Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Cerebral Linguistic Toolbox That Blows The Mind

“Depending on the type of grammar used in forming a given sentence, the brain will activate a certain set of regions to process it, like a carpenter digging through a toolbox to pick a group of tools to accomplish the various basic components that comprise a complex task” (1). This was the descriptive offered by one review on how it is that diverse regions of the human brain are recruited to tease out the meaning of sentences when we communicate with each other (1). Cutting edge research into brain function, using American Sign Language as a platform, has unpacked the detail of exactly how the brain achieves this split-second feat (1,2).

In sign language messages can be expressed in one of two ways. As with English, ‘signers’ can use ordered words to convey their message (eg: John gives his lunch to Mary). But they can also move their hands in a manner that specifically relays concepts and ideas- what linguists call inflection(2). In languages such as German and French inflections are easily identifiable as suffixes that can be tagged onto the ends of words to denote, amongst other things, the case or the gender of the word or the ‘role’ that a subject or object in a sentence plays in a given interaction (John giving lunch to Mary in the above example) (2). But sign language, notes Rochester University psychologist Aaron Newman offers “a unique opportunity to directly contrast these two means of marking grammatical roles within the same language” (2).

Newman employed functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to zero in on the spatial-temporal brain activities that accompany both word order and inflection-based communication. What he uncovered was nothing short of remarkable. There exists a network of brain regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC), the superior and posterior temporal sulcus (STS), the caudate nucleus, the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the angular gyrus (AG) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) that are operative during both the interpretation of word order and inflection processing (2). Importantly significant differences exist in the “relative weighting” of activation in these regions depending upon which of these two modes of message transmission is being called upon (2). The DLPC and the right hemisphere AG are more dominantly active when word order-critical sentences are put in front of us. In contrast the MTG and the posterior STS are more active during inflection processing (2). The overarching conclusion borne out by the results of this study is that “specific parts of the neurocognitive system recruited for grammatical processing are dependent on the type of information that must be processed” (2). Read More ›

A Compass That is Never Right

What good is a compass that is never right? Evolution certainly is not that bad, but it is telling how often Darwin’s idea, mandated to be a fact, is so far off base. Consider for example the kangaroo genome, which turned out to be similar to the human genome. As one evolutionist explained:  Read more

BEACON comes home with the bacon!

BEACON (Bio/computational Evolution in Action CONsortium), based at Michigan State University, has just received a $25M grant from the NSF. For details, go here. Below is the rogues gallery of BEACON consortiates (recognize anyone?): It’s gratifying to see our tax dollars being spent so well.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Just as Charles Darwin dealt with difficulties with his theory of evolution in Chapter 6 of Origins, so too Denis Alexander deals with objections in Chapter 6 of his book Creation or Evolution. And just as Darwin’s logic was often questionable, so too is Alexander’s. The chief problem is Alexander’s rather selective presentation. For an author of a book about the origins controversy, Alexander seems to be remarkably unaware of the actual debate.  Read more

A New Model for Evolution: A Rhizome

Evolutionists have a problem. Their theory doesn’t fit the facts, yet it must be true. They have to constantly change their story, all the while insisting it is a fact. Like a Heraclitean flux, it is constantly changing and yet always called the same thing. Evolutionists are continually surprised by the science, yet they euphemistically call this “progress.” A recent article in The Lancet, suggesting that evolution is like a rhizome, is a good example of evolution’s folly that is so obvious.  Read more

‘Sceptics’ — but not about science?

I did an interview recently with the Sceptics’ Society of Birmingham (UK) on the relationship between science and religion, which may be of interest to people here. The interview was conducted over Skype, which explains some of the alien sounds, especially from my end, even though my interlocutor and I were separated by a mere 20 miles. What struck me most about this quite genial interview is the lack of scepticism that today’s self-avowed ‘sceptics’ have towards the scientific establishment. Indeed, they have a rhetorical strategy for deflecting this point. So, if you listen to the whole interview, you’ll hear that my interlocutor periodically draws a strange distinction between ‘intelligent’ and ‘rational’ — as in ‘I grant that anti-evolutionists are Read More ›

DNA Rules of the Road and Incredulity

Every biology student learns of two massive machines that operate on the DNA molecule. There is the transcription machine that makes a single-stranded copy of a gene, and there is the replication machine that makes a double-stranded copy of the DNA double helix. The former is the first step in the protein synthesis process while the latter is part of the cell division process. But what happens when these different machines meet as they operate on the same stretch of DNA? What are the rules of the DNA road?  Read more

Coffee!!: Caught up in the conspirazoid ramblings of the anti-Christian lobby?

A fellow hack phoned me the other night to advise that I am a minor feature in a Canadian book called The Armageddon Factor by one Marci McDonald. The book makes me out to be vastly more important than I am in the intelligent design controversy. This is, of course, in the cause of insisting that traditional Christians pose a major threat to Canada. Read More ›

Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Evolution of Evolution: You Can’t Make This Up

What do bacterial resistance to antibiotic drugs and the universal genetic code have in common? They both have been explained by horizontal gene transfer, a mechanism that evolutionists are increasingly using to explain the origin of the species. And what’s wrong with that? First, it makes evolution superfluous and second, it makes evolution ridiculous.  Read more

Oakes’ Inconsistent Positions

In my post below I described as “fabulous” Ed Oakes’ “Atheism’s Just So Scenarios,” and I stand by that description.  That said, Oakes never fails to befuddle me when it comes to the topic of evolution.  Oakes is a brilliant and insightful writer, whom I almost always enjoy reading.  Consider his take on “Just So Stories” favored by evolutionary psychologists:   This, um, scenario reminds me of those Just So Stories so beloved of evolutionary psychologists, who like to speculate that the reason a male wooer pays the restaurant bill when he takes his inamorata out on a date is because in our hunter-gatherer days the menfolk did the hunting, with their meat-consuming wives trapped back at home nursing their bambini Read More ›

Oakes: Nietzsche, the Only Honest Atheist

Ed Oakes has a fabulous essay over at FT.  A taste: Today, one can hardly find more puffed-up braggarts than those noisy New Atheists currently mounting their soapboxes in Hyde Park, and who seem to labor under the assumption that they are doing the human race a favor by attacking belief in God. In fact, as Nietzsche saw, in his own inimitably ironic way, these atheist frat boys are really attacking science. This is because for Nietzsche—who was perhaps the only truly honest atheist in the history of philosophy—science was ultimately a moral, not an epistemological problem, a point he drove home with special force in The Gay Science (all italics are his): The question “Why science?” leads back to the moral Read More ›

The Human Epigenome Project: Darwinian-Free Science

About twenty five years ago Lars Olov Bygren discovered that feast and famine years can affect not only those who endure them, but their progeny as well. Bygren was not the first to observe that environmental influences can be transmitted to subsequent generations. And as with the earlier discoveries, even in recent decades such empirical findings have not been welcomed by evolutionists. Why? Because such findings go against evolutionary theory. As a recent Time magazine article explained:  Read more

Signature of Controversy: New Book Responds to Stephen Meyer’s Critics

Critics of intelligent design often try to dismiss the theory as not worth addressing, as a question already settled, even as being too boring to countenance. Then they spend an amazing amount of energy trying to refute it. On this episode of ID the Future, Anika Smith interviews David Klinghoffer, editor of the new digital book Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell, featuring essays by David Berklinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, and Richard Sternberg. Listen in as Klinghoffer examines the responses of these various critics in this new volume, available as a free digital book. Click here to listen.

Biological Innovations and the Fact of Evolution

Evolutionists insist that evolution is a fact even though there is much debate about how it occurred. But if they debate the question of how evolution occurred, that means it is an open question. And does this not, in turn, mean that whether evolution occurred is also an open question? No, evolutionists assure us, there is no question that evolution occurred—it is a fact—because we observe it occurring. But therein lies the rub:  Read more

Martin Gardner, Fundamentalism, and Adam’s Navel

The enormously influential mathematics and science writer, skeptic, and encourager of many, Martin Gardner, has died at the age of 95. I came to know Gardner through a mutual friend, the late science writer and skeptic Bob Schadewald (1943-2000), who occasionally visited Gardner at the latter’s home in North Carolina. [Here’s a tiny but relevant fact that shows the surprising reticulations of the science-and-theology debate in America. During one such visit, Gardner gave Schadewald much of the contents of his library, which he found had grown unwieldy. Then, years later, following the devastating fire that destroyed nearly all of YEC paleontologist Kurt Wise’s library, Schadewald packed much of his personal library into boxes to send to Kurt. Schadewald died a few days later, at nearly the same time his books arrived at Kurt’s home in Tennessee. Kurt unpacked the books, carefully wrapped in tissue, in tears, knowing that the person who sent them had just died. So, chances are, at least some of Martin Gardner’s personal library now resides with Kurt Wise. Go figure.] Schadewald told Gardner about this crazy YEC philosophy of science graduate student he knew, at the University of Chicago, and in response, Gardner sent back a letter to me. Read More ›