonies, ponder the deep physics mysteries of the universe, or write entertaining (or even imaginative) books about human history. Why should these things evolve? He said it, not me: “Frankly, we don’t know.” Read More ›

Scan a pumpkin, see a beautiful world of design

In case you missed it, Hallowe'en started out as the Eve of All Saints Day (November 1). The kids running down the street dressed as ghouls, the piles of tooth-rotting candy and the toilet paper in the trees... that all came later. Thank you for listening. Read More ›

Canceled exoplanets prof Dorian Abbot at the Wall Street Journal

The thing is, in 2017, it was ultra-progressive places like Evergreen where the liberal biology teachers could be run off campus. Now it’s MIT, folks... Either Woke goes or science does. But bureaucrats find it easier to cater to Woke than to resist. The more bureaucrats there are, the less university there will be. Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Philosopher: Panpsychism is not in conflict with physics at all

Remember Egnor ’s Principle: If your hypothesis is that your mind is an illusion, then you do not have a hypothesis. The panpsychists want to have a hypothesis. They want to include consciousness as a real fact in nature while avoiding dualism. Read More ›

Aquinas and Intelligent Design

For reasons beyond my comprehension, there is a significantly large (or at least loud) group of Thomists (followers of Thomas Aquinas) who reject Intelligent Design, allegedly on Thomistic grounds. I recently came across an old paper that addresses most of the criticisms of ID raised by Thomists that I have heard. Anyway, I had thought of writing a similar paper, but, voila, someone else already did it! St. Thomas Aquinas on Intelligent Design

“Twisted” human birth canal “evolved” to be good design

Researchers: A longitudinally deeper inlet would require greater pelvic tilt and lumbar lordosis, which would compromise spine health and the stability of upright posture. These different requirements of the pelvic inlet and outlet likely have led to the evolution of a twisted birth canal, requiring human babies to rotate during birth. Read More ›