William Basener and John Sanford have responded here to my post concerning whether R.A. Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection is critical to work on the theoretical population genetics of the interaction between mutation and natural selection. (This reply by Basener and Sanford is also reposted here.) Continue reading
Glancing at Uncommon Descent (I still do as Denyse O’Leary often reports on interesting science articles, as here*, and the odd comment thread can still provide entertainment), I see an OP authored by gpuccio (an Italian medical doctor) entitled The Ubiquitin System: Functional Complexity and Semiosis joined together, telling the story of the ubiquitin protein and its central role in eukaryote biochemistry in some considerable detail. Continue reading
Check her out:
Consider the following argument:
1. One would be rationally entitled to make moral judgments about the institutions and practices of cultures distant from us in space or time only if one had reliable epistemic access to some transcendent (culture-independent) moral standard against which such institutions and practices could be evaluated.
2. But no one has reliable epistemic access to a transcendent, culture-independent moral standard.
3. Therefore, no one is rationally entitled to make moral judgments about the institutions and practices of cultures distant from us in space or time.
I have been asking this question at UD and it is probably one of the reasons why I got banned…Exposing Christian hypocrisy was probably the nail in the coffin though…or so I see it. Am I right?
Well, who is a True Christian first of all? What qualities would someone have to have to meet the criteria of a True Christian?
Here is an article on the issue of Dark DNA.
Dark DNA got its name from the cosmological phenomenon called Dark Matter – the undetectable 25% of the mass of the universe that scientists know exists because they can detect its effects…
Similarly Dark DNA has eluded the sequencing of the genomes and yet scientists know it must exist because they see its effects, such as in case of the sand rat…
An interesting tweet from Richard Dawkins:
Tissue culture “clean meat” already in 2018? I’ve long been looking forward to this. https://ind.pn/2F9xAwS
What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism? An interesting test case for consequentialist morality versus “yuck reaction” absolutism.
It looks like I just got banned at UD, which to me it means I have been noticed by “true Christians”, like Barry Arrington, who has proven, time and time again, that he deserves what he stands for…
I know that Sal got banned there too and he is a Christian..
What should we do? Should we abandon uncommondescent.com all together?
Many have… Who is left other then the few and the same style of comments appearing regularly?
At UD Barry and the Gang of “true Christians” continue their assertiveness of their so-called christian morality and values, including the issue of evil mentioned by me in the previous OPs…
Barry and the Gang seem certain, that if Nazis had won the war, Christians would be the only ones to acknowledge that the Holocaust was evil…How can they be so certain? It’s easy now since the Nazis lost the war… Do they have any evidence to make those assumptions? Continue reading
FMM: Purposeful intervention is pretty much the opposite of random mutation.
FMM notes in the same comment:
If there in nothing about an idea that distinguishes it from it’s alternative it seems to be superfluous.
So the idea is “non designed mutations” and the alternative is “purposeful intervention”.
Give that, and given FMM has not discarded the idea of purposeful intervention there must be something that distinguishes it from non designed mutations.
What is that distinguishing factor? What is the actual evidence for “purposeful intervention” regarding mutations?
And, more broadly, what is the evidence for “purposeful intervention” in any area of biology? Apart from, of course, wishful thinking.
This is a follow up OP to my previous two where I’d challenged some of the common Christian views, such as the immortally of the soul and the origin of evil.
At UD, I also questioned the suppose holiness of Billy Graham-who recently passed away-and the comparison of him to apostle Paul as well as Graham’s confidence that he was going to go to heaven to be with the Lord here.
It looks like that pushed some of the true Christians over the edge at UD and consequently I was challenged to admit as being a closet atheist or as Truth Will Set You Free called me a/mat (atheist/materialist)…
41 Truth Will Set You Free
You are delusional, and you are the real coward. Stop lying to yourself. Embrace your a/mat nihllism.”
Dr. Michael Egnor is a well known neurosurgeon and an ID proponent who is affiliated with the Discovery Institute. He has been writing extensively on the theme of religion, such Thomistic dualism, the immortality of the soul, and recently on the prevalence/existence of evil. Here is a quote from his recent article entitled:
“Cosmic Fine-Tuning and the Problem of Evil”
“Theism predicts two things about evil: that it exists, and that we are not able to entirely comprehend it. Evil exists because the created universe is not God, but His creation, so it must of necessity fall short of God, who is perfectly Good. After all, if the universe were perfectly good, without evil, it would just be God. If the universe is God’s creation, then it must fall short of perfection, and it must contain evil, understood as the deprivation of good. So Goff is mistaken that theism predicts a perfect cosmos, free from evil. Theism posits a perfect God, and a creation necessarily short of perfection. Theism seems to have gotten this “prediction” quite right, because the cosmos is certainly short of perfection. Theism predicts evil in the world, precisely because God is Good and because the world is not God.” – Michael Egnor Continue reading
In today’s post, I’m going to chop down two of Professor Feser’s proofs for God’s existence at the roots: namely, his first proof (in which Feser argues for the existence of a purely actual Being) and his second proof (in which he endeavors to show that an absolutely simple Being exists). Among Feser’s five proofs, his first proof has a special preeminence, as Feser uses it to deduce other attributes of the purely actual Being – its unity, immutability, eternity, immateriality, incorporeality, perfection, goodness, omnipotence and omniscience – which, taken together, warrant it being called “God.” Feser’s second, third, fourth and fifth proofs borrow from the arguments developed in Feser’s first proof, when deducing these same attributes, so if it turns out that the arguments Feser puts forward for these attributes rest on flawed assumptions (as I’ll show they do), then all five of Feser’s proofs of God will be flawed, in their conclusions at least.
So what’s wrong with Feser’s first two proofs? Continue reading
Defending the validity and significance of the new theorem “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection With Mutations, Part II: Our Mutation-Selection Model
– Bill Basener and John Sanford
Joe Felsenstein and Michael Lynch (JF and ML) wrote a blog post, “Does Basener and Sanford’s model of mutation vs selection show that deleterious mutations are unstoppable?” Their post is thoughtful and we are glad to continue the dialogue. We previously wrote a first part of a response to their post, focusing on the impact of R. A. Fisher’s work. This is the second part of our response, focusing on the modelling and mathematics. Our paper can be found at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00285-017-1190-x Continue reading
Natural Selection is described as “the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype”. To this, some add “blind, mindless, and purposeless environmental process” that nonetheless is imagined turning random genetic mutations into superior new features enhancing descendants’ survivability (fitness). Accumulation of these features supposedly turns one lifeform into another over time. Natural Selection seeks to explain the appearance of design in nature without appealing to a designer. Continue reading
Good news from the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization:
Atheism on the Rise
For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).
This was particularly interesting…
Teens, along with young adults, are more likely than older Americans to say the problem of evil and suffering is a deal breaker for them.
…as was this:
Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say “I need factual evidence to support my beliefs” (46%)—which helps to explain their uneasiness with the relationship between science and the Bible. Significantly fewer teens and young adults (28% and 25%) than Gen X and Boomers (36% and 45%) see the two as complementary.
I was in Florida last week for the inaugural Falcon Heavy launch, and though I wish I could do a mind meld and share the memories directly with you, the technology doesn’t yet exist.
Here’s the next best thing:
Destin is right. The sights are awesome, but it’s the sound that really makes the experience. Be sure to watch through to the point where the boosters come home to roost.
(Note for the impatient: Ignition happens around 3:20 into the video.)
– Bill Basener and John Sanford
Joe Felsenstein and Michael Lynch (JF and ML) wrote a blog post, “Does Basener and Sanford’s model of mutation vs selection show that deleterious mutations are unstoppable?” Their post is thoughtful and we are glad to continue the dialogue. This is the first part of a response to their post, focusing on the impact of R. A. Fisher’s work. Our paper can be found at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00285-017-1190-x
First, a short background on our paper:
The primary thesis of our paper is that Fisher was wrong, in a fundamental way, in his belief that his theorem (“The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection”), implied the certainty of ongoing fitness increase. His claim was that mutations continually provide variance, and selection turns the variance into fitness increase. Central to his logic was that collectively; mutations have a net zero effect on fitness. While Fisher assumed mutations are collectively fitness-neutral, it is now known that the vast majority of mutations are deleterious. So mutations can potentially push fitness down – even in the presence of selection. Continue reading
Over at Uncommon Descent, our friend Barry Arrington has a post, Bargaining With a Machine – which seems to be making a supernatural case for morality. I’d like to offer this as a counterpoint and would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Happy Valentines all xxx.
Once again I make an attempt to open the question of created kinds, or baramins, or whatever you want to call them: groups within which there is common descent but between which there is not. This is an opportunity for the creationists who frequent TSZ to school me on the subject.
I ask one simple question to begin the discussion: how many different kinds of birds are there? (It should be obvious why I chose birds, but the choice was, from a scientific standpoint, arbitrary.) As a followup, how can you tell? If there are indeed separately created kinds, I would think the divisions would be obvious. Would you agree, and why or why not? In any case, I’m not asking for precision; an answer within an order of magnitude will do.
Here’s my answer: 1; all birds belong to the same kind. In fact they form an infinitesimal fraction of a kind, since all life on earth is related. We have discussed the evidence many times here: nested hierarchy, etc. There are no joints at which kinds can easily be carved. How about you?