Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 78

How do we know an intelligent agent produced something and it is not just an accident?

Casey Luskin offers:

“Intelligent agents sometimes produce material entities through a series of gradual modifications (as when a sculptor shapes a sculpture over time). Nevertheless, intelligent agents also have the capacity to introduce complex technological systems into the world fully formed. Often such systems bear no resemblance to earlier technological systems — their invention occurs without a material connection to earlier, more rudimentary technologies. When the radio was first invented, it was unlike anything that had come before, even other forms of communication technology. For this reason, although intelligent agents need not generate novel structures abruptly, they can do so.”2

Casey Luskin, “The Positive Case for Intelligent Design in Paleontology” at Evolution News and Science Today (April 29, 2022)

He means someone phoning and telling you something that changes your life?

Here’s the rest of the series.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

The universe is fundamentally off kilter?

But what’s “kilter”:

This idea that, on the grandest scales, the cosmos looks largely the same regardless of position or direction is called the cosmological principle, and it underpins our best theory of how the universe evolved. For cosmologists, it is gospel. But some heretics are now calling the principle into question, pointing to fresh evidence that even at its largest scales, the cosmos is not only lumpy, but fundamentally off-kilter.

Thomas Lewton, “Controversial claim that the universe is skewed could upend cosmology” at New Scientist (April 27, 2022)

Why isn’t “kilter” whatever the universe is?

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Male spiders have found a way to avoid getting eaten by their mates?

Yes, the jokes follow but for now:

Certain orb-weaving spiders have developed a catapult-like mechanism to spring to safety and avoid sexual cannibalism, an international research team reports April 25 in Current Biology.

Hubei University behavioral ecologist Shichang Zhang, the study’s first author, says that the researchers first observed the post-mating catapulting behavior during field studies in 2019. This species of orb-weaving spider—Philoponella prominens—lives in colonies of up to 300 individuals, although each spider maintains its own web within the colony.

After witnessing the odd behavior in the wild, Zhang and colleagues brought the spiders into the lab for a closer look. Using high-resolution cameras, researchers recorded males—which are less than a centimeter long—catapulting away from the female at speeds up to 88 centimeters per second (a little over 3 kilometers per hour). The spiders achieved these impressive speeds by folding their first pair of legs against the female during mating and rapidly straightening them, vaulting into the air as soon as mating was complete.

Hannah Thomasy, “Spiders Catapult Themselves to Avoid Becoming Their Mate’s Meal” at The Scientist (April 25, 2022)

You know, there are guys in counselling today who …

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

David Theroux (1949– 2022)

David J. Theroux (1949–2022) was Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Independent Institute and Publisher of The Independent Review. He received his B.S., A.B., and M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. He was a Juror for the 2017 Brock International Prize in Education, and books and films produced by Mr. Theroux have been the recipients of scores of awards, including three Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prizes, Templeton Freedom Award, two Mencken Awards for Best Book, eight Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Awards for Best Book, three Benjamin Franklin Awards, ten Independent Publisher Book Awards, Peter Shaw Memorial Award, and three Choice Magazine Awards for Outstanding Book. He was Founder and President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California, and was founding Vice President and Director of Academic Affairs for the Cato Institute and President of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. He previously served both as Research Assistant for the economist Yale Brozen and Director of the Lecture Series on Economic Science in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

News, “Obituary” at Independent

He was, we are told, a friend so we honor his memory.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Claim: The blueprint for life generated in asteroids

At NASA:

Using new analyses, scientists have just found the last two of the five informational units of DNA and RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life’s ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteorite impacts or perhaps the infall of dust.

News, “Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids?” at NASA (April 26, 2022)

“Could have contributed to” … okay, keep talking.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

J. Scott Turner: Scientific publishing as a scam

It’s an amazing story:

It may surprise you to know that there has been an embargo against scientists with UK grants publishing in Britain’s premier scientific journal, Nature. At root was a dispute about the cost of publishing scientific papers, who has the rights to see them, and at what price. In the case of Nature, that price was €9,500, about $11,300.

The episode reveals more than just a haggle over price, however. Deep troubles are roiling the seemingly calm surface of scientific publishing. The dustup over Nature is newsworthy because it brought those troubles to the surface, for all to see. Beneath the surface, though, the culture and practice of science and scientific discourse has been being transformed – radically. It’s a complicated story, with a complicated history.

J. Scott Turner, “Scientific Publishing Is a Scam Fed by the Government” at RealClearScience (April 27, 2022)

Readers unfamiliar with J. Scott Turner may wish to know that he is also the author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. And here he is, publishing at Real Clear Science…

Maybe it took someone willing to quit worshipping at the Darwin shrine to bring this out.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Horizontal gene transfer from frogs to snakes via parasites?

So everyone now accepts that non-Darwinian evolution is no longer a thing?:

Horizontal DNA transfer, once thought to be a rare event, has occurred between snakes and frogs at least 54 times in the past 85 million years

Many snakes make meals of frogs, but some appear to be transferring their DNA into the amphibians as well. A genetic analysis suggests that parasites shared between snakes and frogs may facilitate the movement of genetic material from one species to another.

Jake Buehler, “Frogs have acquired DNA from snakes with the help of parasites” at New Scientist (April 26, 2022)

This destroys all those heavily constricted Darwin stories about species’ evolution.

The article requires a fee or subscription.

Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Günter Bechly: Species pairs as a new challenge to Darwinists

Does this mean humans are responsible for maintaining the planet?:

There is no conceivable reason why a disparity like that between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus should be limited to the fossil record, where it can be found in numerous examples among all groups of organisms, while being totally absent among the millions of recent species. So, let’s be generous and not restrict the challenge to the TimeTree database. Just find any pair of species among the millions of living species to meet the challenge. Only one! Come on, if unguided evolution really can do its magic, this should not be too difficult, should it? Well, I won’t hold my breath, but if the challenge cannot be met, Darwinists should be asked to explain why.

Here is my explanation. Darwinism is wrong, and this applies not only to the neo-Darwinian process of random mutation and natural selection but to any unguided evolutionary processes including those suggested by proponents of the so-called Extended Synthesis (e.g., Shapiro et al. 2014, Laland et al. 2014, 2015, Garte 2016, Müller 2016, 2017).

There is no evolutionary reason why the creative power of this process should have been active over all of Earth history but then ceased to function within the past 10 million years. Intelligent design proponents can easily explain this pattern: there was creative intelligent intervention in the history of life, but this creative activity deliberately ceased with the arrival of humans as the final telos. Any further explanation would have to transgress the methodological limits of the design inference, but Judeo-Christian theists will certainly recognize an eerie correspondence with the Biblical message, which says that God rested from his creative activity after the creation of humans (Genesis 2:2-3).

Günter Bechly, “Species Pairs: A New Challenge to Darwinists” at Evolution News and Science Today (April 25, 2022)

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Here’s a curious question: What did Neanderthals evolve from?

Scientists are apparently searching for the “missing link” between humans and Neanderthals:

Researchers use DNA evidence when they can, but when it’s not available, they rely on anatomy to note the differences between Neanderthals and H. sapiens.

Humans have a high and rounded brain case, with a small brow, a chin on the lower jaw and a slimmer bone structure, says Stringer. Neanderthals, by comparison, have a longer, lower skull, with a larger nose, brow and no chin.

“Humans have a clearly distinct skeletal shape from Neanderthals,” says Stringer. “These differences suggest that there was a separate evolution for hundreds of thousands of years.”

On the other hand, older modern human remains have a bigger brow, bulkier teeth and more robust skeletons. And the closer in age the remains are to the mystery ancestor, the difference in features is less pronounced.

Sara Novak, “What Did Neanderthals Evolve From?” at Discover Magazine (Apr 21, 2022)

Some of us would like to know why, apart from professional jealousies and corruption, there is even an issue about differences between Neanderthals and the rest of us.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Is the real problem with science education today lack of support for the Consensus?

Useful statistics here but note the context:

Data show many of the 69,000 U.S. middle school science teachers have no scientific background. Almost a quarter have neither a science degree nor full certification to teach science, according to a 2017-18 survey by the U.S. Department of Education. At schools where at least three-quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, 32 percent of middle school science teachers have neither a science degree nor certification to teach science.

The problem isn’t necessarily state teacher certification requirements. Kentucky, for example, requires middle-school teachers seeking certification to have a science teaching degree and pass proficiency tests.

But the state’s teacher shortage means there’s no guarantee that there are teachers with a science background in classrooms. In a 2019 survey of the state’s school principals, 81 percent reported they could find few or no satisfactory applicants for middle school science jobs.

Steven Yoder, “Shaky Science Instruction Pervades Middle School Classrooms” at Undark (April 25, 2022)

The trouble is, the context of the article is an attack on a teacher who doubts the COVID orthodoxy. We would want to avoid the weeds for sure but in principle it is reasonable to doubt the COVID orthodoxy.

There needs to be an approach to science that is not simply an enforcement of orthodoxy.

Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana