Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 11

February 16, 2023

Has our model of the universe been falsified?

That’s what we hear at IAI News:

New data from the Dark Energy Survey and South Pole Telescope suggest that the universe is less ‘clumpy’ than the standard cosmological model predicts. This has triggered speculation about new forces and insights into the nature of dark matter and dark energy. But this entire project is deeply misguided. We already have robust observations contradicting the standard cosmological model, showing that the universe is in fact more, not less, ‘clumpy’ than we thought. It’s about time the cosmology community faced these results, argue Pavel Kroupa and Moritz Haslbauer.

A recent publication in the journal Physical Review D with about 156 co-authors suggests the distribution of matter to be smoother than expected, based on the predictions of the standard model of cosmology [1]. This new data release by the Dark Energy Survey, was based on the findings of a telescope in Chile that measured the tiny distortions of the images of relatively nearby galaxy images, caused by their light being diverted due to the gravitational pull of foreground matter. The team also employed observations from the South Pole Telescope to measure distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), again due to the uneven distribution of foreground matter. The CMB suggests that matter was nearly evenly distributed in the universe, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. As time progressed and the universe aged and expanded, matter began to clump together under the influence of gravity. But the clumping observed by the South Pole Telescope also did not accord with the predictions of the standard cosmological model.

– Pavel Kroupa | Pavel Kroupa is professor of astrophysics at University of Bonn, in Germany, where he heads the Stellar Populations and Dynamics research group, and professor at the Atronomical Institute of Charles University in Prague and Moritz Haslbauer | PhD candidate in Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Bonn, Germany. February 14, 2023

Well, anything that can’t be falsified by science methods can’t be verified that way either. Take your pick.

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Published on February 16, 2023 18:49

Claim: Flores man is still alive and living in Indonesia

Readers will surely remember Flores man, an ancient diminutive people first discovered in Indonesia in 2003. Some, including Gregory Forth, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, Canada, believe they may still exist as a separate group:

Here’s the claim:

“Although often described as taller or larger-bodied, humanlike creatures like these ape-men have been reported for other parts of Flores Island, Indonesia, and other parts of the world,” Forth writes early in the book. “But adding to the intrigue of the lai ho’a is the fact that—unlike similar beings reported from other parts of Flores, which local people consider extinct—these ape-men are claimed to have survived to the present.”

Forth conveys that in addition to the belief among the Lio that at least a few lai ho’a have persisted into modern times, several accounts he deemed to be credible which involved sightings of living specimens from as far back as the 1960s up until as recently as 2019 provide compelling fodder for paleoanthropologists willing to entertain ideas that a small population of “living fossil” archaic humans might still thrive on Flores. – Micah Hanks, DeBrief, February 15, 2023

Hope springs eternal. The hope for an ape-man is likely to be disappointed.

Forth’s book is Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid (Pegasus, 2022)

Idea advanced at BBC:

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Published on February 16, 2023 18:29

At Science Daily: Bacteria and humans have similar defenses against viruses

Marketed as we’re not all that different from bacteria:

“This study demonstrates that we’re not all that different from bacteria,” said senior author Aaron Whiteley, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry. “We can learn a lot about how the human body works by studying these bacterial processes.”

What was the find?

For the study, Whiteley and co-first author Hannah Ledvina, a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the department, collaborated with University of California San Diego biochemists to learn more about a protein called cGAS (cyclic GMP-AMP synthase), previously shown to be present in both humans and, in a simpler form, bacteria.

In bacteria and in humans, cGAS is critical for mounting a downstream defense when the cell senses a viral invader. But what regulates this process in bacteria was previously unknown.

Using an ultra-high-resolution technique called cryo-electron microscopy alongside other genetic and biochemical experiments, Whiteley’s team took an up-close look at the structure of cGAS’s evolutionary predecessor in bacteria and discovered additional proteins that bacteria use to help cGAS defend the cell from viral attack.

Specifically, they discovered that bacteria modify their cGAS using a streamlined “all-in-one version” of ubiquitin transferase, a complex collection of enzymes that in humans control immune signaling and other critical cellular processes.

Because bacteria are easier to genetically manipulate and study than human cells, this discovery opens a new world of opportunity for research, said Ledvina.

Any life form needs a strategy for dealing with viruses. Humans, bacteria, and perhaps countless other life forms may have hit on the same one.

You may also wish to read: Evolution appears to converge on goals—but in Darwinian terms, is that possible?

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Published on February 16, 2023 18:01

February 15, 2023

Paul Davies at Closer to Truth: Do ultimate questions evolve?

Readers may recall that yesterday we posted a link that provoked considerable discussion: Theoretical physicist Paul Davies on the gap between life and non-life. Giving away the store, Barry Arrington said.

Well, here are Paul Davies and Robert Lawrence Kuhn again at Closer to Truth, this time on “Ultimate Questions: Do They Evolve?”

Ask the most fundamental questions; make the most penetrating inquires; probe the deep essence of existence. Push boundaries. Search the foundations of reality. Imagine all that may exist in physics and cosmology, even beyond current understanding. Then ask how such ultimate questions may change over time.

Note: If the questions are really ultimate questions, they can’t evolve. That’s what “ultimate” means: It’s the last one.

But perhaps Davies and various readers have a different view.

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Published on February 15, 2023 15:30

A mind-controlled wheelchair is a case for the reality of the human mind. Discuss.

From The Scientist:

Three people with limited to no mobility in their limbs were able to navigate a specially designed wheelchair just by thinking about where they wanted to go, a study published today (November 18) in iScience reports. Unlike some previous designs which used embedded electrodes or asked users to focus on points of light on a screen, which can cause eye strain, the wheelchair uses a noninvasive brain-machine interface involving an electrode-studded cap to interpret brain activity. After training, the users were able to steer their way through a cluttered obstacle course.

“Our research highlights a potential pathway for improved clinical translation of non-invasive brain-machine interface technology,” study coauthor and University of Texas at Austin computer engineering and neurology researcher José del R. Millán says in a press release from the journal. – Christie Wilcox, November 28, 2022

Wonder how the materialists will talk their way out of this one.

The paper is open access.

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Published on February 15, 2023 14:55

Bad data from the academy? Darwinism makes it worse

At the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, Loretta G. Breuning talks about social science nonsense presented as science:

Researchers, especially in the social sciences, insist that they only care about the greater good and not about selfish rewards. But they are highly rewarded if they create “evidence” that advances the Rousseauian agenda. Any graduate student can see which findings get respect and which do not. The grad student who conforms ends up with the credentials necessary to be included in “The Science.” If students don’t conform, they’re ignored, and if they keep it up, they’re discredited, personally or professionally.

A researcher can get conforming results more easily than you might expect. They just re-run a study over and over with slight changes until they get “data” that fit the paradigm. Results that advance the agenda get media attention, and the rest are forgotten. Studies are rarely replicated, so research cited as “The Science” for years may rest on the flimsiest of foundations. For example, we often hear that our hunter-gatherer ancestors worked four hours a day and spent the rest of the time making art and making love. It feels true because it fits the belief that life was easy before “our society” ruined things. So we don’t inspect the mountain of assumptions and extrapolations that studies like this one rest on. – February 15, 2023

But she finishes with,

After my early retirement, I had the chance to study social science with an open mind. I learned that our brains evolved to keep our genes alive, not to make us happy. The brain releases happy chemicals when we do things that help our genes survive. It doesn’t decide this with conscious logic. It decides with a limbic system that’s the same in all mammals, and with neural pathways built from our own early experiences. This is why we seek happiness in quirky ways. I was grateful to have a second chance at an open mind and hope today’s college students will find that chance someday.

There. She has just flushed down the toilet any chance of understanding the reality of human life and the human mind. Those pop psych academics are doing the right thing and she should support them.

If what she says is true: “our brains evolved to keep our genes alive, not to make us happy. The brain releases happy chemicals when we do things that help our genes survive. It doesn’t decide this with conscious logic,” fine. Support enthusiastically the biggest piles of flapdoodle that the academy can muster — as long as your brain is happy.

Keep reading Uncommon Descent and other ID sources, if you want a point of view that empowers you to reject the flapdoodle.

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Published on February 15, 2023 14:30

That US State Dept report on the fraudulent runoff 2004 election in Ukraine: knowing how to steal an election

From the UD image library:

Oh, yes, McFaul on colour revolutions:

The Russian view:

Places:

Hint, the theme colour for the US push was/is black, just see Antifa:

Just for record as some are playing the nothing to see here game again. END

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Published on February 15, 2023 08:36

February 14, 2023

Oxytocin — that supposedly creates attraction — not needed, new study shows

This story just had to work for Valentine’s Day…

From The Scientist:

Prairie voles mate for life. Much like humans, once voles form a pair bond—typically with a member of the opposite sex—they cohabitate, coparent, and even prefer each other’s company over that of other voles. Decades of research on the monogamous rodents have led to a better understanding of the so-called love molecule oxytocin, a hormone that studies have suggested is crucial for forming social bonds in prairie voles, humans, and various other species.

But new research published today (January 27) in Neuron has turned 40 years of oxytocin research on its head by showing that voles without oxytocin receptors still form pair bonds. The finding might hold clues as to why researchers have had mixed success in using oxytocin to treat conditions that disrupt the formation of social bonds, such as depression and autism, the authors say.

“I think that it really does require revisiting and reimagining of what we think oxytocin is actually doing,” says Alexander Ophir, a neuroscientist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study. – Natalia Mesa, January 27, 2023

Well, it might be genes…. But gosh, if researchers can’t easily find a purely materialist explanation for devotion even in a rodent, why are we supposed to be listening to “the Voice of Science” on such topics where humans are concerned?

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Published on February 14, 2023 16:56

James Tour on the origin of life at Socrates in the City

Yes, it’s Origin of Life at the movies tonight, so fetch popcorn. And who better to talk about it than our favourite chemist James Tour?:

A conversation between Dr. James Tour and Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas on the topic “How Did Life Come into Being?” Dr. Tour is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University. He is widely regarded as among the leading nano-scientists in the world.

This event took place at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas in October 2022.

At Cat’s Board, we learn of at least 14 major hurdles in the way of origin of life:

Natural selection: There was no selection on early earth. In the living world, complex molecular machines are pre-programmed to make the building blocks of life, precisely as needed.Time: Some chemical reactions are so unspecific that getting the right one by unguided means resorting to time leads to huge numbers of odds.Getting pure materials: Evidently, what chemists do in the lab, namely using pure reagents, was not what happened on the early earth. Impure contamination in the pool of chemicals was the state of affairs.Getting free Gibbs energy: Spontaneous prebiotic reactions would have to “invent” ways to recruit Gibbs free energy from its environment so as to reduce its own entropy.Activation and repetitive processes: Monomers need to be activated in order for polymerization and catenation to make amino acid strands, and genes, to be possible.Information: Specified complex information, digital data, stored in genes through the language of the genetic code, dictates and directs the making of irreducibly complex molecular machines.Polymerization: How did prebiotic polycondensation of amino acids and nucleotides in heterogeneous aqueous solutions or in interfaces with water-based media occur without the aid of biological catalysts?Eigens paradox: is one of the most intractable puzzles in the study of the origins of life. It is thought that the error threshold concept described above limits the size of self-replicating molecules to perhaps a few hundred digits, yet almost all life on earth requires much longer molecules to encode their genetic information.Muller’s rachet: The theory of Muller’s Ratchet predicts that small asexual populations are doomed to accumulate ever-increasing deleterious mutation loads as a consequence of the magnified power of genetic drift and mutation that accompanies small population size.Protected environments: If these chemical reactions had happened in places being exposed to UV radiation, no deal. If it was too cold, or too hot, too acidic, or too alkaline, in the wrong atmospheric conditions, no deal.The right sequence of reactions: In metabolic pathways in the cell, enzymes must be lined up in the right sequence. How did spontaneous events organize such a state of affairs?Getting an organized system out of chaos: How did a prebiotic soup come to be organized into systems capable of emergent processes such as growth, self-propagation, information processing, and adaptive evolution?Irreducible complexity: The cell is an irreducible, minimal entity of life. The individual parts by themselves bear no function unless integrated into a higher-order system.Homeostasis: The control of metabolism is a fundamental requirement for all life, with perturbations of metabolic homeostasis underpinning numerous disease-associated pathologies.

That’s the condensed version. Much more at the site.

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Published on February 14, 2023 16:22

Paul Davies on the gap between life and non-life

It’s a big one. Theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist Paul Davies talks to Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to Truth about the conundrums: “What is life and how did it arise from non-life? Is it as simple as the random organization of complex chemicals on the early Earth? What are the pathways whereby chemicals turned into life? Is life inevitable? Or extremely rare? What’s remarkable is how little we know. ”

A reader notes that Davies says at 37m30s: “What life makes is consistent with physics and chemistry, but is not dictated by physics and chemistry.” Well, by a process of elimination, doesn’t that leave information? Design? And how are things designed without intelligence? At this point, one can only say, Keep talking.

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Published on February 14, 2023 15:59

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