The story of Krista and Tatiana Hogan, 11-year-old twin girls born in Vancouver, British Columbia, who are joined at the top, back, and sides of their heads, will doubtless be familiar to most readers. Here’s a documentary that was made about the twins:

https://youtu.be/WKwT1Ol3nY0

Over at Uncommon Descent and Evolution News and Views, Denyse O’Leary, David Klinghoffer and Michael Egnor (who is a Professor of Neurosurgery at State University of New York, Stony Brook), have argued that the Hogan twins constitute a living refutation of the materialistic notion that mind and brain are one and the same thing. Each twin has her own distinct mind and personality, despite the fact that they share parts of their brains.

In this post, I’m going to argue that while these three authors are perfectly correct in insisting that each twin does indeed possess a mind of her own, their claim that this fact refutes materialism is profoundly mistaken. On the contrary, I will argue that the twins’ ability to share thoughts without speaking weakens the case for Thomistic dualism, and lends support to a subtle variety of materialism which incorporates top-down causation. And on this point, the mother of the Hogan twins would probably agree with me: she sends her children to a school run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which teaches that the human brain is the seat of thought, language, creativity, morality and even our consciousness of God. Could this Christian version of materialism be correct, after all?

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Much of the popular debate about evolution is between neo-Darwinians and neo-Paleyans (advocates of “intelligent design”). If you ask a neo-Paleyan who the intelligent designer is, they typically say they believe “God”, but there are other possible answers, for example, “extraterrestrials”, which begs the question “Who designed extraterrestrials?”, although I will ignore it. Continue reading →

Here is something that is worth arguing over.

In another post, recent contributor TomMueller stated that GPS satellites use relativistic synchronization to match up their clocks with earthbound clocks.  I explained to him that this was not so, even though its easy to believe, if you don’t think critically, that it is.

Tom followed my post to him with a litany of ad hominem, “Oh, you are a moron, you are a troll, creationist idiots,  I read about it on a credible site, I talked to a physics professor about it…” and on and on he went with his insults and denial.

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So what is Entropy?

To follow in the tradition of Maimonides. Entropy is NOT a tendency to disorder! I need to thank Joe Felsenstein for directing me to Frank L. Lambert’s insights on a previous thread probably best left alone. Here is a great site to elucidate Lambert’s insights:

http://entropysite.oxy.edu/

What about Evolution? Can complex systems arise naturally and spontaneously into higher tiers of complexity and order and opportunity—according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics— and all without divine intervention commonly described as Intelligent Design or Irreducible Complexity?

Sean Carroll has much to offer on this question:

Entropy and Complexity, Cause and Effect, Life and Time

Participants should refrain from arc-reflex boiler-plate diatribes echoing previously held opinion and first examine what Carroll has to say. Failure to do so will merit cyber-smack downs.

Over at Biologos, an evangelical theologian named Robin Parry has written a hit piece titled, God is More Than an Intelligent Designer. Now, I have no problem with someone criticizing Intelligent Design. But I do have a problem when someone criticizes it without getting out of his armchair and taking a look at the evidence for and against it. My own position is that Intelligent Design theory should be evaluated on strictly scientific grounds. Parry, unfortunately, criticizes it for all the wrong reasons, which can be summed up in a single, dismissive phrase: “Your God is too small.”

Is Parry right? Let’s have a look at his arguments.

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This is my second kick at the can and a follow up to my last OP called:

A worksheet targeted for High School students proving once and for all that Photosynthesis is not “Irreducibly Complex”

In deference to Keiths, I have changed the title.

I want to thank participants for their insightful suggestions… yes that includes you Sal. I even included your frog metaphor.

Special thanks go to Mung and to Bill!

A very deep bow and tip of the hat goes to Keiths.

NEW LINK

I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions for improvement before I finalize it and submit to the Biology Teachers’ cyber-community for their perusal.

If you were going to argue that any species on Earth is the product of intelligent design, then humans would be a pretty logical choice – after all, we’re the only species that’s capable of knowing whether we’re designed, and if so, of inquiring as to who our Designer might be. That makes us a pretty remarkable species. In a recent unsigned post, Evolution News and Views attempts to summarize the evidence for humans as products of intelligent design. Unfortunately, it does such a poor job that it ends up shooting itself in the foot. In this post, I’d like to highlight the questions which any halfway-decent case for humans being design products needs to address, and suggest a few answers.

Briefly, the questions which any theory positing that humans were designed needs to answer are as follows:

(1) What exactly are human beings?
(2) Which physical and mental attributes of human beings can we confidently say were designed?
(3) Did these attributes all appear at once? And if not, what are the implications for human equality?
(4) Which hominins in the fossil record qualify as human?
(5) Can we identify the point in the fossil record at which human beings appear, as products of intelligent design? If not, why not?

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But not all of them. It’s interesting that even the most hardened creationists who have exposure to some science still cannot quite bring themselves to rule out the possibility of a beneficial mutation. Here’s Sal:

Much (not all) the heterozygosity and alleles were created and thus differences were strategically positioned to not cause functional compromise and most of the mutations thereafter are rare variants and slightly damaging.

So if most are slightly damaging then a few are beneficial. And if a few are beneficial then even fewer will be highly beneficial.

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We have been gibbering for many, many pages, at least nominally on the topic ‘Common Design vs Common Descent’. I’d like here to discuss an interesting fact I discovered during the course of this. I mentioned it twice, but readers seemed underwhelmed by what, to me, looks like a genuine scientific discovery (I haven’t searched exhaustively for priority). More importantly for present purposes, it provides a useful test-bed for several concepts that regularly do the rounds.

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and behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,eating steak and drinking wine.

“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Isaiah 22:13

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Some present may remember an entertaining (not to mention illuminating (pun intended) ) blog by Professor Larry Moran:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2016/04/fun-and-games-with-otangelo-grasso.html

I am a high school Biology teacher and Professor Moran threw out some challenges which cut me to the quick.

Here is a very brief and incomplete summary:

The dual photosystems of Blue-Green Algae clearly evolved late from a combination of a type I reaction center in species like Heliobacter and green sulfur bacteria and a type II reaction center from species like purple bacteria and green filamentous bacteria. The oxygen evolving complex was a late addition.

Both photosystems employ Porphyrins and Carotenoids which are important in various metabolic processes (not just photosynthesis) meaning their evolutionary history may reflect many other functions only to be co-opted later for photosynthesis. Meanwhile both can be demonstrated to have abiogenic origins.

Meanwhile RuBisCO is found in non-photosynthetic species…

According to Professor Moran, many misconceptions are perpetuated when teaching according to textbook orthodoxy. Instead we should consider Photoreduction and Photophosphorylation as two stand-alone processes, and that the capture of light energy to produce carbohydrates is a highly specialized phenomenon; which, from an evolutionary point of view is not really (at least not originally) part of “photosynthesis” (i.e. carbohydrate anabolism).

Even Flowering Plants not only can, but in fact most of the time do, decouple ATP/NADPH production from Carbon fixation. Indeed, much of the ATP & NADPH generated by Photosystems II & I respectively are in fact redirected to immediate energy needs, even in flowering plants.

Meanwhile, I heartily agree with Larry Moran’s thesis that it is important (nay, let’s say instead imperative) to teach students that there’s more to life than just flowering plants and humans?

Larry Moran (in very unsubtle and less than gentle terms) “suggests” such strategies should apply to teaching of all biochemistry; i.e. from simple pathways to more complex pathways.

A recent “must-read” article inspired me to respond to Larry Moran’s challenge,

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13924.pdf

… and I have cobbled together a worksheet, where I attempt to prove that photosynthesis is

1 – misunderstood (tis not really about Glucose and it’s not even about the Calvin Cycle) at least from a Biochemist’s evolutionary POV. Ecologists have justification to differ.
2 – NOT “irreducibly complex” but rather a hodge-podge cobbling by evolution over a long period of time. (cf https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/evolution-and-tinkering-1977-francois-jacob)

Larry Moran’s fingerprints are all over this work of mine, for which I really cannot claim any originality on my part.

I would be grateful for any constructive input and suggestions for improvement. Remember, the intended target audience remains high school students.

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By6ZKSkkTEG-QXFtWVhKOWNwREE/view

Geneticist Richard Buggs, Reader in Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary University of London, has just written an intriguing article in Nature: Ecology and Evolution (28 October 2017), titled, Adam and Eve: a tested hypothesis? Comments on a recent book chapter. It appears that Buggs is unpersuaded that science has ruled out Adam and Eve. He thinks it’s still theoretically possible that the human race once passed through a short, sharp population bottleneck of just two individuals, followed by exponential population growth. Buggs disagrees with the assessment of Christian biologist Dennis Venema, professor of biology at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, who forthrightly declared in chapter 3 of his 2017 book Adam and the Genome that it is scientifically impossible that the human lineage ever passed through a bottleneck of two, and we can be as certain about this fact as we are about the truth of heliocentrism.

Here’s Buggs’ take-down of the three methods employed by Venema to discredit the possibility of a single primal couple. As a layperson, I have to say it looks as if Buggs has done his homework:

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In a recent thread, I challenged Christians and other believers to explain why their supposedly loving God treats people so poorly. Toward the end of the thread, I commented:

We’re more than 1200 comments into this thread, and still none of the believers can explain why their “loving” God shits all over people, day after day.

If you loved someone, would you purposely trap them under the rubble of a collapsed building? Or drown them? Or drive them from their home and destroy their possessions? [Or stand by, doing nothing, while a maniac mowed them down using automatic weapons?]

Your supposedly loving God does that. Why?

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