Reply to Free Will Deniers: Show Me

auto accident, behavior, Belief, brains, Chemistry, choice, Clarence Darrow, Culture & Ethics, Darwinian evolution, deterministic free will, faith, free will, free will deniers, ham sandwich, human beings, Jerry Coyne, LARPing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, materialists, Meaning, Neuroscience & Mind, parking lot, philosophers, physics, physiology, Politics, rain, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris, Stephen Cave, The Blue Book
If you carelessly dent a genuine free will denier’s car in a parking lot, he wouldn’t hold you responsible any more than he’d hold your car responsible. Source
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Fossil Friday: New Evidence for the Human Nature of Neanderthals

anatomy, antibiotics, Australian aboriginals, behavior, Bence Viola, biospecies, body decoration, cave art, cavemen, eagle talons, Fossil Friday, gene pool, genetic admixture, glue, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, human nature, Human Origins, human uniqueness, jewelry, lordosis, mating partners, Michael Shermer, native Australians, Neanderthals, ochre, painkillers, paleontology, seafood, spinal curvature, stone circles, Svante Pääbo, Thomas Huxley, University of Toronto
What is at stake is not just some esoteric species problem in the ivory tower, but the very question of human nature and human uniqueness. 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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Physics and Chemistry Could Not Give Rise to Biology

behavior, Big Bang, biological complexity, biology, Brian Miller, Casey Luskin, Chemistry, convergence, death, Diversity, Douglas Axe, electrostatic laws, environmental conditions, enzymes, equilibrium, Evolution, evolutionary algorithms, first law of thermodynamics, George Ellis, gravity, initial conditions, Intelligent Design, laws of forms, laws of nature, leaves, mass-energy, material mechanisms, natural selection, Nature (journal), nucleotide sequences, periodic table of elements, phenotypic plasticity, physics, proteins, quantum physics, Rope Kojonen, Second Law of Thermodynamics, stem cells, Stephen Dilley, structuralism, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design (series)
The laws of nature provide stable conditions and physical boundaries within which biological outcomes are possible. Source
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The Superior Programming that Makes Plants Look Smart

animals, anthropomorphism, bacteria, behavior, biology, Chapman University, Curiosity rover, Darwinians, Duke University, ethylene, flowers, herbivores, Ian T. Baldwin, intelligence, Intelligent Design, ivy, leaf senescence, leaves, Life Sciences, memory, Michael Pollan, Nature (journal), nitrogen, programming, Richard Karban, self-awareness, strigolactone, synthetic organic chemistry, tendrils, tentacles, The New Yorker, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, trees, Wesley Smith
Two signaling molecules — strigolactone and ethylene — can work independently to begin the process of leaf senescence. Source
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Is Human Psychology Better Explained by Evolution or Design?

African Savannah, art, behavior, cathedrals, Daniel Dennett, Darwinian evolution, David Barash, environment of evolutionary adaptedness, evo psych, Evolution, evolutionary psychologists, evolutionary psychology, genes, Henry Schlinger, Human Origins, humans, Intelligent Design, Judith Eve Lipton, just-so stories, Marc Hauser, Moon, museums, music, Oskar Schindler, Philip Skell, Pleistocene, Richard Dawkins, Subrena Smith, survival machines, The Descent of Man, Victorian England
“We are survival machines,” wrote atheist biologist Richard Dawkins, “robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” Source
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Intelligent Design in Animal Self-Location and Navigation

algorithms, Animal Algorithms, bats, behavior, biology, circuits, electronic circuit, Engineering, fish, grid cells, head-direction cells, hindbrain, hippocampus, homeostasis, information, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, mammals, navigation, neural network, neurons, optical flow, place cells, proximate neurons, Research, science, self, zebrafish
A question is whether such mechanisms exist in more ancient brain regions of other animals. A new study has identified a self-location mechanism in zebrafish. Source
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How to Destroy Love with Darwinism

Alice in Wonderland, alleles, altruism, antelopes, ants, behavior, behaviorism, biology, bioRxiv, bonobos, cooperation, Darwinian theory, Evolution, game theory, genetic determinism, Green Beard hypothesis, Kaleda K. Denton, kin selection, Lausanne University, leaping, lions, Love, pandemic, Red Queen hypothesis, slime molds, watchman crow
When Darwin proposed a new view of biology based on chance, he cheapened everything, including our most precious human values. Source
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Darwinism and Intelligent Design in Poland 

Adam Cenian, Andrzej Myc, behavior, biology, creationism, Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Black Box, Darwinism, Discovery Institute, En Arche Foundation, eugenics, Evolution, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Fundacja En Arche, Grzegorz Malec, Icons of Evolution, Intelligent Design, marriage, Marxism, Michael Behe, Michael Denton, morals, Phillip E. Johnson, Poland, Polish, relationships, restaurants, Signature in the Cell, slavery, steak tartare, Stephen Meyer, University of Warsaw, vodka, Vodka (restaurant), Warsaw, World War II
On January 29, 2020, I arrived in Warsaw, Poland, in the middle of a blizzard. Fortunately, most of the snow had cleared away by January 31, when I lectured at an event celebrating the release of a new Polish translation of my book, Icons of Evolution.  The event was organized by Fundacja En Arche (the En Arche Foundation, or roughly, the Origins Foundation). Although its critics call it a “creationist” organization, Fundacja En Arche is not about biblical creationism (whether young Earth or old Earth). Instead, it focuses on the scientific and philosophical issues of Darwinism and intelligent design. I told the staff that the foundation reminded me of Discovery Institute twenty years ago.  A major part of En Arche’s work so far has been translating into Polish books such…
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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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