Philip Cunningham writes to note for us such moments in the literature: Abstract: (open access) Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomolecules are tuned exactly to the critical point of the metal-insulator transition separating the Anderson localized insulator phase from the conducting disordered metal phase. Using tools from Random Matrix Theory we confirm that the energy level statistics of these biomolecules show the universal transitional distribution of the metal-insulator critical point and the wave functions are multifractals in accordance with the theory of Anderson transitions. The findings Read More ›

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor doesn’t mince words: I despise Darwinism. It is, in my view, an utterly worthless scientific concept promulgated by a third-rate barnacle collector and hypochondriac to justify functional, if not explicit, atheism. Richard Dawkins got it right: Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. A low bar, admittedly, but “natural selection” satisfied, and still satisfies, many. Even bright Christians, regrettably. Darwin still has some cache among design advocates — the usual trope is that he provided evidence for common descent and explained microevolution. In this I differ from some of my friends and colleagues sympathetic to ID/Thomism. Darwin’s “theory” is completely worthless to science, a degradation of philosophy, and lethal to culture. As Jerry Fodor Read More ›

From Sarah Chaffee and Granville Sewell at The Spectator:  Whether the standard neo-Darwinian mechanism fully explains the origins of biological novelties is a question that scientists themselves increasingly contest. Yet for the media, evolution is the holy Kaaba of science. Resistance verging on hysteria greets attempts to allow teachers to introduce mainstream controversies found in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Just look at media coverage about Arizona’s state science standards, currently being revised, where minor changes were decried as a wholesale “attack” on evolution. Louisiana passed its academic freedom law, the Louisiana Science Education Act, in 2008 and critics have been denouncing it ever since, dishonestly, for sneaking in instruction about “intelligent design” or “creationism.” Tennessee passed a similar law in 2012, Read More ›

A recent book, Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God , by Melissa Cain Travis might be of interest. According to one of the Amazon reviews, One of the areas in the book that is unique and very interesting is the discussion about mathematics. The author states that, “Several eminent thinkers have convincingly argued that we discover, rather than invent, the realities of mathematics.” She cites numerous references from several scientists supporting this thesis, including Max Planck, Sir Arthur Eddington, Eugene Wigner and Roger Penrose. For example, physicist Wigner (an agnostic) wrote, “The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious. There is no Read More ›

With Philip Cunningham Philip Cunningham writes to say, “As the preceding e-mails strongly indicated, Biological Form simply is not reducible to Darwinian Mechanisms” Paper. See also: Do all genes affect every complex trait? Veronique Greenwood: The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way… and Other bad news from the genome for neo-Darwinism From Philip Cunningham: The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is.

Philip Cunningham hat tipped us earlier on the article at Quartz that raised the possibility that all genes affect every complex trait. He also writes to say, “The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is:” These news items from recent years give some sense of the issues, he says: The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology (Bard, 2011) Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this Read More ›

The more closely geneticists look at complex traits and diseases, the harder it gets to find active genes that don’t influence them. From Veronique Greenwood at Quanta: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis. But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way… One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism Read More ›

The question of, if there are aliens out there, where are they? In short, they ain’t.  From Dissolving the Fermi Paradox by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, Toby Ord: Abstract: The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from Read More ›

 Darwin’s Doubt deals with the Cambrian explosion of life forms about 550 million years ago. Philip Cunningham, who forwarded this link, notes, Stephen Meyer joins Michael to discuss the origins of life and the biology’s big bang, the Cambrian explosion. Animal forms come and go, but what links them as “acts of mind” (as Agassiz put it) is a “continuity of ideas,” not, says Meyer, the physical continuity that Darwin asserted. These are wonderful ways of putting things. Meyer also discusses the 2016 Royal Society meeting attended by a “spirited minority” of ID proponents, where one evolutionist put it that “criticism of neo-Darwinism is so early ’90s.” He meant that among scientists behind closed doors, neo-Darwinism itself is so Read More ›

 Inspiring Philosophy Philip Cunningham kindly forwarded this, noting that “Quantum mechanics has repeatedly confirmed the startling conclusion that (material) reality cannot exist without consciousness.” True, but defenders of a rational approach to science tend to forget that many people today are educated to think that reason and evidence are tools of oppression, that only their feelings are valid. That won’t end well, no matter what their feelings are. See also: How naturalism rots science from the head down The illusion of consciousness sees through itself. and Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?

Douglas Axe here: The Power of Common Science (Ep. 153) Guest: Dr. Douglas Axe, Author of “Undeniable” Undeniable. See also: Undeniable: Darwinians stage manage evidence against their view into near oblivion Doug Axe vs Keith Fox: Is design in nature undeniable? and Andrew McDiarmid podcast with Doug Axe, author of Undeniable, “on the Design Intuition and a New Biology” Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

From NASA: The Twin Study propelled NASA into the genomics era of space travel. It was a ground-breaking study comparing what happened to astronaut Scott Kelly, in space, to his identical twin brother, Mark, who remained on Earth. The perfect nature versus nurture study was born. The Twins Study brought ten research teams from around the country together to accomplish one goal: discover what happens to the human body after spending one year in space. NASA has a grasp on what happens to the body after the standard-duration six-month missions aboard the International Space Station, but Scott Kelly’s one-year mission is a stepping stone to a three-year mission to Mars. More. So what did they find? Among other things, After Read More ›

From at ScienceDaily: Ancient microbes may have been producing oxygen through photosynthesis a billion years earlier than we thought, which means oxygen was available for living organisms very close to the origin of life on earth. In a new article in Heliyon, a researcher from Imperial College London studied the molecular machines responsible for photosynthesis and found the process may have evolved as long as 3.6 billion years ago. … One surprising finding was that the evolution of the photosystem was not linear. Photosystems are known to evolve very slowly — they have done so since cyanobacteria appeared at least 2.4 billion years ago. But when Dr. Cardona used that slow rate of evolution to calculate the origin of photosynthesis, Read More ›

From Stephen Skolnick at Physics Buzz: At the intersection of physics and philosophy, there’s a question that’s weighed on the minds of great thinkers for centuries: Is there truly such a thing as free will? When we make a choice, are we fundamentally any different than a calculator “choosing” which segments of its display to light up when the = button is pressed? The question has its roots in the acceptance that humans are, for all our astounding complexity, purely physical systems. Once you drop the notion that we’ve got an intrinsic, metaphysical soul that sits behind the eyes and pulls the levers, the question of why we make the choices we make becomes urgent…if only philosophically. Funny no one Read More ›