Skeptic Michael Shermer’s Non-Vision of the Soul

Bayesian reasoning, body, brain, COSM 2025, David Deutsch, Faith & Science, Francis Crick, materialist paradigm, Michael Egnor, Michael Shermer, mind, near-death experiences, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurosurgeons, Skeptics Society, soul, The Astonishing Hypothesis, The Beginning of Infinity
Responding to Michael Egnor at COSM 2025, he said that the soul is an explanation but not a good explanation for our relationship to our bodies. Source
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For Good or Evil: The Contradictory Legacy of James D. Watson

Africa, animals, atheists, cellular operations, Christie’s, codes, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, digital code, DNA, double helix, Evolution, faith, Francis Crick, genes, genetic isolation, genetics, history, Human Zoos, humans beings, information, intelligence, Intelligent Design, intelligent designer, James D. Watson, John West, language, Maurice Wilkins, nihilism, Nobel Prize, Plato's Revenge, Race, Racism, religion, Richard Dawkins, Richard Sternberg, sequence hypothesis, Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer, The Information Enigma, theism
Let’s hope that whoever writes the future history of science will, like the bidder for that Nobel medal, be merciful to him. Source
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Teleology: Anticipation and Necessity

anticipation, August Weismann, Bible, building blocks, Chance and Necessity, chipmunks, cognition, Design Inference, DNA, electromagnetism, Evolution, Faith & Science, Ferrari, final causality, flowering plants, Ford Mustang, Francis Crick, grizzly bear, immanent power, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, James Hutchison Stirling, Jaques Monod, natural selection, natural theology, necessity, nectar, perch, pollinators, representational directedness, rodent, Technology, telos, Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, tuna, Wiliam Dembski, wolf
Imagine a primordial grizzly bear on the northern edge of the forest adjacent to the Arctic. His soma senses the differences of the new environment. Source
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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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