Frankenstein and His Offspring

abiogenesis, Aristotle, biology, cryogenic freezing, Evolution, Frankenstein, Funny Man: Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Harold Urey, Intelligent Design, Mary Shelley, Mel Brooks, movies, origin of life, panspermia, Patrick McGilligan, satire, Stanley Miller, Svante Arrhenius, Why Words Matter: Sense and Nonsense in Science (series), Young Frankenstein
"Abiogenesis" seems to draw its strength from pseudo-scientific folk-beliefs that life could somehow be made to emerge from non-life. Source
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C. S. Lewis Unmasks the Pretensions of SETI

Arecibo Message, Arecibo telescope, Argument from Reason, Artificial Intelligence, Beacon in the Galaxy, Cambridge University, chess, computer games, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, intelligent ETs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, John West, Jonathan Jiang, Martin Rees, Matthew Sparkes, Messaging Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, METI, Physics, Earth & Space, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI, Stephanie Pappas, Stephen Hawking, The Magician’s Twin, Voyager Golden Records, Voyager spacecraft
How can METI / SETI advocates repudiate intelligent design while depending on the design inference for their work? Source
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The Dawkinsian Mythology

Anthony Flew, Bernard de Fontenelle, Charles Darwin, complexification, David Stove, Evolution, gemmules, heredity, Intelligent Design, John Gray, Martian canals, Mary Midgely, meme, pangenesis, Percival Lowell, phlogiston, Richard Dawkins, Richard Spilsbury, The Selfish Gene, Why Words Matter: Sense and Nonsense in Science (series)
Philosopher Mary Midgely pointed out the fatuousness of the “meme” hypothesis in painfully direct terms. Source
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Brain Neurons Are “Comparable to a Library”

axon, biology, brain, Brown University, Duke University, external world, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, library, Max Planck Institute, NELL2, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, pinwheels, proteins, purpose, retina, Robo3, Rockefeller University, visual cortex
It’s one of those occasions in biology (not rare) when the term “intelligent design,” despite other merits, falls flat as a description. Source
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Event Report: Design and the Designer

biology, Biomimetics, COVID-19, Daniel Reeves, design triangulation, Emily Reeves, Eric Metaxas, faith, Faith & Science, history of science, human foot, intellectuals, Intelligent Design, International Space Station, John West, Michael Keas, Olympics, Philadelphia, Physics, Earth & Space, Return of the God Hypothesis, Socrates in the City, Stephen Meyer, Stuart Burgess, Systems Biology, theology, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
There were 16 different talks, ranging from the history of science and faith to more technical topics like systems biology and design triangulation. Source
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Researchers: What’s Evolutionary Debris to You Is Unexplored Territory to Us

centromeres, DNA, Evolution, evolutionary processes, gene expression, Genome Research, human genome, Intelligent Design, Joe Felsenstein, John Avise, Junk DNA, Laurence Moran, Nicholas Matzke, nucleic acids, repetitive elements, researchers, RNA, T. Ryan Gregory, telomeres, transposable elements
From a new, open-access article, “Implications of the first complete human genome assembly.” Source
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Unexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe

Carl Sagan, Contact (novel), Cosmos (magazine), electromagnetism, extraterrestrials, Fibonacci sequence, fine structure constant, Golden Ratio, Intelligent Design, Jordan Ellenberg, Laurence Eaves, Paul Davies, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, pi, Planck’s constant, quantum mechanics, relativity, Richard Feynman, University of Nottingham, Wolfgang Pauli
Richard Feynman called 1/137, the fine structure constant, “a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.” Source
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Design Inference: Stone Structures Were Intelligently Arranged, Though We Don’t Know by Whom

Archaeology, Argument from Reason, Bedouins, chimps, crows, design filter, Design Inference, designer, Evolution, fairy circles, geoglyphs, geometric structures, Intelligent Design, John West, Jordan, Live Science, Middle East, Namibia, Nazca Lines, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Syria, World War I, Yemen
There are hundreds of these structures. They extend over much of the Middle East: Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Source
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