Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 176

July 25, 2021

The slow descent of “Science!” As in “Trust the Science!”

Here’s a generous helping of a Wall Street Journal interview with science writer Matt Ridley that probes some of the changes brought about by the massive COVID-19 failure:

“Conformity,” Mr. Ridley says, “is the enemy of scientific progress, which depends on disagreement and challenge. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts, as [the physicist Richard] Feynman put it.” Mr. Ridley reserves his bluntest criticism for “science as a profession,” which he says has become “rather off-puttingly arrogant and political, permeated by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.” Increasing numbers of scientists “seem to fall prey to groupthink, and the process of peer-reviewing and publishing allows dogmatic gate-keeping to get in the way of new ideas and open-minded challenge.”

The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020. “The Taiwanese said, ‘We’re picking up signs that this is a human-to-human transmission that threatens a major epidemic. Please, will you investigate?’ And the WHO basically said, ‘You’re from Taiwan. We’re not allowed to talk to you.’ ”

He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”

Tunku Varadarajan, “How Science Lost the Public’s Trust” at WSJ via Instapundit (July 23, 2021)

It has not gone unnoticed.

The “lab leak theory” is a well-evidenced event, but not popular with certain governments.

Real science will emerge from the ruins.

See also: Lab leak theory vindicated: What that means for fighting COVID-19. What was the U.S. government’s role in downplaying the lab leak theory?

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Published on July 25, 2021 07:34

July 24, 2021

Will Joshua Swamidass have the floor at Uncommon Descent?

On Friday, we riffed a piece in which ID defender Douglas Axe defended himself against a claim by theistic evolutionist Joshua Swamidass that he offered a “confrontational approach” in a book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique.

A reader suggested we get in touch with Dr. Swamidass and ask him, would you like to enlarge on that a bit? He got back to us and said he might later discuss Dr. Axe’s comments in a more favorable light.

He directed our attention to this piece:

There was a new round of deletions and edits at BioLogos. No retractions. That’s how they roll it seems. So be it.

The good news it that this quietly vindicates a lot of people, including William Lane Craig, Fazale Rana, and Vern Poythress.

The bad news is that BioLogos also is claiming vindication, with what seems to be a rewrite of history. According to them, though they overstated they evidence, their conclusions are entirely unchanged. Quite a magic trick.

Joshua Swamidass, “18 Million Years Ago Means…500,000?” at Peaceful Science (July 19, 2021)

He also asks us to consider this article which he wrote earlier this year:

year ago, yesterday, BioLogos[1] quietly deleted an article, from 2010, published on their website, “Does Genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple?” The deleted article reports, incorrectly, that any notion of Adam and Eve, ancestors of us, is in conflict with the genetic evidence.

The claims made in the 2010 article, however, went far beyond the evidence. The authors claimed conflict between science and traditional readings of Scripture where there was none.

Still, this article would come to have an outsized influence. Dennis Venema was one of the scientists who authored this article. In Adam and the Genome (2017), Venema recounts how the claims in this article were presented to a larger audience.

Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: “That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.”

Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve, NPR, 2011 quoted it Christianity Today, also, published a widely read cover story covering these claims. The 2010 article became the cornerstone of BioLogos’s scientific position on Adam and Eve.

The problem, however, was that Venema’s response to the reporter was just not true. To the contrary, the best evidence at the time showed that Adam and Eve, if they were real people in a real past, would most likely be ancestors of us all. If they were ancient, maybe the evidence many not even demand there were people outside the garden.

Joshua Swamidass, “BioLogos Deletes an Article” at Peaceful Science

Here at UD, we just report news. But look, here’s an offer:

We will print, at Uncommon Descent, whatever Dr. Swamidass wishes to say further on this interesting topic of disappearing articles. We’d also be happy to hear him address how he thinks Dr. Axe has misrepresented him. Hey, we’re listening.

Here’s the relevant vid:

See also: Douglas Axe vs Joshua Swamidass… Axe: First and foremost, Swamidass dislikes the “confrontational approach” that he thinks I promote and exemplify, along with other ID proponents. In his words: “Doug Axe in Undeniable and also in the recent Crossway book on theistic evolution talks about how there’s a need to have a confrontational approach to evolutionary science.” Swamidass must be feeling threatened.

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Published on July 24, 2021 10:41

At Mind Matters News: The day philosophers started to take consciousness seriously

Of course, once they did, they found themselves deep in huge conundrums:

We sometimes forget how far we are from solving the mystery of consciousness.

An anecdote from 1994 might help us understand. Picture an utterly boring, pointless conference in Tucson, Arizona, one of whose attendees was an obscure philosopher from Australia, scheduled to give the third talk. And shook everything up:

News, “The day philosophers started to take consciousness seriously” at Mind Matters News

That was David Chalmers and the “Hard Problem of Consciousness.”

Some useful work is being done. We are discovering, for example, that

— people in a persistent vegetative state can have active conscious lives

– people can control artificial limbs by thoughts alone

– in, perhaps, the strangest development, the mind can sometimes discover information when detached from the clinically dead brain.

None of these discoveries confirms the materialism with which the academic world had become so comfortable.

News, “The day philosophers started to take consciousness seriously” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: We have learned a great deal about consciousness in the past half century but none of it supports materialism.

See also: Claim: “Spirituality” circuit in the brain has been identified Really? Is that even possible? No single definition fits all spirituality which is why there could not be a brain circuit that explains all spirituality.

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Published on July 24, 2021 08:38

At Mind Matters News: Do birds really understand what they are saying?

Remarkable claims are made for some birds:

Perhaps because parrots can carefully mimic human voices (and many other sounds), many claims are made for their intelligence For example, that they understand abstractions like currency:

We are encouraged to think that the parrots have“pretty sophisticated reasoning” …

No one involved hopes that any of us will ask the obvious question: Then why are the birds not using currency themselves? It turns out that a lot of the birds were related (they grew up together), which probably helps us understand why they sought to help each other.

The paper is open access.
News, “Do birds really understand what they are saying?” at Mind Matters News

Nobody makes these claims for chickens or turkeys.

Takehome: To understand what they are saying, birds would need to understand abstractions; it’s not clear that they can.

See also: Do newborn mammals dream? But how DO they? Yale: A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.

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Published on July 24, 2021 08:12

July 23, 2021

Do newborn mammals dream? But how DO they?

Can someone explain:

As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?

A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.

Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.

This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.

“At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior,” said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale.” But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form.”

In the study, Crair’s team, led by Yale graduate students Xinxin Ge and Kathy Zhang, explored the origins of these waves of activity. Imaging the brains of mice soon after birth but before their eyes opened, the Yale team found that these retinal waves flow in a pattern that mimics the activity that would occur if the animal were moving forward through the environment. Yale University, “Eyes wide shut: How newborn mammals dream the world they’re entering” at ScienceDaily

The paper is closed access.

Surely this is not possible without design in nature. Too much information.

Note: Anyone familiar with kittens will have noticed this. The kittens begin to behave like cats as soon as they have acquired neurological competence with their own limbs.

But that takes several weeks.

See also:

In what ways are cats intelligent? Cats have nearly twice as many neurons as dogs and a bigger and more complex cerebral cortex.

And In what ways are dogs intelligent? There is no human counterpart to some types of dog intelligence.

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Published on July 23, 2021 09:52

Douglas Axe vs Joshua Swamidass…

Seen from Douglas Axe’s perspective:

In a recent dialogue with paleontologist and ID proponent Gunter Bechly, Washington University computational biologist Joshua Swamidass zeroed in on his main complaints about intelligent design. The venue was Justin Brierley’s podcast Unbelievable? I get top billing in this department. First and foremost, Swamidass dislikes the “confrontational approach” that he thinks I promote and exemplify, along with other ID proponents. In his words: “Doug Axe in Undeniable and also in the recent Crossway book on theistic evolution talks about how there’s a need to have a confrontational approach to evolutionary science.”

“Even if ID is correct,” he continues, “I think a conversational approach is better than a confrontational approach.”

The proper role and form of confrontation in dialogue is worth discussing, so I thank Joshua for bringing the subject up. In short, if by confrontation we mean calling someone to account on a false claim by presenting evidence of its falsehood, then surely everyone who values the truth ought to be in favor of it. Understood that way, confrontation has nothing to do with bullying or vilifying. It’s about setting the record straight, which certainly shouldn’t be at odds with productive conversation.

In fact, Joshua’s comments call for an example of constructive confrontation. Contrary to what he said, I don’t actually talk about the need to have a confrontational approach. Rather, he seems to be misconstruing a section from my contribution to

Theistic Evolution. Douglas Axe, “Confronting Joshua Swamidass on Confrontation” at Evolution News and Science Today (July 22, 2021)

Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? Make coffee. Never do this without coffee.

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Published on July 23, 2021 08:46

The design argument from a mechanic’s perspective

Our Danish correspondent Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution, offers a design argument from the perspective of someone who works with design all the time:

What constitutes a good ID argument

Inspiring conversations with fellow ID folks has made me think about what constitutes a good argument for ID, and more importantly to whom. It has come to my attention that arguments I find so compelling, that I actually need no further evidence to make a design inference, is far from convincing to others Having renovated, modified and maintained engines for historic car racing, seeing the drawing or an animation of a flagellum motor is sufficient for me to infer design. I don’t find it slightly convincing, I find the flagellum motor so convincing that no doubt is left in my mind, that nature is intelligently designed.

It has dawned on me that this is far from the experience others are having. I recently was met with the argument, that if the flagellum motor or equal machine like objects from nature were that convincing as I claim, the discussion would be over and ID declared winner. “The facts do not speak for themselves” was repeated several times in one particular conversation I had, – the “facts” being that the flagellum motor has design like features.

The disagreement circled around my claim that the flagellum motor is absolute proof of ID. My interlocutor justifiably claimed that if it were absolute proof everybody would be convinced, and since everybody is not convinced the flagellum motor as evidence for ID is simply not good enough. Now then my reply was and is, that it’s not the argument lacking quality, it’s people’s ability to appreciate the argument’s weight that constitutes the problem. The argument for design alone from the flagellum motor is so overwhelming that in fact everybody ought to be convinced.

So why aren’t they? The problem here is, I’ll argue, that it requires real world experience with machinery to acquire the ability to appreciate the huge weight of the argument from the flagellum motor including Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity. A friend of mine who happens to be both a theologian and an electronics engineer recently had this amusing comment when we were talking about why the evolutionists don’t get it, he said:

We can’t talk with these people until they have spent time in the shed disassembling and assembling a moped! He was referring to what we did as teenagers. And yes, this is the problem in a nut shell. If you haven’t had hands-on experience with assembling complex functional systems like a moped, you cannot, and I’m sorry to offend all you great thinkers out there, evaluate the argument around the flagellum and irreducible complexity. Why? Because machinery, functional systems and their inherent irreducible complexity are real world phenomena!

The word “empirical” refers to having had experience (in German “Erfahrung”). The only true way to acquire experience is through physical interaction. Experience does not come through theoretical knowledge. In the world of abstraction all sorts of scenarios could be true, you can simply yourself decide what is true and what is not. Actual physical experience is the only thing that keeps thought constructions in check and can weed out wrong theories.

If you understand through bodily experience how reality works, you will come to the conclusion that evolution is an unrealistic idea. In the realm of thought though, evolution works brilliantly because in the abstract you can choose the bits and pieces which make your theory work and ignore anything that contradicts. This is actually how Darwin’s theory is kept alive.

Evaluating Behes IC concept is simply not possible on a theoretical level. You need hands-on experience with complex functional systems to fully understand that evolution is a thought experiment which could never work in reality.

When Ken Miller purportedly debunked Behe’s mousetrap analogy he did so in the world of abstraction with no reference to how real stuff in the real world works. Evolutionist disciples bought it hook line and sinker because in the realm of thought everything you want to work works. Behe’s IC proves (yes proves!) that evolution is false, but the chance is that you aren’t able to realize it because you operate solely on a theoretical level and have no real world experience working on complex machinery.

—

While we are here: Didn’t Ken Miller attempt a ridiculous explanation of human consciousness?

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Published on July 23, 2021 07:41

Is “string theory world” in some trouble?

Is Cool cosmology not getting results? Columbia mathematician Peter Woit, admittedly a critic, comments:

For quite a few years now, I’ve been mystified about what is going on in string theory, as the subject has become dominated by AdS/CFT inspired work which has nothing to do with either strings or any visible idea about a possible route to a unified fundamental theory. …

Peter Woit, “Deterioration of the World’s Thinking About the Deepest Stringy Ideas” at Not Even Wrong

The fun part is this quote:

This superficial approach – in which people reduced their understanding of string theory and its amazing properties to some mundane, constantly repetitive ideas about AdS/CFT, especially those that are just small superconstructions added on top of 4D quantum field theories – got even worse in the recent decade when the “quantum information” began to be treated as a part of “our field”. Quantum information is a legitimate set of ideas and laws but I think that in general, this field adds nothing to the fundamental physics so far which would go beyond the basic postulates of quantum mechanics…

Lubos Motl, “Evolution, deterioration of the world’s thinking about the deepest stringy ideas” at The Reference Frame (July 11, 2021)

And Woit adds,

According to Lubos, he’s not the only one who feels this way, with an “anonymous Princeton big shot” agreeing with him (hard to think of anyone else this could be other than Nima Arkani-Hamed)

Peter Woit, “Deterioration of the World’s Thinking About the Deepest Stringy Ideas” at Not Even Wrong

Nima Armani-Hamed has crossed our screen before.

Some of us think string theory only existed in order to give a bizarre twist to the fine-tuning of our universe and to create a basis for believing that there is an uncountable infinity of universes out there instead. Apart from that, it may be hard to see much point. We shall see.

Gossip is fun when it doesn’t hurt anyone.

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Published on July 23, 2021 06:53

A panel on CV19 with a co-inventor of mRNA technology

See here:

Okay, embed seems to work. If not please click the link.

This is a FYI news item, no discussion. END

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Published on July 23, 2021 03:52

July 22, 2021

At Scientific American: Why elephants play

An animal behaviorist offers to explain:

People tend to think of play as an activity one engages in at one’s leisure, outside of learning important skills needed to succeed later in life, such as hunting, mating, and evading predators. But although playing is fun for all involved—and fun for those who are watching—play behaviors evolved as ritualized forms of survival skills needed later in life, providing the opportunity to perfect those skills.

Engaging in play allows animals to experiment with new behaviors in a protected environment without dangerous consequences. The unwritten code of conduct surrounding play lets them explore many possible outcomes.

Animals learn the rules of engagement for play at a very young age. Among dogs, the bow is a universal invitation to engage in silliness that triggers the same bowing down and splaying of the front legs in the receiver of the signal—inevitably followed by chasing and pretend biting. Chimpanzees and gorillas motivate others to romp by showing their upper and lower teeth in what primatologists refer to as a play face, which is comparable to human laughter.

Caitlin O’Connell, “Play Is Serious Business for Elephants” at Scientific American

Okay. Anyone who grew up with cats will recognize this: Almost from the first time kittens can stagger around, they engage in play fights. Kittens find it hard to stop until they collapse from exhaustion.

One thing play probably does is enable the kitten to develop its neurology. The neurology is a potential until the connections are made.

See also: In what ways are cats intelligent? Cats have nearly twice as many neurons as dogs and a bigger and more complex cerebral cortex.

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Published on July 22, 2021 07:48

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