Humans as “Beloved”: A Signature of Intelligent Design

animals, atheists, beauty, bees, Bethel McGrew, birdsong, cats, cosmos, Darwinism, David Klinghoffer, dust, Evolution, Faith & Science, flowers, Intelligent Design, light, materialistic narrative, mountain peak, nature, Pale Blue Dot, physics, Prince, princess, sunset, symphony, The Story of Everything, tulips, Wall Street Journal
A few minor shifts in how light interacts with matter and our sense of sight would be dulled to most of the visual beauty that we most appreciate in nature. Source
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Sophistication of Bee Decision-Making Is a Mystery, Unless Design Hypothesis Is Permitted

animal behavior, Apis mellifera, bees, behavior, behavioral decisions, brain, communication systems, decision-making, depth, Engineering, flower print, flowers, food, foraging, honeybees, Intelligent Design, Lars Chittka, learning, mantids, memory, mimicry, nectar, noise, pollen, predators, primates, psychology, Punishment, quinine, Radar, reward, signal-to-noise ratio, spiders, sugar, trade-offs, University of Sheffield, vegetation, World War II, zoology
Distinguishing a real flower from a flower print on a woman’s dress can come into play, possibly requiring some experimental probing. Source
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Life and Origami: Lessons from the Art of Paper-Folding

AI systems, amino acids, Artificial Intelligence, boats, brain, butterflies, cranes, Creativity, Cyclommatus metallifer, DNA, embryonic development, Evolution, flowers, folds, information content, Intelligent Design, intelligent entities, Isaac Gonzalez, large language models, nucleotides, origami, planes, simulations, spinal cord, Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2
The differences between an origami figure and a living thing are more instructive than their similarities. 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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Sex Chromosomes Refuse to Fit One Origins Theory

angiosperms, biology, Evolution, flowers, Genome Biology and Evolution, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, Ophrys apifera, sex, sex chromosomes
Doesn’t everyone like sex? Of course they do — and the designer made the sexual organs of angiosperms, namely, flowers, to be the most spectacularly beautiful structures in biology, so he evidently likes sex too.  An invited review (open access) in Genome Biology and Evolution explores the “incredible diversity of sex chromosome systems,” but especially how their evolutionary origins refuse to fit any one theory. See, “Sex chromosome evolution: So many exceptions to the rules.” From the abstract: Despite many convergent genomic patterns exhibited by independently evolved sex chromosome systems, and many case studies supporting these theoretical predictions, emerging data provide numerous interesting exceptions to these long-standing theories, and suggest that the remarkable diversity of sex chromosomes is matched by a similar diversity in their evolution. Photo: Ophrys apifera, also known…
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Earth — The Mystery of Our Colorful Home

Apollo 8, Apollo astronauts, beauty, birds of paradise, butterflies, Carl Sagan, color, crystals, Don Davis, earth, Earthrise, emerald, flowers, Frank Borman, gem stones, insects, Io, Jim Lovell, lunar limb, Mars, Moon, natural selection, Neptune, peacock, Physics, Earth & Space, rainbows, reef fish, sexual selection, solar system, space art, surprise, Uranus, Venus
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth coming up! Wow, that’s pretty!” These were the words William Anders spoke to the other two Apollo 8 crew members, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, just before he took the now famous “earthrise” picture on December 24, 1968. Since then, other Apollo astronauts and even unmanned lunar spacecraft have taken similar pictures (see above). Notice how Anders reacted to the view of Earth rising over the lunar limb; these were obviously spontaneous reactions to something that caught him off guard. He expressed surprise and noted how pretty it looked. These are expressions of beauty. A beautiful thing surprises us. The fact that the earthrise pictures have been reproduced so many times speaks to their universal appeal. Probably most…
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