Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 108

February 10, 2022

Chernobyl didn’t produce new species but it did produce a lot of debate about radiation effects

About the effects of radiation, Chernobyl was serious:

When a safety system test at one of the Chernobyl power plant’s reactors went badly wrong in April 1986, explosions unleashed a fiery plume of debris and radioactive atoms, or radionuclides, into the air that, over several days, may have emitted several hundred times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. More than two dozen first responders died within months after rapidly absorbing doses of up to 13,400 millisieverts (a sievert is a unit of radiation absorption; normal background radiation levels are usually around 1.5 to 3.5 millisieverts a year.) Over subsequent decades, thousands of children and adolescents who likely absorbed somewhat lower doses developed thyroid cancer, a cancer type that, fortunately, most tend to survive.

Katarina Zimmer, “Scientists can’t agree about Chernobyl’s impact on wildlife” at Knowable Magazine (February 7, 2022)

The people left, the wild animals stayed, absorbing low-level radiation. While early reports suggested things were fine, a later one (open access here) documented such effects as a decline in numbers of various species, smaller brains and less viable sperm at higher radiation levels. That report came to be disputed, as Zimmer writes:

But some other research teams have not found significant radiation effects on the genetic diversity or abundance of certain animals around Chernobyl. In one widely publicized 2015 survey of a Belarus area near the power plant, a team of scientists determined that the numbers of elk, roe deer and wild boar were similar to those in radiation-free nature reserves in the region. No matter what the consequences of lingering radiation might be, there were massive benefits to people leaving.

Katarina Zimmer, “Scientists can’t agree about Chernobyl’s impact on wildlife” at Knowable Magazine (February 7, 2022)

The fact that there were no longer any humans in the area is bound to be a confounding factor. At any rate, however radiation might affect the wildlife, population sizes did not decrease. Good will in the research community, however, did:

The stubborn discrepancies have caused some members of each camp to become distrustful of the other’s conclusions, and on some occasions the debate has turned personal. In 2015, the International Union for Radioecology, a nonprofit group of radiation scientists, invited researchers from both sides to a meeting in Miami, striving to reach a consensus. But the conversation became so heated, “they started hurling insults at each other,” recalls McMaster University radiobiologist Carmel Mothersill, the IUR’s treasurer. The only conclusion they could reach was that “everything is so uncertain in the low-dose region that you can’t attribute anything definitively to the radiation dose.”

Katarina Zimmer, “Scientists can’t agree about Chernobyl’s impact on wildlife” at Knowable Magazine (February 7, 2022)

In science fiction, maybe radiation would result in new mutant species but it didn’t happen when radiation was inadvertently tried on a large scale on the ground.

You may also wish to read:

Darwinism must have bypassed Chernobyl. In 2011, it was noted that Chernobyl, forbidden to humans due to radiation after the nuclear accident, had not shown signs of new species evolving by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism), as hoped. But it was simply teeming with usual wildlife. (June 24, 2019)

and

After Chernobyl, Eden? (March 10, 2011) From the source: “Twenty-five years after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place inside the exclusion zone. With Geiger counter in hand, the author explores Europe’s strangest wildlife refuge, an enchanted postapocalyptic forest from which entirely new species may soon emerge.” What was mainly new was that the animals showed no fear of humans.

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Published on February 10, 2022 02:38

The Khan Academy markets 1980s Darwinism

From back when all official “evolution” claims were expected to be reverently accepted by everyone:

I’ve been reviewing the Khan Academy video on “Evidence for Evolution,” which misleads students and teachers with some seriously outdated science about biological origins. See my two earlier posts, here and here, detailing the video’s treatment of what biologist Jonathan Wells calls “icons of evolution,” long ago discredited lines of evidence that never seem to go away. After using circular arguments for common ancestry based upon homology, the Khan Academy video goes on to push another evolutionary icon: fossil horses.

Khan draws straight arrows from one species of fossil horses to the next and says “there is a constant change and we can see it directly through the fossil record.” The video even shows a continuous cross-section of rock strata and draws lines on it as if we find this “gradual” sequence of horses in the same unit — in the same location over long periods of time, thus showing evolution in operation at a “very, very gradual pace.”

Casey Luskin, “Khan Academy “Evidence for Evolution” Video Pushes the Fake Fossil Horses Series” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 9, 2022)

It sounds so neat, it could have come from the Office of Correct Thought. The only problem is, history is messy:

But in the famed series, the horse fossils don’t evolve in a straight line, nor are they found in the same place, nor do they show a continuous direction of change.

Casey Luskin, “Khan Academy “Evidence for Evolution” Video Pushes the Fake Fossil Horses Series” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 9, 2022)

This vid gives some sense of it:

The evolution of the horse is often portrayed as a simple progression from small, 4 and 5-toed browsers to the large, one-toed grazers of the modern-day – but the truth is so much more complex than this.

It’s fair to say that the human imagination, seeking order, imposes neatness on a picture that, by itself, demonstrates nothing of the kind. How do the folk at the Khan Academy know that the kids wouldn’t have more fun with and learn more from a more factually correct interpretation of the story?

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Published on February 10, 2022 01:37

February 9, 2022

At Mind Matters News: The Philosopher’s Zombie Still Walks and Physics Can’t Explain It

Various thinkers try to show that the zombie does not exist because consciousness is either just brain wiring or an illusion, maybe both:

Canadian science journalist Dan Falk tells us, the philosopher’s zombie thought experiment, “flawed as it is,” demonstrates that physics alone can’t explain consciousness. Not that many physicists haven’t tried. But first, what is the philosopher’s zombie (sometimes called the p-zombie)?:

The experiment features an imagined creature exactly like you or me, but with a crucial ingredient – consciousness – missing. Though versions of the argument go back many decades, its current version was stated most explicitly by Chalmers. In his book The Conscious Mind (1996), he invites the reader to consider his zombie twin, a creature who is ‘molecule for molecule identical to me’ but who ‘lacks conscious experience entirely’.”

He does everything he is supposed to do but experiences nothing inside.

In step two, Chalmers argues that if you can conceive of the zombie, then zombies are possible. And finally, step three: if zombies are possible, then physics, by itself, isn’t up to the job of explaining minds. This last step is worth examining more closely. Physicalists argue that bits of matter, moving about in accordance with the laws of physics, explain everything, including the workings of the brain and, with it, the mind. Proponents of the zombie argument counter that this isn’t enough: they argue that we can have all of those bits of matter in motion, and yet not have consciousness.

DAN FALK, “THE PHILOSOPHER’S ZOMBIE” AT AEON (FEBRUARY 4, 2022)

Falk assembles a number of experts who dispute the idea that the zombie shows that consciousness is not strictly physical…

● Cosmologist Sean Carroll offers an example involving time travel and the question of whether the zombie is conceivable:

If you went back 10,000 years and explained to someone what a prime number is, and asked: ‘Is it conceivable to you that there’s a largest prime number?’ Well, they might say “yes”; as far as they can conceive, there could be a largest prime number. And then you can explain to them, no, there’s a very simple mathematical proof that there can’t be a largest prime number. And they go: “Oh, I was wrong – it’s not conceivable.”

DAN FALK, “THE PHILOSOPHER’S ZOMBIE” AT AEON (FEBRUARY 4, 2022)

But wait. The largest prime number is conceivable. It just can’t exist in an infinite series. Mathematician Gregory Chaitin, best known for Chaitin’s unknowable number, also talks about the smallest uninteresting number — which turns out not to exist, for reasons of logic. Note that both the unknowable number (which exists but can’t be known) and the smallest uninteresting number (which doesn’t exist) are quite conceivable. Dr. Carroll is not giving the human imagination nearly enough credit.

News, “The philosopher’s zombie still walks and physics can’t explain it” at Mind Matters News (February 8, 2022)

The others, at the link, are no better.

Takehome: The “zombie” argument does what it is supposed to do: Shows that consciousness, the motivating force in our lives, is not really a material thing.

You may also wish to read:

Neuroscientist Michael Graziano should meet the philosopher’s zombie. To understand consciousness, we need to establish what it is not before we create any more new theories. A p-zombie (a philosopher’s thought experiment) behaves exactly like a human being but has no first-person (subjective) experience. The meat robot violates no physical principles. Yet we KNOW we are not p-zombies. Think what that means. (Michael Egnor)

and

Neurosurgeon explains why you are not a zombie. Michael Egnor explains to podcaster Lucas Skrobot that our minds must necessarily transcend our materials, so we can’t be zombies. (Michael Egnor)

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Published on February 09, 2022 18:30

Politics has invaded the world of human fossil analysis

And hit the journals and studies:

The study of ancient DNA has also been politicised. Ancient DNA holds clues to ancient peoples that can shed light on their migration patterns and on human evolutionary history. For example, an analysis of Neanderthal DNA in the 1990s helped determine when modern humans and Neanderthals last shared a common ancestor. And the DNA analysis of Native American remains that are over 7,000 years old (so-called Paleoindians) has helped us understand how the Americas were originally peopled. Perhaps the most well-known example of the politicization of ancient DNA studies is the long legal battle for control of the remains of Kennewick Man, which were found in Washington State in 1996. Based on skull shape—the best evidence available at the time—scientists initially inferred that his most probable ancestry was European. Local Native American groups sued to have his remains reburied without further analysis under a 1990 US federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The courts initially permitted further scientific analysis. In 2015, scientists reported that, using more recently developed tools, they had been able to extract DNA from Kennewick Man’s hand bones—and that his DNA suggested he was closely related to various Native American groups and might also have some European, Central or Southern Asian or Siberian ancestry. Although scientists would normally run such tests a second time to double-check their results, at that point a US court directed that his remains must be reburied without further analysis.

Elizabeth Weiss, “The Politics of Bones” at Areo Magazine (February 8, 2022)

Much more at the link.

One thing about Wokeness is that people don’t have to do any work. They can just air a grievance and take no responsibility for the consequences.

But that’s probably part of a larger meltdown in which Wokeness will probably end a number of science disciplines.

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Published on February 09, 2022 18:08

L&FP, 51a: Extending the dilemma into the “multi-lemma” — getting out of thorny personal, organisational and policy thickets (aka, problematiques)

In one of the classics, in the Minor Prophets, we read a strange-seeming tale:

Amos 5:18 Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why would you have the day of the LORD?
It is darkness, and not light,
19 as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it? [ESV]

Switching metaphors, we can imagine being caught in a thorny thicket, or facing the horns of a many-pronged “multi-lemma” or even feeling that we have gone over a cliff, and are trying to cope with battered body and broken bones as well as loss of equipment. Seemingly, every way we turn, there is yet another horn or yet another thorny bush. We would then feel trapped, wondering, is there any good or al least least costly, least damaging, least painful way out of this?

Obviously, the first thing would have been to avoid or even avert such a situation:

After all, there is a price to be paid for allowing ourselves to be caught up in the [inaccurate!] metaphorical march of lemmings:

Of Lemmings, marches of folly and cliffs of self-falsifying absurdity . . .

But, that may be too late (or, we may have been taken by surprise), the issue is to address the now problematique, thicket of mutually reinforcing dangers or difficulties. How do we break out of such a trap?

Decision theory, informed by game theory (and, sometimes, with Nature as the opposed player):

Here, we see a managerial decision tree, with decisional options and estimated outcomes, with estimated odds. The insertion of probabilities is where one injects the idea of a game played against nature, one makes a move (here, across three mutually exclusive options) and then faces Nature’s counter-move with expected values. From this sort of framework, one may estimate expected monetary values of outcomes and one may identify “black swan” type low probability, high adverse impact potential outcomes.

Black Swan Events, summarised by Wikipedia:

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist – a saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after the first European encounter with them.[1]

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb starting in 2001 to explain:

1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.

2. The non-computability of the probability of consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).

3. The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.

Taleb’s “black swan theory” refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[2]: xxi More technically, in the scientific monograph “Silent Risk”,[3] Taleb mathematically defines the black swan problem as “stemming from the use of degenerate metaprobability”.[3]

Of course, that assumes that one has enough information and insight to frame up a credible model. That brings in our bounded rationality and the possible need to buy time and if possible do experiments or simulations or elicitations that reduce or at least identify risks. Nor should we become overly tied to numbers, oftentimes cruder rankings or even an idea of the direction of a change or outcome might be good enough.

However, notice, that it is assumed that we are in a position to decide and act. Especially for organisations or communities, we may not be in a decision making or influencing position. Or, we may only be able to sense an approaching juggernaut and get out of its way. Or, we may have to join a counter-cultural movement of reformation or even refuge or outright flight.

And, sometimes, it is too late, we can go over a cliff irrecoverably. Europe, July 1914 comes to mind.

But what about arguments or thinking?

What we are looking at is the extension of the dilemma joined to, a stitch in time saves nine. The considerations in the last L&FP post are still relevant in cases where the horns multiply, of course, the complexity multiplies with that:

Is a dilemma real or fallacious? Is there a viable retreat if it is real? Is there an overlooked or suppressed option? Is one of the horns acceptable as a least of evils given our circumstances? And more.

So, let us ponder. END

Rylands Papyrus fragment P52, from a
codex c 125 AD, text from Jn 18,
setting John in C1 so too NT

PS: In arguments on Jesus, there is the rather famous Lewis-McDowell Trilemma, in effect, Lord, liar or lunatic. Often objectors pretend it is false, as the existence of Jesus or the credibility of the text are questionable, etc. But in fact, both Lewis and McDowell addressed the evidence of reality of the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth; which is utterly decisive (save to those who indulge crude selective hyperskepticism, even with a veneer of sophisticated scholarship). Second, the support for especially Luke-Acts undergirds authenticity of the Gospels and Epistles as C1 historical documents, and there is no good reason to doubt that he saw himself as Messiah and came to have disciples willing to bear peaceful witness to him (and to his resurrection) in the face of dungeon, fire, sword or worse. Their testimony changed the course of history.

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Published on February 09, 2022 03:42

Truckers to government: We are not your lab rats any more

● The Canadian truckers and their supporters held a press conference February 7, 2022, for the media who despise them:

● The Ottawa police chief took credit in part for the GoFundMe cancellation. The cancellation actually made very little difference because money isn’t the big need. Supplies from supporters in the community appear from nowhere. The struggle is getting the Trust the Science elite to quit listening to international freakouts and listen to reality on the ground instead.

That said, the GiveSendGo organization that now accepts donations for the truckers reports, “We’ve seen nearly 10 million bots trying to overwhelm our servers in just the past two hours. Though this has caused issues for the platform, we will not let it stand in the way of providing a safe and effective means of fundraising for our campaign owner[s] across the globe.”

● Ottawa towing companies are refusing to tow the truckers: “All tow-truck operators on contract with the City of Ottawa have refused to remove the heavy vehicles associated with the ‘Freedom Convoy’ from the downtown core, the city manager says.” Maybe the contempt and indifference of an elite progressive government isn’t as inspiring to the masses of lab rats as the elite have thought.

● The airlines are beginning to tire of the imposed recession. “Interim CEO Harry Taylor said travel advisories and testing requirements were meant to be temporary, but that after two years the industry crisis has come to a head. ‘It is disappointing that Canada remains stagnant in its approach and continues to make travel inaccessible and punitive for Canadians and inbound tourists,’ he said Monday.”

● Ottawa businesses that obediently closed during the demonstrations lost a lot of money: “Apparently, the people running these restaurants believed the narrative that the demonstrators were prone to vandalism and violence.” Actually, the restaurants would have been in competition with all the free food offered but, even so, lots of people would have just gone out to dinner and let the homeless have the free food. “Oh, and the handful of restaurants that are not shuttered? Business has never been better. Lineups of customers literally stretch out the doors. And guess what? There has been no reports of barbarism erupting.”

● One of Justin Trudeau’s own MPs has broken rank and is calling for an end to the COVID crazy: “Liberal MP Joël Lightbound gave a solo press conference this morning to call on his own government to lift COVID-19 restrictions and to change its ‘divisive’ tone on the issue.” The opposition party, formerly echoing the government, has followed up: “When it comes to lockdowns and mandates, we’re seeing things change very quickly and rightly so,” Bergen added, noting recent comments from Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam that vaccine mandates should be “reevaluated.”

● Elite-driven slanders, hyped in Canadian media, continue: “Freedom Convoy truckers say Trudeau and North America’s liberal media are falsely demonizing them as ultra-right-wing crazies. And after spending a week in their midst, the Mail’s reporter can only conclude these peaceful, good-natured protestors are 100% correct about that – if nothing else” Also: “Trudeau accused of fueling anger after claiming anti-vax protesters are ‘waving swastikas’

Justin, baby, relax. What you saw might have been the flag of the province of Saskatchewan or something. It’s hard to see clearly when you are peeking out from hiding, shouting insults, and not meeting anybody. Now go get your beauty sleep.

● The message is getting through: Saskatchewan (province) will end mandates February 13. Alberta (province) is caving too. Quebec (province) plans to lift most restrictions by March 14.

● An Alberta MLA, visiting one of the standoffs at Coutts, Alberta, says, the Convoys have inspired the world to fight for freedom. ‘Freedom Convoy’ Protests Are Spreading Throughout World as Truckers Lead the Fight Against Mandates.

Meanwhile, in the United States, four governors are dumping mask mandates: “For those with short-term memory loss, to advocate for individual responsibility was — until five minutes ago — to wish for the death of grandmothers everywhere. Now it’s science, apparently.”

● Longtime indie publisher Ezra Levant explains the hatred and contempt Canadian media feel for the truckers and their followers in an epic thread (February 8, 2022):

1. The first thing to know about the media is that they’re lazy. They’d rather re-write a government press release than get up from their desk and report from the field — especially when it’s -20° out.

So they repeat Trudeau’s lie that the truckers are racist and sexist.

…2— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) February 8, 2022

2. The second thing to know is that in Canada, more than 99% of journalists receive a payment from Justin Trudeau. Here’s the list of the journalists who took Trudeau’s $61 million pre-election pay-off: https://t.co/loGh7YgWqV

It’s more than 99% of working journalists.— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) February 8, 2022

3. There is an illusion of media competition in Canada, but it’s an oligopoly. Postmedia — the largest recipient of Trudeau’s media bail-out — owns every English-language daily newspaper in Canada, except two. And even they just run the same wire copy as their competitors.— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) February 8, 2022

4. And Trudeau’s CBC state broadcaster is larger than all other news media combined. Every non-CBC journalist tailors their work so that, if they’re laid off, they can get hired at the CBC, since it’s “too big to fail”. It’s the last resort.— Ezra Levant (@ezralevant) February 8, 2022

There was never any chance you were going to find out what was happening from the legacy Canadian media. They’re more likely embedded with the police than the truckers. For news value, you need the few independents who don’t take the government’s cash.

● How did elite progressives and their media court flatterers come to despise working Canadians so much that they actually tripped a Big Switch in Canada? Commentator Roger Simon talks about the Frankfurt School and offers, “The yawning gap between them and the people they lord over has become too great. People are sickened, as they should be, by the arrogance.”

● The last word in elite cluelessness belongs to Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson: “It’s disturbing when you see the protest turning into what looks like some kind of a fun carnival, where they’ve got bouncy castles and hot tubs and saunas, a complete insult to the people who are putting up with this nonsense for the last seven days, and it shows a great deal of insensitivity,” …

Mr. Watson, kids – who are not at significant risk via COVID – have been in elite progressive COVID-19 jail for years. Soon, other parents are also going to get red-pilled and start liberating their kids from Trust the Science! jail. And trust them to think they have the right to ask some hard questions.

Summary: The reason people are laughing, smiling, and dancing here is this: It started with the truckers and the mandates. But the message is now much bigger: Canada belongs to the people of Canada, not to the internationalist elite who despise us. And don’t get us started on “Trust the Science!” After all, we’re Canadians. We would not want to be rude.

You may also wish to read:

Let us listen to Dr. Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

and, for what’s happening in suddenly famous Canada:

The police swoop in Ottawa: The Constitution? Old news now. “Trust the science!” is starting to show its totalitarian face in Canada — but, as they slowly learn the facts, citizens are standing their ground, From the comments: “Canadians: ‘Be polite when you are being arrested.’ u guys rock!” (Sure, commenter. Canada belongs to the people of Canada. And this is how free people fight back. Serfs, by contrast, destroy things and attack people because they have no stake in a free and prosperous society.)

and

What I saw at the Freedom Convoy in downtown Victoria It was all friendly; people were having a good time. There was no violence; I heard no racial epithets and saw no racial insignia. So if media tell you that it is really about white nationalism, etc., remember that the legacy Canadian media are in fact supported to stay in business by the federal government. Because few depend on them for news any more.

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Published on February 09, 2022 02:16

February 8, 2022

At Mind Matters News: The mystery of how newborns know things gets deeper

But learning more about it may help us understand autism spectrum disorders better:

That said, babies are born knowing some things. And this is where Vallortigara’s research gets really interesting:

The same kind of preference [as with chicks] was subsequently discovered in human neonates, as the cognitive neuroscientist Mark Johnson and colleagues showed, based on the newborns’ eye gaze. Recently, my team used EEG to measure electrical activity in the brains of newborns as they saw face-like, inverted face-like, or scrambled face-like configurations, and we found impressive selectivity of response to the first pattern. That is, we observed a significantly stronger change in our measure of cortical activity in response to the upright face-like stimuli, as compared with the other stimuli. We also revealed the involvement of cortical areas that overlap with the adult face-processing circuit. Our findings suggest that the cortical route specialised for face processing is already functional at birth.

Giorgio Vallortigara, “Babies and chicks help solve one of psychology’s oldest puzzles” at Psyche (February 2, 2022)

Babies (and chicks) also preferred biological motion to mechanical motion. How did they know?

Maybe the babies are quick learners. No because, as Vallortigara notes, the preference actually waned as the babies grew older. But then it spiked again at a couple of months of age:

It’s interesting to note that these life-detecting abilities appear to wax and wane as babies age. For instance, the preference for biological motion seems to vanish at one and two months of age in human infants, and then to reappear by three months. A likely explanation is that, at birth, animals possess innate mechanisms that act in a reflex-like manner, serving to direct their attention to relevant stimuli in the environment, such as caregivers. Then a second mechanism, based on learning, might take precedence, allowing more specific recognition – ie, the face of Mom as opposed to a stranger, or the movement of one’s own species as opposed to generic biological motion, and so on.

Giorgio Vallortigara, “Babies and chicks help solve one of psychology’s oldest puzzles” at Psyche (February 2, 2022)

So there are two stages in babies’ recognition of other humans; one is innate and covers the first months of life, gradually waning in favor of the second, which is learned. That may have implications for the detection and early treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

News, “The mystery of how newborns know things gets deeper” at Mind Matters News (The mystery of how newborns know things gets deeper)

Takehome: An innate program guides newborns to seek human faces and body movements but it wanes in favor of personal learning. But that may take longer for autists.

You may also wish to read: Source of most animal intelligence still a mystery. Eric Cassell takes questions: If life forms are born or hatched knowing this stuff, it isn’t learned. But if it’s in the genes, where is it? Questions range from “Do animals have free will?” through “How do migratory animals adapt to magnetic poll reversals” which may come every 1000 years or so?

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Published on February 08, 2022 19:11

Templeton tries to wish away fine-tuning of the universe

Profiling the work of science writer and editor Miriam Frankel:

Many physicists are skeptical that our universe is fine tuned for life, with some arguing that any apparent fine tuning is an illusion. Some scientists have argued that in the absence of a probability distribution for the possible values of parameters that could occur, it’s impossible to argue with conviction that our measured values are actually odd or “lucky.” Another major issue is that a lot of the evidence supporting the idea that our universe is fine tuned for life is largely based on investigating how changes to the parameters of the universe would, in theory, affect the evolution of a bio-friendly cosmos like ours. But we cannot rule out the possibility that some kind of life could arise even in a universe with completely different properties. In chapter five, Frankel explains that in some cases, if one allows many parameters to vary simultaneously, it could alleviate the apparent fine-tuning problems. This suggests that the universe may not be so finely tuned after all — it may be able to produce life under a wider range of circumstances than first thought.

Frankel concludes the review by returning to the overarching question — is the universe ultimately fine-tuned for life? To learn more about her conclusion, read the full review.

John Templeton Foundation, “Fine-Tuning” at Foundational Questions Institute (January 2022)

It’s a free short book (52 pp):

Her conclusion?:

If we decide to consider fine tuning to be a real conundrum, then, as discussed in Chapter 3, the most popular explanations are either to accept it as a lucky coincidence or to subscribe to an infinite multiverse. The multiverse allows us to make sense of how the universe may have come to hold the values of the physical constants and laws that it has—among many other possibilities that are realized in neighboring cosmoses. But importantly, it cannot tell us why it has those values, in the way that a new fundamental theory of physics might be able to explain. And there is no fundamental reason for why the multiverse is the way it is, governed by string theory, enabling so many different universes within. In a sense, the multiverse explanation just shifts the problem of fine tuning up a level, from the universe to the multiverse. As seen in Chapter 4, there are many ongoing and upcoming experiments that could provide some evidence in support of the multiverse, or perhaps lead us to a new fundamental theory of nature in which the values of physical constants are explained more deeply, rather than having occurred as a whim. Or, forthcoming measurements of the fundamental constants, such as the cosmological constant and the fine-structure constant, could show that these apparent constants actually vary over time and space, rather than being fixed. If this turns out the be the case, and that variation was large, it would be a major blow to fine-tuning arguments.

For now, we could perhaps regard the multiverse and even fine tuning as “meta cosmology,” as Bernard Carr does (Carr, 2020). Until experiments address the issues laid out in this review, perhaps the most important question is not whether fine tuning is real or an illusion, but whether it is useful as a scientific concept. Scrutinizing the conditions needed for life to emerge in the universe will ultimately help us understand the foundations of physics and biology—and potentially explore the possibility of life existing beyond our planet. To that end, investigating fine tuning seems to be vital to unveiling the essence of who we are, and our place in the cosmos. (pp. 47–48)

So there you have it, folks. Fine-tuning is either a fluke or a multiverse. No other possibility is conceivable. Maybe science is about eliminating the concept of intelligence from the universe.

Alternative view from Steve Meyer:

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Published on February 08, 2022 18:46

Excerpt from Richard Weikart’s new book, Darwinian Racism

Beginning with the Columbine Massacre:

It was the spring of 1999, a Denver suburb. The day, April 20 — Adolf Hitler’s birthday. An 18-year-old white nationalist, Eric Harris, donned a shirt emblazoned with “Natural Selection” before heading off to high school. For weeks he had been preparing a special event in honor of the Führer. Together with a co-conspirator, Dylan Klebold, he planted a bomb in the Columbine High School cafeteria. Harris planned to shoot his fellow students as they fled the explosion. When the bomb failed to detonate, he and Klebold entered the school and opened fire, killing 13 and wounding 24 before turning their guns on themselves.

Why was Harris — as are many white nationalists today — so eager to honor both Hitler and Darwin? Why did he think Darwin’s theory of natural selection provided fodder for his white nationalist ideology?

If we delve deeply into the ideology of Nazis, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists, we find that Darwinism — the view that species have evolved over eons of time through the process of natural selection — plays a fundamental role, shaping their views about race and society.

Richard Weikart, “Darwinian Racism: How Evolutionary Theory Shaped Nazi Thinking” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 2, 2022)

You may also wish to read: Historian Richard Weikart helps talk show maven (born Caryn Elaine Johnson, 1955) understand why the Holocaust WAS about race. Weikart is not trying to Cancel Goldberg; rather, he thinks there are some things she (and perhaps most people) don’t clearly understand about the Holocaust. First, to the Nazis — whatever anyone else may think — it was about race. Weikart goes onto explain in considerable detail that the on-the-ground interpretation of Darwinism underlay this development.

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Published on February 08, 2022 02:14

Junking more claims around junk DNA

Apparently, repeated sequences have a function:

As a case in point, consider an article released by New Scientist in July of last year. The writer, Michael Marshall, explains that the “new, more complete version of the human genome” that was released in May of 2021 “has uncovered enormous amounts of genetic variation between people that we couldn’t detect before…. Other studies have suggested that the new genome will finally reveal the functions of seemingly useless, repetitive sequences of ‘Junk DNA.’” Marshall explains that previous technology that was used to sequence the human genome made scientists “blind” to the fact that such sequences are, in fact, useful. After studying sections of the sequence that have DNA that repeat “over and over without interruption,” geneticist of the University of Connecticut Rachel O’Neill said, “Most surprising is the number of repeats and the types of complex repeats…. They’re not just random repeated sequences, they have structure, and that structure can impact the organization of our genome.” Marshall explains, “Many geneticists have long argued that much of this repetitive DNA has no function and is ‘junk.’ However, some parts do seem to play roles—for instance, in regulating the activity of genes.”

Jeff Miller, “More Evidence that the “Junk” DNA Argument is Junk” at Apologetics Press (February 7, 2022)

The New Scientist article is Michael Marshall (2021), “Full Human Genome Put to Work,” New Scientist, 251[3345]:12. A subscription is required.

You may also wish to read: At Scientific American: Salamander “junk DNA” challenges long-held view of evolution. Douglas Fox at SciAm: The salamanders would be on death’s door if they were human. “Everything about having a large genome is costly,” Wake told me in 2020. Yet salamanders have survived for 200 million years. “So there must be some benefit,” he said. The hunt for those benefits has led to some heretical surprises, potentially turning our understanding of evolution on its head.

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Published on February 08, 2022 01:55

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