Previous thread long and off-topic – this seems as good a place as any to pick up the conversation on a new thread.

"Looks like chunkdz talks a big religious game, but when it comes to protecting his house, he puts his faith where it belongs – in science. After all, the Bible tells us that God directs lightning, but it never mentions that you can protect your house (or your church) from it with an iron rod. Guess God didn't want folks to know about that, so he could zap 'em and burn their house down. No wonder so many people learned over time to ditch the Bible and grab the textbook when it comes to important things like keeping your house from getting burned down. Doh

No wonder the percentage of people who call themselves Christian is dropping so quickly in the U.S. (it's already happened elsewhere of course)… The rest of 'em are getting killed by lightning."

-aiguy

Don't you love the way bigots portray believers as idiots? Of course, the bigot fails to realize that the lightning rod was independently discovered by a christian and a Jesuit priest.

Matt Ridley on why we need heretics.

HT: WUWT

People often say this or that is not "science" or that  "science" has proven this or "science" can or can't do that. Are they all talking about the same thing? Perhaps not.

Read the rest of this entry »

The project to try and banish teleology by mechanistic-cum-empiricist interpretations of physical science looks like…well, still a project. People have been and still are trying and trying to explain it away and some even call it "science". Yet, no matter how hard people try, teleology is still “grinning residually up at us like the frog at the bottom of the beer mug”. Never mind the ironic fact that trying to explain away teleology is a teleological, goal-directed enterprise in itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few outspoken scientists argue that it is wrong to believe in a supreme intelligence, but I don't think this is wrong in the usual sense of the word. In fact, a recent poll has shown that 36% of scientists believe in God, and about half are spiritual in some sense. How does a religious scientist accommodate both the questioning that is characteristic of scientific practice and a belief that there is a supreme intelligence behind it all?

I think there is a way for the questioning method of science to meet religious belief without generating the distressing anti-science clash that is newsworthy, yet ultimately destructive. It is clear that matter and energy interact according to a set of physical laws, and strong evidence indicates that the universe had a beginning we call the Big Bang. A religious scientist can comfortably believe that the universe and its laws were put in place by a creator. Science has nothing to say about this statement of faith because it cannot be submitted to experimental tests or observation.

SCIENCE SEZ SO.

HT: Vox Day

Q.) How does Jerry Coyne prove that science and faith are incompatible?

A.) By telling us how much faith he has in science!

Read the rest of this entry »

Scientist Jerry Coyne recently shared some very sad news about one of his fellow scientists.

"Sadly, he shows a chronic and debilitating sympathy for religion"

Jerry is obviously pretty broken up about this. Sad…Chronic…Debilitating… not a good prognosis.

Who is this pathetic creature who's sad spiral into faith has led to a debilitating collapse of reason and judgement? Which promising career has been utterly sapped of drive and creativity by the horrific degenerative effects of religion? Which scientist has become so chronically obsessed with religion, so paralyzed by faith that he can barely light a Bunsen burner or swab a Petri dish??

Jerry is mournful. We can sense his devastation at the sheer tragic loss.

"Sad, isn’t it, that a really smart scientist makes an assertion that “a considerable amount of faith drives everyday science.”

Oh, God, it's worse than I thought. Obviously the onset of dementia has already begun. Tell us Jerry, who is this poor lost soul who's once bright future was tragically stolen by the insidious malignant disease of faith?
Read the rest of this entry »

After the discussion about toolkits and multi-cellularity a few more interesting discoveries were made. For example:
A) Oxygen is Key To 'Cut And Paste' Of Genes.
B) Sodium Channels Evolved Before Animals’ Nervous Systems, Research Shows. (h/t Mike Gene and Nullasalus)
C) Calcium is important for multicellularity and multi-cellular signaling.

These are also interesting facts to take into account:
A) Monosiga brevicollis has an extensive calcium signaling toolkit and emerged before the evolution of multi-cellular animals.
B) Choanoflagellates have five immunoglobulin domains, though they have no immune system; collagen, integrin and cadherin domains, though they have no skeleton or matrix binding cells together; and proteins called tyrosine kinases that are a key part of signaling between cells, even though Monosiga is not known to communicate, or at least does not form colonies.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is also an open thread.

If I understand what Cargo Cult Science is supposed to be, it refers to people mistakenly assuming their cause is identical to the real cause of a resulting event. In this case, the natives assumed that their look-alike airstrip, look-alike headphones and look-alike radio transmitter were the cause of airplanes landing. What the failure of their results should have told them is that they were wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

The case study continues…

In part 1 we discussed how the partisan mind creates an alternate reality by bypassing the rational lobe of the brain. We saw how the partisan brain deals with information which challenges the subject's deeply held partisan beliefs.

Now let's see how the partisan brain processes information which reinforces the subject's deeply held partisan beliefs.

Read the rest of this entry »

98.6 Degrees Fahrenheit Ideal Temperature for Keeping Fungi Away and Food at Bay is the attention grabbing headline of a Science Daily article.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2010) — Two researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that our 98.6° F (37° C) body temperature strikes a perfect balance: warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat nonstop to maintain our metabolism.

The research helps explain a mystery namely, why mammalian temperatures hover around 37 degrees C.

"Not exactly", according to… well. The American Anthropological Association, apparently.

I link to Steve Sailer's blog on this one since he quotes the article in question at length, which otherwise seems to be behind a paywall. Nevertheless, some choice extractions below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Previously I've discussed the problem – particularly the modern problem – of finding much meaning in words like natural, naturalism, and supernatural. Instead of tackling that problem head-on, though, I'd like to go about it in a more roundabout way.

Let's say I have a cosmological theory: The universe is only, say.. 6000 years old. Year 0 marks the sudden appearance of planets, galaxies, species, environments, humanity, and time itself. I'm sure this sounds like a familiar story to you – it is (at least a popular variant of) the young-earth creationist position. But as I've just described it, there's another way to tag this idea.

Read the rest of this entry »