Computational biologist & MD Joshua Swamidass continues to misunderstand ideology. Whether he does so intentionally or not, it reveals a rather important social problem of pseudo-knowledge being presented as knowledge simply because it is being said by a natural scientist. Swamidass has multiple times claimed that “Darwinism was falsified by population genetics back in 1968” (https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/darwinism-falsified-in-science-long-ago/4325). Yet he still doesn’t seem to understand that one cannot actually ‘falsify’ Darwinism. That is the wrong language (likely based on an outdated view of Karl Popper’s notion of ‘falsifiability’) that is rather harming than helping the conversation.

Recently, I have been awestruck by the statement of one of the “reputable” regulars at TSZ that evolutionary theory doesn’t need to be subjected to any experimental testing or experimental verification…

How do you like that?

He erroneously used the famous experiment that verified Einstein’s prediction of gravity’s ability to bend light. Here are the details:
See? Experiments don’t need to be run in the lab, and they can still be valid experiments.

While this kind of statement is nothing new to me that Darwinists deny or ignore the need for the experimental verification of their evolutionary claims, on the other hand, they demand ID to be subjected to the scientific method processes for their claims to be verified…Hypocrisy at its best…

So, why can’t evolution be tested?

BruceS’s link to a series of discussions with the leading atheists of our day, about emergence, reductionism, and mostly just about how to make naturalism sound believable to the gathered masses the atheist preachers exist to proselytize to, is a rather entertaining bit of folly to indulge in. Its the end result of what you get when you band together the most well known atheists, each who consider themselves to be solely the smartest person in the world (due wholly to the history of their lucky accidental mutations which have no meaning, they will remind you over and over) and get them all to agree that they believe the same thing, and then listen as they all try to figure out what it is they believe. Madcap slapstick ensues.

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Modern science has increased our knowledge of the external world a great deal, but even it has reached the point where it finds it impossible to exclude ourselves from the picture.

Modern natural science is the science of the quantitative, Goethean science is the science of the qualitative.

I recently created a video (sorry, it’s a long one) covering what I view as the evidence that cells direct their own evolution. I’m curious what feedback others have on it.

Sorry about the length, but I cover a large number of topics, and try to explain it in light of all of the misunderstandings about the subject which I have seen.

Initially, I have been planning to do an OP on the amazing abilities of plants to “resolve the mathematical equations” in quantum photosynthesis…However, since another issue was raised in one of the last OPs, I’d thought it would be a great opportunity to keep the flow of the same theme going…

In the OP “On variant genetic codes”  the author has presented his case that Craig Venter’s doubt for common descent based solely on the genetic code variants (back in 2011 there were 18 of them) is not enough to doubt common descent…
Based on the discussion that took place at the University of Arizona back in 2011, do you get the impression that Craig Venter’s doubt for common descent is based solely on the fact that there are genetic code variants? I don’t … but you’d judge it for yourself:

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Elizabeth Liddle, who founded this Website, has recently declared that racist remarks on TSZ should be deleted. Moderator Alan Fox would like to additionally ban hate speech, incitement to violence, and discrimination, where these are proscribed by law. However, at the present time, nothing in the Rules of this Website prohibits racism or hate speech. And how does one define these terms, anyway? In this short post, I’d like to offer a few tentative proposals.

It seems to me that a rule that bans racism alone would be too arbitrary. Why ban racism but not sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia or transphobia?

Most pro-ID or pro-evolution blogs have summaries of the year usually with the highlights of the most interesting points or OPs …Larry Moran also has one on the most popular post though of 2017…

If I were in charge of a blog like TSZ my summary of 2018 would ask for the details of the actual conversions: i.e. how effective TSZ has been in what it was set up for. It was apparently set up to attract converts from the support or belief of ID to support or believe that sheer dumb luck in the discussions of life origins…

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I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the recent Max’s demon thread, it might be helpful to revisit that OP for context before continuing on to what follows here. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/maxs-demon-a-design-detection-riddle/

As promised and for what it’s worth I’d now like to submit my proposal for a method for detecting design in situations like Max’s demon where instead of looking at a single isolated artifact or event we are evaluating a happening that is extended spatiotemporally in some way. Continue reading →