Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 14

February 8, 2023

Unique octopus genes seem to have appeared from nowhere

At Nature: “Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence — DNA sequence expanded in areas otherwise reserved for vertebrates.” ““It’s the first sequenced genome from something like an alien,” jokes neurobiologist Clifton Ragsdale of the University of Chicago in Illinois, who co-led the genetic analysis of the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides).”

Oh? How was that?

“Evolution of novel genes”? Isn’t that the question at hand? Where do novel genes come from? They found “a suite of octopus-and cephalopod-specific genes” that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. As for mechanisms that “can drive genomic novelty,” their list does little more than assume that making more of existing things and shuffling them around will create novel things that do something useful. Try that with a copy machine, a book, and scissors. “Modification of gene regulatory networks” is no help, either. Stephen Meyer documented in Darwin’s Doubt how modifications to GRNs are almost always lethal, and never innovative. – David Coppedge

The researchers reach for convergent evolution — but convergent with what?

The octopus — a highly intelligent short-lived exothermic invertebrate — should sink lectern-splintering Darwinism — but then the octo does not have tenure and many of the lectern splinterers do. That’s life. But so is finding out the facts.

You may also wish to read: Octopuses get emotional about pain, research suggests. The smartest of invertebrates, the octopus, once again prompts us to rethink what we believe to be the origin of intelligence. The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.

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Published on February 08, 2023 17:00

L&FP 65c: Hossenfelder on the rest of the story on delayed choice quantum eraser exercises

Here:

Still not duly humbled? KF

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Published on February 08, 2023 00:17

February 7, 2023

At Smithsonian Magazine: Neanderthals hunted and butchered massive elephants

Meat from the gigantic animals could have fed hundreds of hominids, according to a new analysis of bones found in central Germany

Between 1985 and 1996, archaeologists recovered 3,122 elephant remains at Neumark-Nord 1, a site near the present-day city of Halle in central Germany. The trove included entire skeletons, stomach contents and random bones from more than 70 individual straight-tusked elephants. This now-extinct species stood more than 13 feet tall and weighed between 6 and 13 tons—roughly the same as eight mid-sized cars. Straight-tusked elephants were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene.

Recently, researchers decided to give those remains a closer look. They found a series of strategic, repetitive cut marks on the bones’ surface, suggesting that Neanderthals carefully butchered the enormous mammals for their fat, meat and even their brains. This behavior likely persisted at the site for more than 2,000 years over dozens of generations, per the researchers. – Sarah Kuta

We are told, “The findings, published Wednesday in Science Advances, provide yet another piece of evidence to suggest that humans’ closest ancient relatives were more sophisticated and skilled than the brutish oafs popular culture has made them out to be.”

Just a minute here. Popular culture did not get that idea from thin air. It was carefully inculcated by science popularizers because it tied in with Darwinian Ascent of Man stuff. If it’s not true, let’s be honest about how the correct information affects the establishment science narrative.

The paper is open access.

Those Neanderthals get smarter every time we look them up.

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Published on February 07, 2023 18:41

Design patterns in the human body

Engineer Steve Laufmann discusses the design patterns in the human body. Laufmann is co-author of the book Your Designed Body

Every day, your body must solve hundreds of hard engineering problems simultaneously, or else you’ll die. In the book, Your Designed Body, systems engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman explore this extraordinary system of thousands of ingenious and interdependent engineering solutions that impact your heart, your lungs, your feet, your eyes and ears, and more.

“A brilliant tour of the mind-boggling interactive complexity of the human body.”—William S. Harris, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota

“I particularly enjoyed the way the authors tackled claims about ‘botched design.’”—David Galloway, MD, former President, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

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Published on February 07, 2023 17:47

Jonathan Bartlett: Intelligent design is not what most people think it is

In mid-2021, Jonathan Bartlett wrote this piece at Mind Matters News. Worth repeating:

Widespread confusion about Intelligent Design leads us to address the question: What exactly is it?

Intelligent Design, at its core, says that agency is a distinct causal category in the world. That is, when I code a computer program, write a book, invent a formula, write a poem, etc., I am doing something that is distinctively beyond the operation of pure physics. There is something distinct about the way that causation works for beings with minds compared to how it works for beings without minds. This might sound like an abstract philosophical concept, but it actually has pretty radical (and practical) results.

The business applications of Intelligent Design were put forth by Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One. There, specifically invoking Intelligent Design theory, he demonstrated what sets apart businesses that move markets — they generate new truths that are not algorithmically deducible. Thiel shows that the mind has unique powers which are not reducible to mechanism, and that by focusing our efforts in the direction that our minds are specially built for allows us to create more economic prosperity… More.

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Published on February 07, 2023 17:33

Update on Materialism

In my previous post, I demonstrated that materialism refutes itself because the very act of affirming belief in materialism depends on a denial of materialism. Why? Because purely physical things do not exhibit “intentionality” (the “aboutness” between believer and that which is believed). A liver cannot have any relationship to a proposition. So, for example, it would be absurd to say “my liver believes materialism is true.” And, of course, the problem for the materialist is that materialism claims that brains and livers are essentially the same in that they are purely physical.

Here is the key point: If the amalgamation of chemicals called “liver” and the amalgamation of chemicals called “brain,” are essentially the same, the materialist cannot logically say one exhibits intentionality and the other does not. Yet they do that very thing when they say they believe materialism is true. That is why the very act of affirming materialism refutes materialism. It is a self-referentially incoherent belief system.

Our materialist friends were not able to defeat this logic (it is truly unassailable), but they did jump into the comments with various responses. Here are some examples:

Seversky: “Show us an immaterial or disembodied consciousness and you may have a case” This is a classic red herring. I am not required to show that dualism is true to show that materialism is false. Materialism is false whether or not some other proposition is true.

PyrrhoManiac1: “Naturalists would insist that brains and livers have different biological functions” Here we have equivocation laced with strawman. First, Pyrrho equivocates on the word “difference.” I said that under materialism a brain and a liver are not ESSENTIALLY different. Pyrrho asserts that a brain and a liver are FUNCTIONALLY different. And then he “refutes” my argument by pretending I meant the latter when I clearly meant the former. Nope. Pyrrho, no one disputes that a brain and a liver have different functions. Do you really think I am too stupid to understand that? And do you really dispute that under materialism there is no essential difference between a brain and a liver in that they are both reducible to nothing more than their chemical constituents? If you do, you do not understand materialism, because that is the whole point of materialism. Fail. Pyrrho goes on to blah blah blah about cybernetics and thermodynamic equilibrium. That discussion is not remotely responsive to the question. Double fail.

ChuckDarwin: “at some point you will have to come up with a testable alternative model to explain behavior, including ‘beliefs.’” Nope. If my goal is to refute materialism on its own terms all I have to do is show that materialism is self-referentially incoherent, which I have done. Again, I do not have to show some other proposition is true for materialism to be false.

PyrrhoManiac1 again: This time he asserts that I am caricaturizing materialism when I say it posits that the liver and the brain are “nothing but” their material constituents. Good grief. This is just silly. Not only is Pyrrho wrong, but also, again, the WHOLE POINT of materialism is that everything, including livers and brains, is ultimately reducible to nothing but its physical constituents. Not just a fail but a catastrophic fail.

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Published on February 07, 2023 05:04

February 6, 2023

L&FP, 65b: “Understanding” Quantum Entanglement – with Philip Ball

Another vid to make sure we are duly humbled:

Thoroughly humbled yet?

If not, try here:

. . . yet? KF

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Published on February 06, 2023 21:47

At Nature: “Dogma-defying bacteria package DNA in unusual ways”

We learn, “A startling discovery in bacteria suggests that some species have a bizarre way of packaging chromosomes and regulating gene expression — using proteins that, until recently, weren’t thought to exist in bacteria at all.” (February 3, 2023)

Dogma? Defying dogma? “Bizarre”? These bacteria are just going about their usual business, unconscious of the dogmas some have chosen to promulgate about them. They were never obliged by any power in this world or any other to do only what the dogmatists insist they do.

For now, researchers can only speculate as to what the histones might be doing, and how their unusual mode of action might help the bacteria survive. For B. bacteriovorus, the histones could be protecting the DNA from picking up stray pieces of the fragmented genomes of its prey, says Warnecke.

There’s a thought: Dogmatize less and research more.

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Published on February 06, 2023 16:58

At Big Think: Big Bang cosmology is becoming “a confusing tale” but relax…

A series of three scientific papers describing the expansion history of the Universe is telling a confusing tale, with predictions and measurements slightly disagreeing. (The papers can be accessed here: one, two, three.) While this disagreement isn’t considered a fatal disproof of modern cosmology, it could be a hint that our theories need to be revised…

While the new discrepancy in predictions and measurements of the clumpiness of the Universe are preliminary, it could be that both this measurement and the Hubble Tension imply that the Big Bang theory might need some tweaking. Mind you, the discrepancies do not rise to the level of scrapping the theory entirely; however, it is the nature of the scientific method to adjust theories to account for new observations.
– Fermilab senior scientist Don Lincoln

Okay, but we didn’t think the theory was to be scrapped entirely. The fact that it is in trouble is news, even if no one wants to discuss it.

Incidentally, high science never liked the Big Bang because of its theistic implications. But if a void replaces an unpopular theory, high science won’t like that either. Stay tuned.

Here’s Lincoln’s take from three years ago now:

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Published on February 06, 2023 16:40

The Very Act of Affirming Materialism Refutes It

Consider the following statement: “My liver believes materialism is true.”

Sheer lunacy, right? But on materialism, there is no fundamental difference between the brain and the liver. They are both just meat. Therefore, for the materialist, the phrase “my brain believes materialism is true” is equivalent to the phrase “my liver believes materialism is true.”

The materialist really is stuck. Objects like the liver do not have belief states. Philosophers say they do not exhibit “intentionality” (the “aboutness” a subject has towards an object). A rock cannot have a belief about the proposition “materialism is true.” Neither can a liver. Neither can a brain. Thus, the very act of affirming materialism denies one of its fundamental tenants because the act of affirming necessarily requires intentionality.

But I can hear the materialist object, the human body is a system which is greater than any of its individual components like the brain and the liver alone. It still does not work, because on materialism, each human is reducible to the chemical components of his body. Therefore, the body is nothing but a complex amalgamation of chemicals, and the statement “complex amalgamation of chemicals believes materialism is true” gets the materialist no further than “my liver believes materialism is true.”

Materialism requires its proponents simultaneously to hold the following contradictory beliefs:

1. A material object cannot have a belief state.

2. A brain has belief states even though it is just another kind of material object.

A metaphysical system that requires its proponents to hold mutually exclusive propositions simultaneously should be rejected. Our materialist friends can have logic and reason or they can have their materialism. They can’t have both.

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Published on February 06, 2023 05:29

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