Extraterrestrial Life Would Demonstrate Human Exceptionalism

cabbage, carrots, Charles Darwin, civilizations, Copernican moment, earth, Evolution, extraterrestrial life, Francis Crick, genes, history, human beings, human exceptionalism, Human Genome Project, Intelligent Design, life, machinery, Matt Ridley, music, natural selection, Nicolaus Copernicus, Planetology, planets, sun
I hope we do find life elsewhere. It would be another step in our advancement as a species. Source
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Intelligent Design Is Not Just for Conservatives

1619 Project, Anglo-Saxons, Big Book, Cambridge University Press, Charles Darwin, Charles Kingsley, cisnormative, conservative Christians, conservatives, Darwin’s Bluff, David Berlinski, David Moulton, Discovery Institute, Dover Area School District, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, Evolution’s Rainbow, Francis Crick, George Gaylord Simpson, H.M.S. Beagle, Holly Dunsworth, Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, Intelligent Design, J.B.S. Haldane, Joan Roughgarden, Leif Jensen, liberalism, liberals, Michael Behe, Michael Denton, Nikole-Hannah Jones, orchids, Origin of Species, pseudoscience, Sewell Wright, Stephen Meyer, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Thomas Nagel
After a decade of immersing myself in Darwin studies, evolutionary theory, and intelligent design, I find myself unexpectedly supportive of the iD position. Source
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Dawkins and Picard Win This Year’s Trotter Prize

affective computing, American Humanist Association, C.S. Lewis, Charlie Townes, clash, Culture & Ethics, Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, debates, Denis Noble, Denyse O'Leary, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, Francis Crick, Ide P. Trotter Sr., Intelligent Design, James Shapiro, Mendelian genetics, Micah Green, Michael Egnor, Miracles (book), MIT, Old Testament, qualia, Richard Dawkins, Roger Penrose, Rosalind Picard, Rudder Theatre, Santa Fe, Simon Conway Morris, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Steven Weinberg, Stuart Kauffman, Texas A&M University, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Blind Watchmaker, The End of Christianity, The Third Way of Evolution, Trotter Prize, Tufts University, violence, Zeitgeist
A reflection on the 2025 Trotter Prize Lecture delivered by Oxford's Richard Dawkins and MIT's Rosalind Picard. Source
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Protein Designers Explore Sequence Space

A. E. Wilder-Smith, amino acids, Centre for Genomic Regulation, chance, Charles Thaxton, earthquakes, Evolution, Ewen Callaway, Francis Crick, Illustra Media, intelligence, Intelligent Design, James F. Coppedge, No Free Lunch, primordial soup, proteins, Roger Olsen, sequence hypothesis, The Design Inference, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Walter Bradley, wind, Wistar Institute
They may call it evolution, but it is all about intelligent design and artificial selection, not Darwinism. Source
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My Briar Patch: Notes of a Country Doctor 

Biologic Revolution, Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, briar patch, cancer, Daniel Witt, Francis Crick, geocentrism, heliocentrism, Intelligent Design, Jacques Monod, James Watson, John Searle, mechanistic consensus, Medicine, painting, piano, planets, René Descartes, science of purpose, scientific atheism, Stuart Kauffman, telos, The Song of the South, The Undying Soul, UC Berkeley, University of California at San Francisco
It took me about twenty years after medical school to break free of the intellectual "comfort" afforded by the mechanistic consensus. Source
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New Long Story Video Tackles “A Battle of Predictions: Junk DNA”

BioEssays, biologists, biology, Carmen Sapienza, Columbia University, DNA, ENCODE, Evolution, evolutionary biologists, Forrest Mims, Francis Crick, Genome Biology and Evolution, genomes, Intelligent Design, John Bodnar, John Mattick, Jonathan Wells, Journal of Human Evolution, Junk DNA, Laurence Moran, Living with Darwin, Long Story Short, Nature (journal), Nature Methods, Oxford University Press, paradigm shift, Philip Kitcher, predictions, Richard Dawkins, Scientific American, Taylor & Francis, The Greatest Show on Earth, University of Toronto, W. Ford Doolittle, What’s in Your Genome, William Dembski
Something happened in 2012 that changed the entire debate in favor of the ID-based prediction that DNA would be largely functional. Source
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Specified Complexity Made Simple: The Historical Backdrop

Charles Thaxton, complex specified order, English, Evolution, Francis Crick, information theory, Intelligent Design, Jason Rosenhouse, Leslie Orgel, letters, On Protein Synthesis, Paul Davies, random order, repetitive order, Roger Olsen, specified complexity, Specified Complexity Made Simple (series), The Design Inference, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Walter Bradley, Wikipedia, William Dembski
What happened to change the fortunes of specified complexity in the mainstream scientific community? The intelligent design movement happened. Source
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Brain as a Quantum System: Theory Gets New Traction

Al Gore, anesthesiologists, Astonishing Hypothesis, behavior, Bill Clinton, birds, brain tissue, consciousness, Dorje C. Brody, Francis Crick, George Musser, human mind, internal compass, materialism, Medicine, neurons, Neuroscience & Mind, New Scientist, Orch Or Theory, organoids, proteins, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, quantum computation, Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Trinity College Dublin, University of Surrey
Hameroff and Penrose’s Orch Or Theory sees consciousness as the outcome of a quantum collapse of a wave function. Source
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Can Animal Minds Explain Human Minds?

Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, Christof Koch, consciousness, crabs, dualists, Francis Crick, hard problem of consciousness, John Horgan, Kristin Andrews, Life Sciences, materialism, mind, nervous system, neurological capacity, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, panpsychism, philosophers, philosophy, physiology, The Animal Mind, theists, York University
Kristin Andrews thinks consciousness researchers should discard the assumptions of “white, male and WEIRD” philosophy profs and study more crabs. Source
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