17Oct 2020 by Post

ID by Another Name? Astronomer Says 50 Percent Chance We’re Living in Computer Simulation

base reality, Bayesian reasoning, Brian Josephson, Cambridge University, Cavendish Laboratory, Columbia University, computer simulation, David Kipping, Douglas Axe, Evolution, forecast, Intelligent Design, Jonathan McLatchie, mathematics, Michael Egnor, Nobel Prize, rain, Scientific American, Twitter, umbrella
Of course, an 80 percent chance that we live in an intelligently design world compares favorably with only a 50 percent chance. Source
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06May 2020 by Post

Message from the Molecules — They Say “Intelligent Design”

biology, chauvinism, Chemistry, computer engineering, cosmology, Darwin's Black Box, Evolution, Foresight (book), Intelligent Design, Marcos Eberlin, mass spectrometry, mathematics, Michael Behe, molecules, Nobel laureates, physics
Biology, cosmology, physics, mathematics, computer engineering, chemistry… You could have an interesting argument among proponents of intelligent design about which field of science will ultimately clinch the argument for ID. Famed chemist Marcos Eberlin claims the honor will go to chemistry. Chauvinism, you say? Perhaps. You could take that up with the three Nobel laureates who endorsed his recent book, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. “The molecules speak for themselves,” says Dr. Eberlin here. “The molecules will speak louder and louder and louder and finally we will have to surrender to the message that the molecules are sending to us. They say clearly, ‘Intelligent design is the source of life.’” Eberlin’s specific field is mass spectrometry, which, as he has explained to me, is the powerful…
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21Mar 2020 by Post

Listen: Kirk Durston on Fantasy Science and Scientism

Atheism, biophysics, Evidence, experimental science, fantasy science, historical sciences, ID The Future, inferential science, Kirk Durston, materialism, mathematics, multiverse, philosophy, Physics, Earth & Space, Podcast, proteins, testing
On a new episode of ID the Future, Kirk Durston, a biophysicist focused on identifying high-information-density parts of proteins, completes a three-part series on three categories of science: experimental, inferential, and fantasy science. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Fantasy science makes inferential leaps so huge that virtually none of it is testable, either by the standards of experimental science or by those of the historical sciences, which reason to the best explanation by process of elimination. One example of fantasy science, according to Durston, is the multiverse. As he argues, that is an imaginative story largely untethered from evidence and testing, but told using math instead of literary devices. Scientism, “atheism dressed up in a lab coat,” can lead to fantasy science of this kind because it commits…
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16Feb 2020 by Post

Michael Aeschliman in National Review — Berlinski Detonates “Fatuous, Flattering” Optimism

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ben Shapiro, biology, climate change, coronavirus, Culture & Ethics, ethics, First World War, future, Herbert Butterfield, Homo Deus, Human Nature (book), Incarnation, intellectuals, Ivy League, Jonathan Swift, Law of the Jungle, linguistics, Malcolm Muggeridge, Martin Luther King, mathematics, Michael Aeschliman, Middle East, National Review, philosophy, Reinhold Niebuhr, Steven Pinker, Sunday Special, T.S. Eliot, The Better Angels of Our Nature
From climate change to the coronavirus, one tendency among writers and commentators is to an urgent, insatiable, almost sexual desire to cast unwarranted terror over other people. This tendency is matched by an equal appetite, among a large part of the public, for being terrified. The market is well matched with its suppliers. But this dynamic is mirrored by its opposite: a wish, proceeding from different personal imperatives but no less urgent, to assure us that the future looks better and better, all progress with little pain. There’s a market for this, too, and the relationship with the suppliers is just as tight. It’s to this second pairing that David Berlinski turns his attention in his recent essay collection, Human Nature. Two Celebrity Intellectuals Dr. Berlinski gets a fabulous review…
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14Feb 2020 by Post

In the “Mathematical Glory” of the Universe, Physicist Discovered the “Truly Divine”

A Brief History of Time, Anthropic Principle, Atheism, divine, John Horgan, mathematics, multiverse theory, physicist, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, Scientific American, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Meyer, Sunday School, The Return of the God Hypothesis
How did this slip through? John Horgan with Scientific American interviewed a physicist colleague, Christopher Search. The physicist is appealingly direct in rejecting the atheism associated with Stephen Hawking and other venerated names in the field. More than that, he says it was physics that brought him to a recognition of the “truly divine” in the universe: Over the years my view of physics has evolved significantly. I no longer believe that physics offers all of the answers. It can’t explain why the universe exists or why we are even here. It does though paint a very beautiful and intricate picture of the how the universe works. I actually feel sorry for people that do not understand the laws of physics in their full mathematical glory because they are missing…
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11Dec 2019 by Post

Are the Laws of the Universe “Inevitable”?

Adam Falkowski, Albert Einstein, beauty of nature, Big Bang, black holes, CEA Saclay, Daniel Baumann, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Laurentiu Rodina, laws of the universe, mathematics, metric tensor, Natalie Wolchover, Nobel Prize, Paul Dirac, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, Quanta Magazine, quantum mechanics, Shakespearean sonnet, Sistine Chapel, Steven Weinberg, theory of gravity, University of Amsterdam
Natalie Wolchover at Quanta Magazine has a thoughtful but misguided essay on the “inevitability” of the laws of nature. She writes: Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different. “There’s just no freedom in the laws of physics that we have,” said Daniel Baumann, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam. She cites Baumann to describe the incredible interlocked intricacy of physical laws: [L]aws essentially dictate one another through their mutual consistency — that nature “pulls itself up by its own bootstraps.” The idea turns out to explain a huge amount about the universe.…
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23Nov 2019 by Post

“Relentless and Devastating”: Mathematician Stephen McKeown on Berlinski’s Human Nature

Dallas, David Berlinski, Evolution, history, Human Nature (book), mathematics, quiddities, science, scientific knowledge, Stephen McKeown, University of Texas, wit, writers
More terrific endorsements for Human Nature! Here is mathematician Stephen McKeown on the latest from David Berlinski: Another tour de force by David Berlinski. Few writers indeed, about science or society, can boast such a thoroughgoing command of the significant ideas of the past century, the confident mastery of every centrally significant scientific theory. Yet if Berlinski derives obvious joy from the great theories that unify the world, he is never more memorable than when he vividly displays its irreducible particulars, holding the quiddities of place and person more clearly before our imagination than we might even see them ourselves. If Berlinski glories in science’s achievements, he is no less dismissive of those attempts to see pattern and abstraction born not of vision but of ignorance; and he repeatedly marshals…
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12Nov 2019 by Post

Original, Incisive, Brilliant: Victor Davis Hanson on Berlinski’s Human Nature

celebrities, Culture & Ethics, David Berlinski, endorsements, Evolution, groupthink, Hoover Institution, human nature, intellectuals, linguistics, mathematics, military history, philosophy, physics, Stanford University, Uncommon Knowledge, Victor Davis Hanson
I’ve already had my say on David Berlinski’s new book, Human Nature. Now come the celebrity endorsements! I mean the endorsements from celebrity intellectuals. For the courage and clarity of his own writing, Victor Davis Hanson is a hero to me. Here’s what he has to say about Berlinski: Polymath David Berlinski’s appraisal of a transcendent human nature is really a military history, a discourse on physics and mathematics, a review of philosophy and linguistics, and a brilliant indictment of scientific groupthink by an unapologetic intellectual dissident. Read it and learn something original and incisive on every page. Yes, true. Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The Second World Wars and other books. More to come. Photo: David Berlinski on Uncommon…
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