Fossil Friday: Cambrian Bryozoa Come and Go

bilaterians, body plans, Bryozoa, Cambrian animals, Cambrian Explosion, Carboniferous strata, chordates, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Fossil Friday, fossil record, great Ordovician biodiversification event, green algae, inkblots, invertebrates, lophophore, Lower Cambrian, Lower Ordovician, metazoans, microCT, Middle Pennsylvanian, molecular clock studies, moss animals, Nevada, Ohio, paleontology, phosphatic fossils, Pywackia baileyi, South China, tentacles
This is a field that often has more in common with the interpretation of inkblots in Rorschach tests than with hard science. Source
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Happy Thanksgiving! Here Are Michael Denton’s Top 3 Reasons for Optimism About ID

academia, brain, Darwinism, Evolution, Fornace, gratitude, Harvard University, ID movement, Intelligent Design, Italy, James Tour, Lee Cronin, materialism, matter, Michael Denton, mind, Minding the Brain, origin of life, Scuola di Filosofia di Fornace, Thanksgiving, The Miracle of Man
One reason, he says, is the “relentless” growth of the ID movement, in academia and around the world. This conversation is itself evidence on the latter point. Source
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Design: A Scientific Proxy for Intelligence

Antarctica, arson, biology, carbon dioxide, Dead Sea Scrolls, design detection, Evolution, geological history, Greenland Ice Sheet Project, intelligence, intelligent agency, Intelligent Design, Lake Vostok, magnetic field, Michael Egnor, minds, natural forces, Paul Nelson, probability, shales, water, Willaim Dembski
The Dead Sea Scrolls are an example of a design artifact for which intelligence is inferred as the source. Source
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Mimesis and Identifying the Intelligent Designer

atheists, biology, Chemistry, climate change, creative activity, entertainment, Evolution, Faith & Science, high school, human beings, intelligent activity, Intelligent Design, materialists, mimesis, music, non-fiction, Patrick T. Brown, philosophy, popular fiction, René Girard, The Free Press, thick desire, thin desire
We are social creatures, meant to be together. That means social pressure is real and can be intense. Source
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Mimetic Behavior in the Scientific Community

Alfred Wegener, Anthony Fauci, arXiv, Budapest, CDC, childbed fever, Continental Drift, Evolution, firefighters, geologists, government, Ignaz Semmelweis, insane asylum, Medicine, mental health, microbes, mimesis, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, nurses, Pangaea, philosophers, police, propaganda, René Girard, transit workers, Vaccines
Sometimes the suppression comes from the government. The restriction on doctors' freedom to use promising treatments during the pandemic was unprecedented. Source
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Epigenetics: Performing the Genome

cadenza, central dogma, coda, Current Biology, diet, DNA, EMBO Reports, environment, epigenetics, Evolution, exercise, Frank Gannon, Frankenstein, genome, Intelligent Design, John Innes Centre, Life Sciences, lifestyle, low oxygen, mental habits, middle C, mind, mood, mutations, pianist, piano, RNA, Serengeti, tempo, University of Georgia, Van Cliburn, Vladimir Horowitz, zebra, zebra finch, zebrafish
Epigenetics is surpassing genetics in distinction, just as the pianist gets the applause and not the piano. Source
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Couldn’t Life’s Information Have Accumulated Gradually? No, and New Long Story Explains Why Not

accuracy, biological information, chemical evolution, code, DNA, Evolution, genome, information, Intelligent Design, James Tour, Long Story Short, Lynn Helena Caporale, origin of life, researchers, self-replication, The Implicit Genome, YouTube videos
It turns out there are five separate qualities to life and its information that make this comforting rationalization impossible to uphold. Source
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The Best and Worst Heuristics for Biological Discovery

biology, Cell (journal), cellular activity, cryoelectron tomography, cytoplasmic lattices, embryo, embryonic arrest, embryonic development, epigenetic reprogramming, Evolution, filaments, heuristic, Intelligent Design, intermediate filaments, mammalian development, mammalian yolk, mammals, microscopy, oocytes, PADI6, proteins, ribosomal arrays, subcortical maternal complex
"We don’t know what this structure does, so it probably does nothing. Remember, evolution produces a lot of non-functional debris." Source
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