… physicists should recognize that time is real.

From his article inNew Scientist:

No single feature of our universe is more in need of explanation than the forward march of time, yet physics and cosmology have so far failed to explain this basic fact of nature. It’s time for a radical approach. We need a new starting point for explaining the directionality of time. – “It’s time physics recognised that time is real” (paywall)

Here are Smolin’s views on the scientific method.

New Scientist has featured some remarkable ideas on time, including “Time need not end in the multiverse” (2011) and “Beyond space-time: Welcome to phase space” (2011), but we don’t think Dr. Smolin will have trouble keeping up. He has just recently authored a book, Time Reborn, of which a reviewer has said,

Before I can even begin a review of the book, I do feel that a bit of background must be provided on the scientific context in which this book appears. Smolin is a prominent if controversial figure within the theoretical physics community, well known for work on the cutting edge of our knowledge and promoting that work directly to the general public well before it has become widely accepted within the physics community itself.

Well, we can say too things about the book in advance: It is bound to be fun and it won’t be on the exam.

Donald Prothero , geologist/paleontologist at the California Institute of Technology, has been a pretty good joe for Darwinism over the years. He is quoted here and
here, for example, affirming Darwin’s truths, and also affirming the miracle of Haeckel’s embryos (described by others as an imposture)* in his 1994 textbook with Robert H. Dott, Jr. Oh never mind, people have done worse for those they love.

But, late in their careers, Darwinists sometimes admit the very problems that they seemed anxious earlier to explain away. In 2012, Prothero admitted that in evolution, stasis (no change over vast stretches of time) is the general pattern. Gradualism (slow Darwinian change) is rare, and evolutionary biologists have known that for decades*:

In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions—and that’s a good thing! Science advances when we discover what we don’t know, or we discover that simple answers we’d been following for years no longer work. – Donald Prothero, “Darwin’s Legacy,” Skeptic, February 15, 2012: http://tinyurl.com/btsn796

He strenuously participates in Darwin’s battles today. Yet the broad pattern of stasis is the real message from the rocks.

Darwinism is apparently one of those things that must be believed in its utter absence, as a sign of faith. And that is what it is to be a Skeptic these days.

* For example: “one of the most famous fakes in biology,” Michael K. Richardson quoted in Elizabeth Pennisi, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,” Science 277 (1997): 1435.

I see where TSZ continues to host the following long since corrected assertion:

Kairosfocus, this is outrageous.  Nobody here, to my knowledge, has suggested that you are a Nazi, and I certainly have not.

This is false and should be known to be false by the poster and blog owner. It is an example of   exactly the sort of enabling behaviour that has long been a point of concern regarding the standards at TSZ.

Here is my original complaint on this point, of April 2nd:

=======

>>  . . . Let’s roll the tape from TSZ, screen capture A:

And, B, a little lower in the same comment by OM:

[ . . . . ]

2 –>Notice, how the issue  in [a referenced cite]  is that I spoke to how ordinary Germans were taken to the camp after the defeat of the Nazis, to see what they had been enabling. And that has patently been my concern, in the face of a pattern of censorship and expulsion sustained by widespread blame/scapegoat the victim tactics and associated enabling passivity. As is documented above [in the linked].

3 –> Now, see what OM — commenting at TSZ — twists this into as captured above:

What KF is saying is that people like Alan Fox (AF) and the posters here are like the Nazi party, fully aware of the horror they are inflicting but who don’t particularly care, no doubt because of the lack of morals.

4 –> By right of fair comment, this is a willful case of speaking in disregard of duties of care to truth, hoping to profit by the false being seen as truth, and from the associated demonisation and well poisoning. In one word, a lie. (Cf. linked definition.)

5 –> Now, look at the propaganda tactic of the twisted about, false accusation OM then resorts to, here loaded with the slander that design thinkers are pursuing a right wing, Creationist theocratic totalitarian agenda, compounded by invidious association with Nazism on the notion that only a Nazi — how ignorant of history this is! — or fellow traveller could object to the notion that homosexual behaviour is a right rooted in unchangeable and essentially benign characteristics:

And at what point is it KF that you expect to march Alan around the camps? When your religious war is won and the immoral atheists defeated?

I’d go on but I’m afraid I may say some things that would not be compatible with the general purpose of the thread or indeed civility.

I would like to note however that both the Nazis and KF think that homosexuals are immoral and/or deviants. So draw your own conclusion as to who’ll be marching who round what camp if they get their way.

[ . . . . ]

8 –> The invidious association OM made of course intends to imply that only a Nazi could object to homosexualism. That itself speaks volumes on the demonisation of principled objection to homosexual behaviour as patently disordered and damaging to self and community. The intent of such tactics of guilt by improper association, is to use well-poisoning tactics to shut down reasonable discussion of a serious matter and its implications for the future of our civilisation. {NB: Cf a recent note on Marsha Gessen’s recent remarks here on radical homosexualist intent towards marriage. Note, applause in the tape at the relevant point.}

9 –> Which, is exactly what I was complaining about on how design theory is being treated.

10 –> That is, the uncivil tactics we are complaining here of have a tendency to become habitual. As shown by concrete example provided by OM.>>

=======

In short, as long as it is true that there are many people who have principled objections or concerns to homosexual behaviour, homosexualisation of marriage and similar issues, it is an improper tainting invidious comparison to pretend that it is Nazis and X who have objections.

As any REASONABLE person should recognise.

I have grounds for my concern and TSZ’s leadership needs to correct the record and make amends for wrong done. END

A telling clip from the JME paper:

we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. [--> dehumanising the intended victim, always the first step to excusing mass, politically backed murder] The reason is that, unlike the case of death of an existing person, failing to bring a new person into existence does not prevent anyone from accomplishing any of her future aims. However, this consideration entails a much stronger idea than the one according to which severely handicapped children should be euthanised. If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet . . .

This is where we have now reached under the impact of the evolutionary materialist worldview, dressed up in the lab coat of “science.” And yes, that is well merited fair comment in light of the obvious implications of say Prof Provine’s notorious Darwin Day 1998 remarks at U Tenn:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will . . .

We also need to note how, forty years ago, Schaeffer and Koop presented a mini series on Whatever Happened to the Human Race, that brings out these implications. (I have commented further on this here.)

Let us therefore listen as these distinguished men speak from beyond the grave to us:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Chilling. They have warned, in no uncertain terms, concerning the cascade of breakdown of the value of life: abortion on demand –> infanticide –> euthanasia –> mass killing of the undesirables.

FORTY years ago.

They were widely pooh poohed, derided and dismissed as alarmists.

But now, what they warned about is beginning to happen, in some places seems to already be happening.

That should be a wake-up call.

Are we listening? END

A telling clip from the JME paper:

we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. [--> dehumanising the intended victim, always the first step to excusing mass, politically backed murder] The reason is that, unlike the case of death of an existing person, failing to bring a new person into existence does not prevent anyone from accomplishing any of her future aims. However, this consideration entails a much stronger idea than the one according to which severely handicapped children should be euthanised. If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet . . .

This is where we have now reached under the impact of the evolutionary materialist worldview, dressed up in the lab coat of “science.” And yes, that is well merited fair comment in light of the obvious implications of say Prof Provine’s notorious Darwin Day 1998 remarks at U Tenn:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will . . .

We also need to note how, forty years ago, Schaeffer and Koop presented a mini series on Whatever Happened to the Human Race, that brings out these implications. (I have commented further on this here.)

Let us therefore listen as these distinguished men speak from beyond the grave to us:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Chilling. They have warned, in no uncertain terms, concerning the cascade of breakdown of the value of life: abortion on demand –> infanticide –> euthanasia –> mass killing of the undesirables.

FORTY years ago.

They were widely pooh poohed, derided and dismissed as alarmists.

But now, what they warned about is beginning to happen, in some places seems to already be happening.

That should be a wake-up call.

Are we listening? END

Neanderthal art? Maybe you stopped listening back when Michael Shermer announced that

… there is almost no evidence that Neanderthals would have ever “advanced” beyond where they were when they disappeared 30,000 years ago. Even though paleoanthropologists disagree about a great many things, there is near total agreement in the literature that Neanderthals were not on their way to becoming “us.”[1]

Maybe you even stopped listening as long ago as when Carl Sagan opined that in the not-too-distant future, a chimpanzee would, with assistance, write a memoir. [2]

Although the two messages sound opposite at first glance, they have a common underlying theme: Darwinism will either show us humans who are intellectually incapable of art because they are separate, inferior species (demonstrating common descent with animals) or else it will show us that chimpanzees are just like us (demonstrating that art arises through common descent with animals). Or maybe that there is nothing much to art, any animal can do it. [3]

Recently this bombshell landed, an apparent Neanderthal painting of seals. As one researcher puts it, “The findings show that our long-lost cousins were cognitively advanced from the get-go, long before modern humans appeared in Europe.” The current Nature news feature discusses various other possible Neanderthal art finds and the ensuing scholarly argle bargle.

In truth, we don’t yet have much art of any type done by anybody surviving from tens of millennia ago, so most conclusions drawn will in fact be based on underlying philosophical assumptions, either those of Shermer and Sagan or of others.

The underlying issue riffs off one of Darwin’s predictions: That humans would evolve into separate species via natural selection:

The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla,” [3]

Since Darwin believed that humans are merely animals, he had to apply his theories to humans, and stick fast to anything that appeared to fit. As Benjamin Wiker put it in an article in Human Events,

Those defending Darwin cannot have read his Descent of Man, wherein he applies the principles of natural selection to human beings—a thing he prudently avoided in his earlier Origin of Species. In the Descent, the eugenic and racial inferences are clearly and startlingly drawn by Darwin himself.

Darwin’s racism was not adopted out of bad will but simply as the logic of Darwinism. That is the point that every Darwinist wants to miss or downplay.
They have demanded that we all understand that the greatest man who ever lived wasn’t a racist and we are all misquoting or misunderstanding him or are bad, bad people or whatever for even bringing this stuff up.

Okay so we’re really awful here at Uncommon Descent. As our name implies, we don’t espouse any theory that says that humans are merely evolved animals or that we must inevitably form separate species as a result of isolation. Heck, we don’t even espouse a theory that says that separate species usually form that way. The evidence is mixed.

His believers are therefore stuck in the awkward position of having to pretend that what is obviously racist isn’t, and denouncing any of us who read the plain sense of it correctly. Oh, and marketing red herrings about his opposition to slavery. (That’s true too, but so? Racism doesn’t entail a belief in slavery. Many racists have opposed it for good humanitarian and public policy reasons.)

The big story about the art is that the Neanderthals are just not performing the way they should as a separate, inferior human species. Maybe that’s because the paleontologists should never have sent a Neanderthal to do the job anyway?

Well, however it breaks out, they are still looking for thst Missing Link.

Note: Darwin’s enthusiast H.G. Wells wrote a famous science fiction novel, The Time machine, based on that very premise, read and filmed today. And it’s hard to imagine what, other than allegiance to Darwinism, would have caused so many readers of science mags to be so sure in 2005 the recently discovered Flores midgets of millennia ago were a separate species.

See also: Are vertebrates really smarter than invertebrates?

[1] Michael Shermer, quoted in Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski, The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), p. 452.

[2] Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Nature of Human Intelligence, New York: Random House, 1977, p. 126.

[3] Claims about animals originating art should not be confused with humans teaching animals to perform a series of gestures read by humans as art:

These series can be long and/or complex; so is the bee dance. It doesn’t demonstrate individual creativity in the performer but rather the ability to process a large amount of certain types of information accurately. As such, it helps us to focus what we mean by “intelligence.” It also raises some very interesting questions about intelligence residing in nature.

[4] Darwin’s opinion in context: was saying that humanity had to diverge into species, based on his theory:

The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.[8]

Presumably, Darwin’s believers think that the fog of preceding words shows that Darwin didn’t mean exactly what he said in the last lines.

As to the endless discussion of the philosophy of science, again let me suggest that any epistemology rests on a triad of observation, reason, and authority. All inquiry variously exploits these three and no inquiry leaves any out. Should you question authority just consider that you cannot do it all on your own.

He adds, perhaps prophetically,

And then of course there is also the moral triad of curiosity, honesty, and faith. Cultures that lack curiosity—and they are legion—make no discoveries. And societies devoid of honesty—perhaps even more legion—conserve and expand authority with lies. And where would we be without faith in a stable world, faith in mathematics, and faith that we can know?

Perhaps in a world where there is no math and no scientific method?

Where science is simply the received opinion among people who get tenure and have grants?

… academic groupthink leads PhDs to defend issues that are indefensible and to give their allegiance to causes that are immoral or unethical. At other times, it leads them to believe things that are simply and demonstrably false—things that violate objective observation, common sense, and the collective experience of mankind. Indeed, colleges and universities across Europe and America brazenly teach their students three things that are so patently absurd that only a PhD could believe them.

And it is very difficult to get contrary evidence across safely.

Major academics do not seem to need to follow the standards of critical thinking that govern the behaviour of people who could lose their jobs, their businesses, or their lives or families, so no surprise in such an environment that biology is dominated by Darwinism.

The same edition of features an interview with Wesley J. Smith (“You Beast!”), one of the people who was slammed for letting the public know about the normalization of infanticide.

For more from the current issue, go here.

From “Intelligence is today’s unknown country” (Salvo 23)

Some invertebrates, especially mollusks, are also unexpectedly intelligent. Underwater footage shows that, in the first known example of tool use among octopi, one species of octopus has learned to dig up and use discarded halved coconut shells as a shelter. Neatly halved coconuts are a human discard, so the behavior may actually have been learned in recent millennia. Researchers think that the octopi were using some less satisfactory material before, but they had the intelligence to just switch. According to researcher Mark Norman,

They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out.

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell—or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other—before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

But intelligence is very unevenly distributed among invertebrates. Clams and oysters are also mollusks, and they are as sharp as marbles.
More.

Too much effort is focused on trying to discover a continuum of intelligence leading all the way up to humans. Humans are just different, period. Octopuses are smarter than people think, but they do not build or program computers.

The reasons some animals have and others don’t have intelligence, in the same basic groups of life forms, pursued as a project in its own right, might yield more understanding of what intelligence is.