Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 101

At Mind Matters News: Astrophysicists lock horns over whether multiverse must exist

Ethan Siegel says it follows naturally from inflation; Adam Frank says inflation is not that robust a theory:

Frank: To summarize, I would argue that inflation has some attractive features, but it simply does not stand as the kind of scientific edifice (in terms of having many, many points of contact with observation) that should force us to accept the Multiverse.

Siegel: In other words, yes, inflation gives you some wiggle room in many ways, but you cannot wiggle out of the Multiverse. The only way out, as Adam says, is to postulate a Rumsfeldian “unknown unknown” to save you. And while that is always possible in any endeavor, I think it is far preferable to draw your best conclusions based on what is known to the limits of our best knowledge at the time. To retort with a quote from the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage, “You may not like it, but accept it.”

News, “Astrophysicists lock horns over whether multiverse must exist” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Inflation is only one factor; other sources weigh in on issues around math, testability, reality-based thinking, and, inevitably, what God would do.

Must we “accept it”? Here are some other approaches:

Robert J. Marks: Is The Big Bang Theory’s nerd right about the multiverse? Sheldon Cooper insists that in no universe would he dance with Penny. Given countless universes, are there truly none in which Sheldon Cooper dances? Maybe. Math shows why there cannot be an infinite number of universes.

Eric Holloway: Here is a way we can be sure if we are living in a multiverse. An experiment can test the idea that there is an infinite number of universes. For our experiment, we need a quantum coin flipper, a disintegration gun, and observers who are sure that there is an infinite array of universes out there.

Michael Egnor: We don’t live in a multiverse because the concept makes no sense. Neurologist Steven Novella and philosopher Philip Goff, both atheists, agree that there are many universes besides the one we live in. Atheists use the multiverse concept to counter the fact that our universe appears fine-tuned to allow life like ours. But is it a valid concept?

and

Multiverse cosmology is not a good argument against God. Or against fine tuning of our universe. God could have created countless universes on various principles for a variety of reasons. The key argument against the multiverse is that there is no evidence for it; it takes us outside the realm of observable science — a choice with consequences.

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Palmer Study Course On Intelligent Design: Review and Conclusion

This video reviews the most important topics from the six previous sessions. Darwinism may still be the reigning creation myth of our time but “the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes”.

For the past 60 years, science has been confirming the necessity of a Creator. From the tiny molecular machines that power cells to the fine-tuning of the cosmos, from irreducible complexity to functional coherence, science verifies that life isn’t the result of any natural process. Life requires foresight, creativity, and wisdom. Life requires a Creator.

Study Questions

Includes:

Scientific discoveries over the past 60 years don’t support evolution, atheism or materialism, but many people aren’t aware of this.

The quora.com website invites questions about evolution, always answering from a pro- evolution perspective. A recent post is typical:

“Q: What arguments are there for and against evolutionary theory? P1 A: The argument for the theory of evolution is that it works. The argument against the theory of evolution is that it makes creationists sad. Not that arguments matter. What matters is evidence, and the theory of evolution is supported by a mountain of evidence, from the fossil record, genetics, biochemistry, anthropology, medicine, virology – heck, even art shows that evolution happens!”

The responder to this question claims that evolution is supported by “a mountain of evidence”. Most people assume Darwinists could support their conclusions with evidence if asked to. If you search for that evidence, you’ll find they’re bluffing – depending on scientific ignorance and reluctance of the public to ask for details.

[Many popular pundits maintain their reputation for Cool by just not asking the detailed questions that John and Sandy Palmer ask. They simply assume that there are “mountains of evidence” somewhere and never ask if it is good evidence or just smart alec responses. – ed.]

You may also wish to see:

Palmer Study Course On Intelligent Design: Human Exceptionalism, Part 1

and

Palmer Study Course On Intelligent Design: Human Exceptionalism 6, Part 2

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TV nite: Media to watch — or watch for

Illustra Media: Birds of the Sun

Every year, the Arctic tern—a bird weighing less than five ounces–completes one of the greatest journeys in the animal kingdom. In their constant search for daylight, moderate temperatures and small fish on which to feed, the terns literally follow the sun from the North Pole to Antarctica, and back again. Their migrations can extend more than 50,000 miles, and the biological systems that make this odyssey possible offer spectacular displays of intelligent design and purpose in the living world.

Topoisomerase: (untangler of knots in our genomes)

Untangler of Knots: The Amazing Topoisomerase Molecular Machine – animated video

Topoisomerase II is an extremely important enzyme in your cells that is designed to untangle knots and supercoils in DNA strands that arise during replication and transcription. It does this by grabbing two tangled DNA segments, holding one steady while it breaks the other segment in two, and then passing the first segment through the break. The second segment is then reconnected, and the two DNA segments are released, having been successfully untangled. Without topoisomerases, chromosomes would become an impossible mess, making DNA replication, transcription, and cell duplication impossible.

The carefully orchestrated untangling activity of topoisomerase II doesn’t happen by accident. This enzyme is a molecular machine that only works because its amino acid sequence is highly specified to provide a special shape and structure necessary for its function. In other words, topoisomerase enzymes contain high levels of complex and specified information—a hallmark of intelligent design.

Biochemist Joe Deweese Explains the Topoisomerase Molecular Machine

Biochemist Joe Deweese explains the topoisomerase molecular machine and answers questions submitted by viewers from around the world. The interview is conducted by Casey Luskin, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute.

Topoisomerase II is an extremely important enzyme in your cells that is designed to untangle knots and supercoils in DNA strands that arise during replication and transcription. It does this by grabbing two tangled DNA segments, holding one steady while it breaks the other segment in two, and then passing the first segment through the break. The second segment is then reconnected, and the two DNA segments are released, having been successfully untangled. Without topoisomerases, chromosomes would become an impossible mess, making DNA replication, transcription, and cell duplication impossible…

Apparently, Steve Meyer’s The Return of the God Hypothesis is to be made into a movie:

From Philip Cunningham, hat tipped below, “Now this is movie that will be, in my book, well worth admission and a overpriced bag of popcorn.”

Stephen Meyer did a very informative two-part interview with host Eric Wallace about Return of the God Hypothesis. Dr. Wallace jokes, “When I read the title it reminded me of the Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi. I was wondering, ‘Should I wait for the movie to come out?’” Actually, now that you mention it, says Meyer, “a theatrical release documentary is being made about the book. We hope to have that released sometime next year, early 2023.” Obviously, that is going to be quite interesting and while I was aware it, this may be the first public tip of the hat by Dr. Meyer. Even so, don’t wait for the movie to come out!” – DVID Klinghoffer, Evolution News

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Why the origin of life is not reducible to physics

Just look what the hopeful researchers have to say in order to claim that. They are not able to get away from the need for design:

Yesterday, we critiqued a proposal by Eugene V. Koonin and three colleagues who presented an expanded theory of evolution as “multilevel learning.” (See, “Evolution Is Not Like Physics.”) The proposal commits the fallacy of equating the properties of biological “laws of evolution” with those of physics, and borders on vitalism, which undermines their goal of naturalizing evolution. The proposal was published in two papers in PNAS last month. This time, we look at the second paper that takes their proposal to the special case of the origin of life. Their attempt to incorporate thermodynamics into a highly negentropic process is sure to provoke interest…

Perceptive readers will want to know how they deal with several well-known issues: (1) probability, (2) entropy increase, and (3) harmful byproducts. The authors have already presented their view of the universe as a “neural network” in which natural selection operates at multiple levels, not just in biology. The only neural networks that any human has observed coming into existence were designed by a mind. How, then, can physical nature learn things?

Evolution News, “Origin of Life Is Not Reducible to Physics” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 24, 2022)

The paper, by Vanchurin, Wolf, Koonin, and Katsnelson, is open access.

The vitalistic tendencies in this proposal become evident where they claim that nonliving entities are able to predict, train, and compete. They are further evident when the environment can select them according to specific criteria. How do Koonin and his colleagues know this happens? Just look around: there are atoms, stars, and brains that survived the competition by natural selection. Their existence confirms the theory. This is like the anthropic principle supporter who says, “If the universe weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.”

Evolution News, “Origin of Life Is Not Reducible to Physics” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 24, 2022)

“[N]onliving entities are able to predict, train, and compete”? Well, this is — of course — a form of panpsychism, which would be fine if they would just admit it. Then we could have a reasonable discussion.

Naturalism, as such, appears to be dead, killed by its own inability to cope with the need for intelligence, however derived, in the creation of life and the universe.

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At Mind Matters News: Former astronaut names planet he thinks most likely to have life

Chris Hadfield picked Kepler-442b. Researchers now seek to narrow down the list of exoplanets for the James Webb Space Telescope to research from thousands to dozens,

Now, even if the James Webb Space Telescope found signatures of life, no one would be able to get there before about 3220 AD, unless we beat the speed of light or discover wormholes that work.

All that said, some are willing to put in a word for less likely planets, including tidally locked ones, where one side always faces the “sun” star and the other always faces the darkness (our Moon is like that in relation to Earth)

News, “” at Mind Matters News (February 26, 2022)

They are thinking that such planets may have habitable zones between the light side and the dark side.

Takehome: Chris Hadfield points to Kepler-442b as Earth-like but some researchers defend the possibility of life even on tidally locked planets, in “edge” zones.

You may also wish to read: How exoplanets have made the search for ET respectable. Recent years have seen a marked change from official skepticism to official curiosity, which includes more generous funding for the search. Even a top science journal, Nature, now sees false alarms simply as an opportunity to refine the search, currently focused on exoplanets.

and

Interstellar travel: The four top technologies for getting there. Astrophysicist Adam Frank looks at the technologies we meet in science fiction and identifies the challenges that hold them back. In a world where technology must confront fundamental physics, what are the chances and obstacles for cryosleep, light sails, wormholes, and warp drives?

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Richard Weikart: Scientists “should not be immune from critique”

It looks as though the thesis of Darwinian Racism is getting a broader audience:

Left-leaning scholars readily cite critical race theory and are quick to spot racism almost anywhere, yet few acknowledge the deep historical roots of scientific racism.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Darwinism fueled discrimination, eugenics movements, and even a “human zoo” filled with indigenous people who scientists claimed were the missing link between men and monkeys.

As Professor Richard Weikart details in his latest book, “Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism,” it also shaped Nazi ideology—providing a justification for their worst atrocities.

Katelynne Richardson, “Scientists ‘should not be immune from critique’: Professor details ‘Darwinian racism’ and its link to Nazism” at The College Fix (February 26, 2022)

As Richard Weikart points out, scientific racism was a far bigger deal, in practice, than religious racism because so many people in power wanted to be seen as “pro-science.”

Trouble is, we can’t fight what we won’t acknowledge.

You may also wish to read: Richard Weikart: Scientific racism is more virulent than religious racism. Those doing battle against the religious roots of racism do often uncover vestiges of racism and this can be helpful. However, sometimes they seem to be letting the most flagrant proponents of racism off the hook. Could it be that they are uncomfortable recognizing that most white nationalists today are thoroughly secular and are inspired by Darwinism and science, rather than religion?

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Is “Trust the Science!” beginning to take a beating?

A recent opinion poll could signal something we’d suggested watching out for earlier: Crackpot authoritarianism around COVID-19 damages the reputation of science:

Overall, 29% of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40% who said this in November 2020. Similarly, the share with a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests is down by 10 percentage points (from 39% to 29%), according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Brian Kennedy, Alec Tyson and Cary Funk, “Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines” at Pew Research (February 15, 2022)

The pollsters also note “Republicans’ confidence in medical scientists down sharply since early in the coronavirus outbreak.” But one may need to balance that against this: “Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.” Despite the dubious record many official sources have for getting it right. That’s not trust in science; it’s trust in authoritarianism.

Rational trust is more easily lost than earned.

You may also wish to read: The cultural changes that destroyed trust in media. The critical question isn’t whether traditional media are trusted but whether their model can even survive the tsunami of the internet. It’s difficult for any traditional medium to match the immediacy, personalization, and breadth of social media — consumers create their own news channels now.

and

Royal Society: Don’t censor misinformation; it makes things worse. While others demand crackdowns on “fake news,” the Society reminds us that the history of science is one of error correction. It’s a fact that much COVID news later thought to need correction was in fact purveyed by official sources, not blogs or Facebook or Twitter accounts.

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Is Stephen Jay Gould now considered a… creationist?

A friend chucked in this vid featuring “Professor Dave, science communicator,” no less:

“I’ve heard the name, but I can’t recall, exactly.”

Overheard in the Uncommon Descent News virtual coffee room: “It figures, eh? And I’m pretty sure that was Richard Dawkins I saw passing out free copies of Behe’s A Mousetrap for Darwin on the Toronto subway.”

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Asked at Evolution News: How much can evolution really accomplish?

Eric Anderson offers response to biochemist Larry Moran, who has argued that Michael Behe has misunderstood and misinterpreted the evidence re chloroquine resistance in A Mousetrap for Darwin:

In 2007, biochemist Michael Behe had the temerity to ask a question — a question that should have been asked with repeated and urgent sincerity by all biologists since the ink from Darwin’s quill first dried on his manuscript: What can evolution actually accomplish?

The question is at once reasonable and utterly crucial to the evolutionary story. Yet, for the most part it has been ignored in the history of evolutionary thought. The deeply held assumption of nearly all evolutionists is that evolution can do everything. After all, we’re here aren’t we! So there is little point in even asking the question. To be sure, occasional lip service has been paid to this inquiry over the decades, but such efforts typically descend into a question-begging exercise that simply assumes evolution must have this great creative power. Again, we’re here, and so even if we don’t understand the precise mechanisms of evolution, even if we’re still trying to fill in the details, even if there is some as-yet-undiscovered evolutionary mechanism, evolution simply must have this great creative power.

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould famously used this tactic, arguing that even if we don’t understand exactly how evolution works, we must still regard evolution as a fact, because, well, things have evolved. Phillip Johnson rightly called out Gould for this self-serving circular attempt to prop up evolution, with Johnson’s careful analysis revealing that Gould’s “fact” of evolution turned out to mean nothing more than the theory.

Eric Anderson, “How Much Can Evolution Really Accomplish?” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 25, 2022)

Actually, in religious circles, if anyone treated their sect’s creed the way Darwinians have treated evolution, they would be regarded as a cult.

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At Mind Matters News: Single neurons perform complex math — even in fruit flies

The fly wants something simple — to avoid getting swatted or eaten, for example — but that requires some algebra:

We may not think of our neurons as performing complex calculations but they must do so in order to determine where sound is coming from or where a moving object is headed. For a long while, how they do so has been a mystery. Recently, researchers at the Max Planck Institute reported that they have “ discovered the biophysical basis by which a specific type of neuron in fruit flies can multiply two incoming signals,” the “algebra of neurons”:

We easily recognize objects and the direction in which they move. The brain calculates this information based on local changes in light intensity detected by our retina. The calculations occur at the level of individual neurons. But what does it mean when neurons calculate? In a network of communicating nerve cells, each cell must calculate its outgoing signal based on a multitude of incoming signals. Certain types of signals will increase and others will reduce the outgoing signal—processes that neuroscientists refer to as “excitation” and “inhibition.”

Max Planck Society, “The algebra of neurons: Study deciphers how a single nerve cell can multiply” at Phys.org (February 23, 2022) The paper is open access.

The fly is just trying to avoid getting swatted or eaten. But that is both more complex and more mathematical than we might have supposed:

News, “Single neurons perform complex math — even in fruit flies” at Mind Matters News (February 25, 2022)

Takehome: The fly’s specialized neurons either multiply or divide incoming signals in order to pinpoint the location of a sound or the direction of movement. How likely is this to happen without any intelligence behind nature at all?

You may also wish to read:

Human neurons are different from animal ones, researchers say.
A Canadian research team got a rare chance to compare live brain tissue from donors undergoing surgery with that of rodents. The human neurons’ interactions turned out to be of more different types, show more different features, and have more complex interactions than the rodent ones.

and

Researchers can’t explain: Memories drift from neuron to neuron. Memories are supposed to stay put in the neurons that lay them down. A recent study, published at Nature, shows that they move a lot… The mobile memories are only one of many recent remarkable neuroscience finds that have been challenging textbook wisdom.

Also: How do insects use their very small brains to think clearly? How do they engage in complex behavior with only 100,000 to a million neurons? Researchers are finding that insects have a number of strategies for making the most of comparatively few neurons to enable complex behavior. (Denyse O’Leary)

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