29Jan 2025 by Post

Here’s the Other Common Objection to Intelligent Design — Answered

adaptations, Armin Moczek, automobile lineages, automobiles, bats, BIO-Complexity, biology, cars, convergence, creator, dependency graph, dolphins, echolocation, Evolution, Evolution News, Faith & Science, Field Museum of Natural History, genes, George Gaylord Simpson, history of life, humans, improvements, Indiana University, Intelligent Design, life, magic wand, New York Times, PDE2D, physics, planning, software, Technology, testing, The Guardian, The Mathematical Intelligencer, theology, unintelligent process, Why Evolution Is Different, Winston Ewert
If you asked me, “Do you believe in evolution?” I would reply “I believe in the evolution of life, and the evolution of automobiles." Source
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03Mar 2024 by Post

War on Human Exceptionalism Turns to Tool Use

Abigail Desmond, abstraction, animals, archaeologists, bragging rights, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, crows, debris, dolphins, environment, hands, Harvard University, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, life forms, Michael Haslam, monkeys, Neuroscience & Mind, octopuses, Oxford University, Saturn V rocket, sea urchins, tool use, tools
As the academic war on human exceptionalism motors on, researchers’ thinking sometimes shorts out — and they don’t even notice. Source
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03Oct 2023 by Post

Dreaming Animals and Human Exceptionalism

abstractions, American Kennel Club, animals, bird song, birds, cats, cuttlefish, David M. Peña-Guzmán, dolphins, dreaming, horses, human exceptionalism, information, jumping spiders, learning, Life Sciences, memory, Neuroscience & Mind, rapid eye movement, sleep, Smithsonian Magazine, spiders, symbols, Teresa Iglesias, thought, whales
Researchers have detected something like REM (rapid eye movement) sleep — which is associated with dreaming in humans — in jumping spiders. Source
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14Feb 2023 by Post

New Scientist: Ichthyosaurs Evolved “Astonishingly Rapidly”

Cartorhynchus, cetaceans, Current Biology, Cymbospondylus youngorum, Darwinian gradualism, dolphins, Early Eocene, Evolution, Fossil Hill, fossil record, Frontiers in Earth Science, Günter Bechly, ichthyosaur, land mammals, Mesozoic, Neo-Darwinism, Nevada, New Scientist, Pakicetus, paleontology, Permian-Triassic extinction, porpoises, Science (journal), Sclerocormus, Tethys Sea, whales
This is a case of evolutionary biology trying to explain away the data that otherwise was not directly expected under their model. Source
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09Dec 2022 by Post

MicroRNAs: A New Clue About Octopus Intelligence?

apes, biology, brain, central brain, cognitive abilities, Cris Niell, crows, cuttlefish, Dogs, dolphins, elephants, Grygoriy Zolotarov, intelligence, MicroRNAs, miRNAs, nervous system, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurotransmitters, Nikolaus Rajewsky, octopus, Oregon, RNA, science, squid, vertebrates, whales, William Rainey Harper
While octopus brains are very different from vertebrate brains, they share with vertebrates, a huge number of microRNAs. Source
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03Sep 2021 by Post

“Do You Believe in Evolution?” A Short Answer

automobiles, bats, BIO-Complexity, cars, classes, convergence, Darwinian theory, Darwinism, dependency graph, dolphins, Dutch, echolocation, English, Evolution, genes, George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard University, Intelligent Design, orders, phyla, Polish, science fiction, software, Spanish, Technology, Tree of Life, Why Evolution Is Different, Winston Ewert
You don't have time to give a 30-minute answer outlining the different meanings of the word "evolution" and the evidence pro and con for each. Source
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11May 2020 by Post

In Biology, Intelligent Designs that Amaze, Amuse, and Entertain

Alticini, An Uplifting Story, bottlenose dolphins, catapult, dandelions, Darwinism, dolphins, Evolution, fish stocks, flea beetle, flea beetles, Francis Collins, Illustra Media, infrared cameras, infrared radiation, Intelligent Design, International Society for Photonics and Optics, Keith Moorad, killer whales, leaf beetles, Lehigh University, Life Sciences, Michael Behe, National Institutes of Health, night vision goggles, origami, parachute, Pensoft, PNAS, toothed whales, U.S. Navy, Zookeys
A parade of amazing designs from the living world has passed through these pages over the years, and it shows no sign of stopping. Here are some entertaining examples from recent news. Jump Like a Flea, Beetle Flea beetles, or Alticini, are high-jump champions among the coleopterans (beetles) in the insect world. There are some 9,900 species of flea beetles, a “hyper-diverse group” that inhabits environments from deserts to rainforests all over the world. The Pensoft blog shows a picture of one, saying, “Exceptional catapulting jump mechanism in a tiny beetle could be applied in robotic limbs.”  The fascinating and highly efficient jumping mechanism in flea beetles is described in a new research article in the open-access journal Zookeys. Despite having been known since 1929, the explosive jump — which is also the reason behind the colloquial name of this…
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04Dec 2019 by Post

No Harm, No Foul — What If Darwinism Were Excised from Biology?

Adam C. Soloff, Amir Marcovitz, appendectomy, bacteria, bats, behavior, cephalectomy, Daphne Major island, Darwin Devolves, Darwin's Finches, Darwinism, Darwinspeak, dolphins, echolocation, Evolution, Galápagos Islands, Hippocratic Oath, homeostasis, Illustra Media, Immune System, introgressive hybridization, Jerry Coyne, Marcos Eberlin, Michael Behe, Michael T. Lotze, Peter and Rosemary Grant, pharynx, Philip Skell, phylogeny, PNAS, primum non nocere, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Richard Dawkins, sound generation, tonsillectomy, turtles, whales
Some biologists might shudder at the thought of eliminating Darwinism from their scientific work. A “Darwin-ectomy” sounds more painful than a tonsillectomy or appendectomy. To hard-core evolutionists, it might sound like a cephalectomy (removal of the head)! If Darwinism is as essential to biology as Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne argues, then removing evolutionary words and concepts should make research incomprehensible.  If, on the other hand, Darwinism is more of a “narrative gloss” applied to the conclusions after the scientific work is done, as the late Philip Skell observed, then biology would survive the operation just fine. It might even be healthier, slimmed down after disposing of unnecessary philosophical baggage. Here are some recent scientific papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to use as test…
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