Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

About That Central Dogma

Remember when evolutionists stated that information flow proceeds from DNA to RNA to proteins? They called it the “Central Dogma” and they envisioned DNA mutations providing the fuel for natural selection to create the species. Then there was reverse transcriptase, a protein machine that inserted RNA into DNA. And then there was alternative splicing where protein machines rearranged RNA. And there was RNA editing, where proteins … Read more

Water-Land Ratio of Habitable Planets

Just ran across this interesting article. I don’t put too much stock into computer simulations of things that are still poorly understood. Indeed, there are plenty of open questions about whether even the basic mechanics of planet formation are understood. But this caught my eye: For planets to be habitable, they must orbit stars within the ‘habitable zone’ where it is not too hot or too cold Yes, we know that, but this next part is less often discussed: In addition, recent studies on habitability of planets suggest that the water-land ratio must be similar to the Earth. That is, the water mass fraction should not be far from that of the Earth’s (~0.01wt%): planets with too much water (> Read More ›

This IS news. Christians should confront Darwinism

Christians for Darwin? We are looking at you. We are looking at you now. Do you renounce the nonsense? Or just hope to get more funds from it until you quietly retire? Suggested by poli sci prof J. Budziszewski. Here: Christians need not be afraid to confront the inconsistencies of Darwinism Can you name something that natural selection doesn’t explain? The most distinctive things about us—what Christians call our spiritual qualities—can’t be explained by natural selection. Tell me the adaptive value of a sense of beauty. Or say you are moved to awe by Bach’s Air on the G String: How does awe help you to pass on your genes to the next generation? One sociobiologist, an atheist, speculated that Read More ›

“Intelligent design” detoxified?

No riots in the streets? Wow. Here. Yer humble News hack can’t easily tell what’s going on because she keeps getting pop-up messages advising that the firm ships to Canada. Guess they never heard about the Last Spike. Serious Sunday religion coverage soon anyway. Follow UD News at Twitter!

FYI-FTR*: Part 2, Is it so that >>If current models are inadequate (and actually all models are), and indeed we do not yet have good OoL models, that does not in itself make a case for design>>

Further for record* on the case for a designer: EL, here: >> . . . What undermines the “case for design” chiefly, is that there isn’t a case for a designer. If current models are inadequate (and actually all [the?] models are), and indeed we do not yet have good OoL models, that does not in itself make a case for design. It merely makes a case for “our current models are inadequate”. Even if it could be shown that some observed feature has no possible evolutionary pathway, that wouldn’t make the case for design. What might would be some evidence of a design process, or fabrication process, or some observable force that moved, say, strands of DNA into novel Read More ›

How bad research science has gotten: Chocolate files

Here.  (But one must admit this is at least fun.) I am Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D. Well, actually my name is John, and I’m a journalist. I do have a Ph.D., but it’s in the molecular biology of bacteria, not humans. The Institute of Diet and Health? That’s nothing more than a website. Other than those fibs, the study was 100 percent authentic. My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It Read More ›

Science does not necessarily promote self-criticism

It can insulate people from it. The Wall Street Journal article by John Horgan that reviews Darwin follower Jerry Coyne’s latest is behind some paywall. But we hear from a reliable source that it says, among other things: Mr. Coyne repeatedly reminds us that science, unlike religion, promotes self-criticism. but he is remarkably lacking in this virtue himself. … The popularity of multiverse theories, a hypothetical corollary of several highly speculative physics theories, merely shows how desperate scientists are for answers. Multiverse enthusiasts seem to think that the existence of an infinite number of universes will make ours appear less mysterious. The problem is none of these other universes can be observed, which is why skeptics liken multiverse theories to Read More ›

Dr. Ewert Answers

A few weeks ago I solicited questions on Google Moderator as an experiment. Unfortunately, the experiment was not very successful as I only got a few questions. However, I will answer the questions that did get listed. During this time Dr. Thomas English posted some questions at the skeptical zone, and I’ll be answering those here as well. DieB asks: What happened to the erratum of “The Search for a Search” Looking at internet archive, it looks like I inadvertantly reverted the evoinfo.org website back to an earlier version sometime around December 2012 losing the erratum. I have put the erratum back in place. DieB asks: Take Ω={1..100}, fitness function “distance to a target”. Now you have a search which Read More ›

Serious doubt about peer reviewed studies is increasing

See, for example, “Science has taken a turn towards darkness” (This, by the way, is from distinguished medical journal Lancet, not from “A-Crock-a-Lypse News and Used Car Sales.”) Now, this from Times Higher: I used to be the editor of the BMJ, and we conducted our own research into peer review. In one study we inserted eight errors into a 600 word paper and sent it 300 reviewers. None of them spotted more than five errors, and a fifth didn’t detect any. The median number spotted was two. These studies have been repeated many times with the same result. Other studies have shown that if reviewers are asked whether a study should be published there is little more agreement than would Read More ›

Guest Post: Part 1 of 2: Qualitative Complex and Specified Information within genes – An Introduction

Today’s guest post comes to us from one of our regular commenters, Dr.JDD. All that follows is his: I would like to start off this post by emphasising this is not meant to be seen in any way as a “disproof” nor an “attempt to disprove” the appearance of complex proteins in eukaryotic cells through proposed unguided evolutionary mechanisms. This is rather I hope something to stir up discussion and engage thought in particular to those who wish to understand better the real complexities and challenges that are needed to be overcome, if indeed we were to accept such proposed mechanisms as genuine and real. We all know that mutations in DNA can result in a different amino acid appearing Read More ›

Let’s discuss: >> Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by [want of . . . ???] any evidence for the putative designer . . . >>

In a current UD thread, Mung clips and comments: >> OT: Over at TSZ, fossils of reason occasionally appear, quite by accident. Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by any evidence for the putative designer – no hypothesis about what the designer was trying to do, how she was doing it, what her capacities were, etc. Mung: The ID case does not hold up because it is undermined by any evidence for the designer. Classic.>> I added: >> identification of an empirically detectable, reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration — thus of a design process — is a strong sign of a designer back of that process. Further, designs typically Read More ›

Call the police: Creationist finds interesting fossils

From the BBC: The Albertan, who has a longstanding interest in fossils, was digging a basement for a new home in Calgar… One is tempted to wonder whether the government-funded Beeb hack has any idea what digging out a basement in Calgary might even mean. Aren’t we all eating pineapples now, instead of sweeping up our underground furnace rooms? Whatever. Meanwhile, “No, it hasn’t changed my mind. We all have the same evidence, and it’s just a matter of how you interpret it,” he told the paper. “There’s no dates stamped on these things.” But Dr Zelenitsky – while she might disagree about fossil dating – praised Mr Nernberg for his awareness of what the fossils were. “Most people would Read More ›

Fri Nite Frite: Do atoms know we are watching them?

In a double slit experiment? From Physics World: Truscott’s team found that when the second laser pulse was not applied, the probability of the atom being detected in each of the momentum states was 0.5, regardless of the phase lag between the two. However, application of the second pulse produced a distinct sine-wave interference pattern. When the waves were perfectly in phase on arrival at the beamsplitter, they interfered constructively, always entering the state formed by adding them. When the waves were in antiphase, however, they interfered destructively and were always found in the state formed by subtracting them. This means that accepting our classical intuition about particles travelling well-defined paths would indeed force us into accepting backward causation. “I Read More ›

Is Darwinian evolution a post-normal science? A post-empirical science?

Stuff that people are supposed to believe that does not need to be correct? Not even defensible, if evidence-based standards were used? Just accepted as “science? And yattered about on TV “science” programs? A friend asked. Here is a paper on post-normal science. Here is some information on post-empiricism as well (we are past the stage of requiring evidence; we just want acceptance or else). Just so we all know what we are expected to believe and fund. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Editor of The Lancet: “Science has taken a turn towards darkness”

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. Richard Horton Editor-in-Chief The Lancet Here