Tag: Paul Nelson

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
January 25, 2023

Tagged
Albert Einstein, Barry Marshall, Challenger disaster, consensus science, conservative behavior, consolidating science, Cornel University, courage, decline of science, Delta function, disruption, disruptive science, federal science funding, follow the science, Gregor Mendel, groundbreaking science, herd effect, history of science, incremental science, Intelligent Design, John Horgan, Michael Park, Paul Nelson, peptic ulcers, Peter Thiel, Richard Feynman, risk, risky behavior, Robert Crowther, scientific consensus, scientific creativity, scientific dogma, scientific progress, scientific specialization, scientific trailblazers, self-citation, The End of Science, The Paradox of Consensus, Thomas Gold, Watson and Crick}

Nature Paper: Groundbreaking Science on the Decline

_{Paul Nelson

January 25, 2023

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future philosopher of science Paul Nelson discusses a new paper in Nature making waves in the scientific community, “Papers and Patents are Becoming Less Disruptive over Time.” According to Michael Park and his fellow researchers, the rate of groundbreaking scientific discoveries is declining while the percentage of consolidating (or incremental) science is coming to dominate. Is the spirit of groundbreaking scientific discovery withering, and if so, why? Nelson notes a 1997 book by John Horgan, The End of Science. Nelson credits Horgan for seeing the trend a generation ahead of the Park paper, but Nelson breaks with Horgan on the diagnosis. Horgan posits that groundbreaking science is declining because we have already made most of the big breakthroughs there are to make. Nelson begs to differ. He suggests the problem lies elsewhere and likely is multifaceted. Tune in to hear his analysis and his prescription for reinvigorating the scientific enterprise in the twenty-first century. Crowther and Nelson discuss two other papers during their conversation. For Nelson’s paper on disruption and consensus in science, “The Paradox of Consensus,” go here. For the Thomas Gold paper on the problem of the herd effect in science, go here.

Female Eurasian brown bear and her cubs in boreal forest

^{Type
post

Author
Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Date
January 23, 2023

Tagged
Amy Davison, bilayer membrane, bottom-up design, cell membrane, complex specified information, Darwinism, DNA, embryology, evolutionary gradualism, evolutionary theory, foresight, genetic information, Hillary Morgan Ferrer, Intelligent Design, Mama Bear Apologetics, Marcos Eberlin, Natural Selection, Neo-Darwinism, orphan genes, Outgrowing God, Paul Nelson, reproductive thermoregulation, reverse engineering, Richard Dawkins, specified complexity, termites, Theory of Evolution, top-down design}

Mama Bear Apologetics Takes on Atheist Richard Dawkins

_{Hillary Morgan Ferrer

January 23, 2023

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future puts atheist Richard Dawkins’s book Outgrowing God under the microscope and reveals multiple ways his argument smashes up against contrary scientific evidence. Walking us through the critique are author and Mama Bear Apologetics founder Hillary Morgan Ferrer and her co-host, Amy Davison. Dawkins invokes the beautiful order evident in the murmuration of bird flocks as evidence that complexity can evolve from simple algorithmic rules. But Ferrer explains why the phenomenon of bird murmuration doesn’t even begin to approach what we find when sophisticated engineering order emerges in the growth of embryos. Ferrer also considers the challenges of re-engineering sperm thermoregulation to move from how it works in marine life to how it works in land animals. For a blind process to traverse this evolutionary pathway while maintaining viability at every stage would require—to adapt a line from Alice in Wonderland—six hundred impossible things before breakfast. What about evolving something simpler, such as the bilayer cell membrane, essential for cellular life? No, Ferrer argues. It’s also far too sophisticated to have evolved through a blind evolutionary process. What is needed is the foresight that comes with intelligent design. Tune in to hear Ferrer and Davison rebut these and other pro-evolution arguments from Richard Dawkins. This episode of the Mama Bear Apologetics podcast is reposted here with permission. To read more from Ferrer and some of her Mama Bear colleagues, pick up their bestselling book Mama Bear Apologetics: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies.

^{Type
post

Author
Bijan Nemati

Date
January 4, 2023

Tagged
astrophysics, Atheism, Big Bang, Bijan Nemati, Christianity, Colorado School of Mines, Cornel University, Darwin on Trial, Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, Fred Hoyle, God, Hugh Ross, Intelligent Design, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Islam, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, Lockheed, Lockheed Martin, Michael Denton, NASA Origins program, Natural Theology, observational astronomy, particle physics, Paul Nelson, Phillip Johnson, physics, space interferometer, Stanford Linear Accelerator, telescope array, The Fingerprint of God, The Privileged Planet, Theism, transcendence, University of Colorado, Why It Matters}

Astrophysicist Bijan Nemati on Why Intelligent Design Matters

_{Bijan Nemati

January 4, 2023

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, astrophysicist and intelligent design proponent Bijan Nemati shares the first part of his story of science and faith. Those who follow Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture may know Nemati from his appearance in the popular ID documentary The Privileged Planet. Born and raised in Iran, he moved to the United States shortly before the Iranian revolution, became an atheist in college, but eventually found his way to a strong religious faith, in part through his exposure to the scientific evidence for intelligent design, first in biology and then in cosmology. Along the way he landed a high-level job with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and became a leading expert in space interferometer telescopes and the science and technology of detecting earth-like planets. Tune in as he shares with host Eric Anderson his journey of discovery.

^{Type
post

Author
Ann Gauger

Date
December 12, 2022

Tagged
Ann Gauger, autism, Biologic, butterfly metamorphosis, coral reefs, Darwin on Trial, Darwin’s Black Box, Dissent from Darwin list, Entomology, Evolution, Icons of Evolution, Illustra Media, Intelligent Design, Jay Richards, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, natural beauty, Neo-Darwinism, Paul Nelson, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, The Privileged Planet, women in science}

Ann Gauger: A Scientist’s Journey into the Intelligent Design Movement

_{Ann Gauger

December 12, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, biologist and intelligent design researcher Ann Gauger tells host Eric Anderson the rest of her story about how she was drawn into the intelligent design movement. The two discuss everything from the challenges she faced making it in a male-dominated field to the evidential power of beauty in the natural world. But how did she end up in the ID movement? After stepping out of a promising career as a research scientist to focus on her family and meeting the needs of an autistic child, she assumed that her life as a scientist was behind her. But then several years later she began reading the work of Darwin skeptics and intelligent design trailblazers—Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, and others—and then she realized they were all associated with a think tank, Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, just down the street from where she lived. She eventually signed DI’s Dissent from Darwin list, then a year or so after that she signed up for a regular ID newsletter, Nota Bene, signing her name “Ann Gauger, PhD.” She got a phone call from someone at Discovery Institute twenty minutes later. The rest of the story is by turns comical, inspiring, and touching. Before wrapping up her story she urges young women scientists to not let themselves get pressured out of contributing just because STEM fields tend to be male dominated. And she shares a story of being accused at a public university event of lying and suppressing research evidence that supposedly supported evolutionary theory. Not true, she explains.

Ribosome translating mRNA into a polypeptide chain

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
November 16, 2022

Tagged
AF2, AlphaFold, AlphaFold 2, amino acid sequence space, amino acids, chaperone complex, David Berlinski, Deep Mind, Eric Anderson, Evolution, genetic information, Google’s DeepMind, Horace Freeland Judson, Horace Judson, intrinsically disordered proteins, Jacques Monod, Neo-Darwinism, orphan genes, orphan proteins, Paul Nelson, phylogenetics, protein folding, protein folding problem, ribosome, Shakespeare, taxonomically restricted genes, The Eighth Day of Creation, x-ray crystallography}

Orphan Proteins Spell Trouble for AlphaFold 2

_{Paul Nelson

November 16, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson further explores AlphaFold 2, a cutting edge computer program from Google’s DeepMind designed to rapidly suss out important secrets in the realm of proteins, indispensable molecular biological workhorses that come in thousands of different shapes and sizes. Nelson enthuses about AlphaFold 2 but also explains why he is convinced that AlphaFold’s creators have hit a series of immovable obstacles. The watchword here—orphans. Tune in to learn what these mischievous orphan proteins are about, and what they suggest for AlphaFold, evolution, and intelligent design.

Chain of amino acid or bio molecules called protein - 3d illustration

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
November 14, 2022

Tagged
Alphabet, AlphaFold, AlphaFold 2, amino acids, Artificial Intelligence, central dogma, codons, cognates, DeepMind, DNA, DNA R Us, Eric Anderson, eukaryotes, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Google, homo sapiens proteome, human genome project, Intelligent Design, introns, language evolution, large subunit of ribosome, Machine learning, messenger RNA, natural language, Paul Nelson, peptide bonds, prokaryotes, protein 3D shape, protein folding, protein folding problem, proteome, ribosome, Romance languages, Watson and Crick}

Powerful Protein Folding Algorithm AlphaFold Foiled by Singletons

_{Paul Nelson

November 14, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future spotlights AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence program in the news for its impressive breakthroughs at predicting a protein’s 3D structure from its amino acid sequence. Philosopher of Biology Paul Nelson walks listeners through the importance of this “amazing breakthrough,” as he describes it in a recent Evolution News article; but don’t uncork the champagne bottles just yet. The reason, according to Nelson, is that while proteins, protein sequences, and protein folding promise to reveal much that is still mysterious in molecular biology, we now know that biological information involves far more than just an organism’s proteome—that is, far more than the full suite of proteins expressed by an organism. Nelson uses analogies to manmade machines and cognates among closely and distantly related human languages to shed light on just how much more sophisticated the biological information directing life is than any model narrowly fixated on DNA, the amino acids DNA codes for, and the protein formed from those amino acids. Nelson further explains that, as powerful as the AlphaFold algorithm is, it has not solved the protein-folding problem, if we take such a solution to mean “predicting the three-dimensional conformation of a protein strictly from its primary DNA sequence, ab initio.” The clearest evidence of this: the algorithm is utterly stymied by sequence “singletons.” What are these curious sequences, why do they baffle AlphaFold, and why do these singletons trouble some evolutionists? Tune in as Nelson and host Eric Anderson explore this problem at the leading edge of biological research.

The Very Large Array (VLA) radio-astronomy antennas, in New Mexico, is one of the most impressive observatories in the world. The Sun was piercing through after a major storm during a public tour.

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
July 11, 2022

Tagged
alien life, Atheism, Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan’s Contact, Contact, cosmos, design detection, DNA, DRAKE equation, extra-terrestrial intelligence, Fred Hoyle, Gifford Lectures, Gloria Patri, intelligent causes, Intelligent Design, Materialism, methodological naturalism, Michael Behe, National Academy of Sciences, Paul Nelson, philosophical naturalism, Pi, prime numbers, pulsars, religious skepticism, Robert Crowther, science fiction, search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI, Stephen Meyer, superstition, The Demon Haunted World, UAP, unidentified arial phenomenon, William Dembski}

Carl Sagan’s Love/Hate Relationship with Intelligent Design

_{Paul Nelson

July 11, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, philosopher of science Paul Nelson explores an intriguing tension in the thinking of famous scientist and science popularizer Carl Sagan concerning his agnosticism shading into atheism on the one hand, and on the other hand his embrace of certain ideas consistent with the theory of intelligent design. As Nelson is quick to clarify, if Sagan had lived to see the rise of the contemporary intelligent design movement, he probably would have rejected it, particularly its theistic implications. And yet, Nelson says, Sagan’s thinking and arguments laid out in his Gifford lectures and in his science fiction novel Contact strongly support the idea that intelligent design can be detected. Nelson goes further, saying that if we take the methods Sagan laid out for detecting intelligently designed radio signals from extra-terrestrial intelligence, and apply them to patterns in nature that ID theorists have pointed to (such as DNA), it’s hard not to see his methodology triggering a design inference. Tune in to hear Nelson’s reflections on this important tension in Sagan’s thinking, and what, according to Nelson, prevented Sagan from fully resolving it.

The student is sitting at the table and is looking for excuses for not being ready for the lesson. Photo by Dmitriy on Adobe Stock

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
February 14, 2022

Tagged
amino acids, Casey Luskin, cells, common descent, Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, Craig Venter, Darwinism, DNA, Eugene Koonin, evolutionary theory, genetic code, genetic codes, Jacques Monod, last universal common ancestor, Life’s Greatest Secret, LUCA, Matthew Cobb, Michael Syvanen, Neo-Darwinism, Paul Nelson, Proteins, Richard Dawkins, RNA, scientific predictions, testability, universal common ancestor, universal common descent, variant genetic codes}

How Universal Common Descent Survives Failed Predictions

_{Paul Nelson

February 14, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson discusses his chapter in a recent Harvest House anthology edited by host Casey Luskin, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Nelson says the theory of universal common descent, a key component of modern evolutionary theory, has generated multiple predictions that have failed. The prediction he discusses here is that there would turn out to be a single universal genetic code, since that’s what we should expect if all life on earth is descended from the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). Findings over the past three decades have proven that prediction spectacularly wrong. How does the theory of universal common descent shrug off this contrary empirical finding? The trick for LUCA in this and similar cases is to shift blame for failure to an ancillary theory. It’s a clever move, says Nelson, but it comes at a cost.