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Skip to content Sunday, March 15, 2020 Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community Home News Desk Resources Frequently raised but weak arguments against Intelligent Design ID Defined Glossary Archive of Posts by Michael Behe Darwinian Debating Devices Archives Comment Policy Moderation Put a Sock In It About Contact Us Privacy Policy Search for: Latest When turtle ants rewound evolution’s tape it all turned out different Michael Behe on the X Factor in Life Rob Sheldon on dark energy: Does it exist? Tiny 99 mya bird (?) skull trapped in amber raises many questions Michael Behe muses on design and COVID-19 Evolution Intelligent Design When turtle ants rewound evolution’s tape it all turned out different It must be difficult to derive lectern-splintering theories when life forms simply adapt to whatever works, with nothing defined. Posted on March 14, 2020 March 14, 2020 Author News Comments(7) Food for thought Intelligent Design Michael Behe on the X Factor in Life David Klinghoffer: With our country and much of the world stressed by worries about a sickness, on a scale we’ve never seen before, it’s a reminder that the universe is not governed by random accidents only. Posted on March 13, 2020 March 13, 2020 Author News Comments(11) Cosmology Intelligent Design Physics Rob Sheldon on dark energy: Does it exist? Sheldon, our physics color commentator, writes to say, “I’ve mentioned before that Subir Sarkar at Oxford has questioned the existence of “dark energy” and by implication, the award of the 2011 Nobel prize. Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog links to a 7 minute summary of the Nobel prize and Sarkar’s work: But even more compelling is her Read More… Posted on March 13, 2020 March 13, 2020 Author News Comments(3) Evolution Intelligent Design stasis Tiny 99 mya bird (?) skull trapped in amber raises many questions But get this: Benson goes on to explain that one of the “bizarre” features of Oculudentavis is qualities present in lizards but neither in birds nor in dinosaurs. It is smaller than most hummingbirds but had over a hundred teeth… The more research we do, one suspects, the more of this type of thing we’ll find and the harder it would all be to explain to our old Darwinian schoolteacher. Posted on March 13, 2020 March 13, 2020 Author News Comments(2) Evolution Intelligent Design Michael Behe muses on design and COVID-19 Behe: … most viruses do not affect humans and may well have a positive, necessary role to play in nature of which we are currently unaware. (I would bet on it.) From time to time a storm arises in the virosphere and affects humans. But that’s no reason to think either that viruses weren’t designed or that the designer of viruses isn’t good. Posted on March 12, 2020 March 12, 2020 Author News Comments(65) Ecology Evolution Intelligent Design Beetle larvae (“superworms”) can survive on waste plastic Recent evolution? Maybe. Doesn’t sound as though much evolution is needed, actually. Later in the article, it is suggested that the required enzymes may have existed for some time (that is, the plastic is what’s new). Posted on March 12, 2020 March 12, 2020 Author News Comment(1) Intelligent Design Earth’s rocks and Moon rocks differ—possibly shedding light on Moon origin That may help us understand how the Moon formed, say researchers. Yes, that seems odd, but the we know surprisingly little about how the Moon—which plays a very important role in enabling life on Earth—was formed. Posted on March 12, 2020 March 12, 2020 Author News Comments(2) Human evolution Intelligent Design Homo erectus from nearly 1.5 million years ago was “more behaviourally flexible” than thought But why did we think they wouldn’t be? Isn’t there an underlying story here that is slowly being confuted (but no one wants to really discuss the history in those terms so everything must be treated as a big surprise)? Posted on March 11, 2020 March 11, 2020 Author News Comments(2) academic freedom Climate change Culture Information Intellectual freedom Intelligent Design Wikipedia erases list of climate skeptics Even if everything is all pristine and honest with climate science today, the settled habit of simply censoring opposing views inevitably corrupts. Over time it corrupts absolutely. Darwinism is paying the price even now for that kind of thing, if we go by the defensive Darwinblather around the current, sublime embarrassment of de novo genes. Posted on March 11, 2020 March 13, 2020 Author News Comments(8) Culture Darwinism Intelligent Design Why does Darwinism remind one of the propaganda of unfree countries? Never mind that the de novo genes have no apparent ancestors. Universal common ancestry, the supposed bedrock of the system, is not as important as simple, unquestioning obedience to the current pronouncements of the ideologues. Posted on March 11, 2020 March 11, 2020 Author News Comments(15) Extraterrestrial life Intelligent Design Big new telescope array to search for extraterrestrial alien signals The nice thing about SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects is that it makes very little difference if we don’t find anything. It’s not as though any conclusion can be drawn from a failure to find anything. We will just indulge in another round of speculations as to why we don’t. It’s not always clear why this is a science and not a religion. But hey. Posted on March 10, 2020 March 10, 2020 Author News Comments(3) Culture Darwinism Intelligent Design Racism Nature tut tuts on eugenics, forgets Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin In our current cultural climate, it is very difficult to have a useful discussion of the contribution Darwinism made to modern racism, as evidenced by racist yammer today featuring “natural selection.” To recap, Darwinism made racism “scientific.” That was much easier to sell to the educated classes in the nineteenth century than the idea that some people’s papa was a god and the rest of us were just bricks. And many committed and devoted Darwinists believed in and co-operated with the new, “scientific” racism. Until all that can be fully and freely acknowledged, the matter can never be laid to rest. Posted on March 10, 2020 March 10, 2020 Author News Comments(8) Human evolution Intelligent Design Did Stone Age beads found at 33 kya function as a “social safety net”? However the beads were used, the concept of beads as a medium of exchange, a record of treaties, or a social status marker involves abstraction. They represent an idea. Ideas surely became much more powerful when they were portable. They have a much longer and wider reach when they can be shared and embodied in something other than a given person’s brain. Posted on March 10, 2020 March 10, 2020 Author News Comment(1) Animal minds Intelligent Design Michael Egnor: The bird does NOT do math Egnor: Dr. Pepperberg could have been more forthright: Parrots can’t do statistics. No animal (except man) can do statistics, because statistical reasoning is abstract and only human beings are capable of abstract thought. Parrots think concretely—they think of particular things and relations between particular things, but they cannot think without particular things—they can’t think abstractly. Posted on March 10, 2020 March 10, 2020 Author News Comments(5) Genetics Genomics Human evolution Intelligent Design At Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable: The scientific case for Adam and Eve “He [Swamidass] is joined by atheist biologist Nathan Lents who has given his support to the book, believing that it may help Christians who hold to a traditional understanding of the Adam and Eve story, to also accept evolutionary science. “ Posted on March 10, 2020 March 10, 2020 Author News Comments(5) Posts navigation Older posts Advertisements Meta Register Log in Entries feed Comments feed WordPress.org Search Advertisements Meta Register Log in Entries feed Comments feed WordPress.org Donate Help us to continue generating quality content and reliable website service. Most Popula...