Author: Paul Nelson

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
June 8, 2026

Categories
Cosmology
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Tagged
, atheists, Ayn Rand, Bishop George Berkeley, Black Death, Cambodia, cosmology, dust, eternal recurrence, Friedrich Nietzsche, Genesis, genocide, Holocaust, human perception, Johns Hopkins University, Khmer Rouge, mathematics, metaphysics, Mindscape, natural disasters, nihilism, objectivism, objectivity, Pennsylvania, pessimism, philosophy, poetic naturalism, religion, Richard Feynman, Rwanda, Samuel Johnson, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Sean Carroll, selfishness, subjective idealism, The Character of Physical Law, The Gay Science}

Sean Carroll Revives Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence

_{Paul Nelson
June 8, 2026

Cosmology, Metaphysics, Philosophy

5}

The point arrives when a philosophy is so unreasonable, so utterly broken, that one can only give it a good strong kick. Argument fails; one must act. Read More ›

Teen Caucasian boy smiling with braces and wearing tuxedo for high school prom

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
May 11, 2026

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, amino acids, annotation, automated sequence annotation programs, bachelors, biologists, biology, common descent, conservation, evolution, evolutionary conservation, functional status, gymnasium, intelligent design, John Mattick, Nature (journal), neologisms, open reading frame, peptide, phone number, protein, shared inter-taxon similarity}

“Peptideins”? Give Those Shorties Another Look

_{Paul Nelson
May 11, 2026

Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design

2}

Picture short, lonely bachelors in rented formal wear, leaning on the wall, nervously checking their watches at the annotation dance. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
April 20, 2026

Categories
Genetics
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, animals, causation, character string, context, design intuitions, design perspective, English, food, function, genetics, Genetics (journal), genotype, Gregor Mendel, guitar, house, language, Mendelian genetics, natural language, noun, phenotype, pleiotropy, poker, Reductionism, Richard Sternberg, sensory organs, skull, verb, vertebrates, vocalization}

“Beyond Mendel”: Leading Investigators Appeal for a New Genetics

_{Paul Nelson
April 20, 2026

Genetics, Intelligent Design

3}

Top-down causation makes a lot more sense from a design perspective than from any reductionist, lower-levels-first approach. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
February 20, 2024

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Genetics
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, biochemists, biologists, Charles Darwin, DNA, evolution, function, genome, graduate students, How Life Works, ignorance, intelligent design, junk DNA, Laurence Moran, Nature (journal), null hypothesis, Philip Ball, postdocs, researchers, science journals, science writers, University of Toronto}

With One Short Rule, Philip Ball Explains Why “Junk DNA” May Be a Placeholder for Ignorance

_{Paul Nelson
February 20, 2024

Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design

5}

Here is Ball’s proposed rule for molecular biologists: “stop assuming,” he writes, “we know which parts of DNA matter and which don’t.” Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
January 14, 2024

Categories
Chemistry
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Origin of Life
Tagged
, athens, early Earth, Epicurus, Eugene Koonin, evolution, molecular biology, probabilities, RNA}

Is Epicurus Smiling?

_{Paul Nelson
January 14, 2024

Chemistry, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin of Life

3}

Eugene Koonin pointed out that any abiogenesis scenario requires a cosmological background theory against which any local event probabilities must be evaluated. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
November 3, 2023

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, Cell (journal), embryo, embryonic development, evolution, filaments, heuristic, intelligent design, mammals, proteins}

The Best and Worst Heuristics for Biological Discovery

_{Paul Nelson
November 3, 2023

Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design

2}

"We don’t know what this structure does, so it probably does nothing. Remember, evolution produces a lot of non-functional debris." Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
August 29, 2023

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, evolution, falsification, horizontal gene transfer, intelligent design, Last Universal Common Ancestor, LUCA, PNAS, topology, Tree of Life, Twitter, YouTube videos}

Biologists Take a Hatchet to Tree of Life, Biology Keeps Going Anyway

_{Paul Nelson
August 29, 2023

Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design

3}

Early in his presentation, McInerney says that he hopes to persuade his audience that this familiar LUCA-based hypothesis “has been falsified.” Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
August 15, 2023

Categories
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, bacteria, Carl Woese, function, genes, genomes, orthodoxy, Tree of Life}

Quiz: Is This a Prediction from the Tree of Life?

_{Paul Nelson
August 15, 2023

Evolution, Intelligent Design

2}

Conservation of function, but not genes, can be understood with an analogy to natural language. Consider two sentences. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
August 14, 2023

Categories
Intelligent Design
Origin of Life
Physical Sciences
Tagged
, A Brief History of Time, Baylor University, Bruce Gordon, cosmological constant, cosmos, Francis Crick, intelligent design, John Horgan, Nobel laureates, Paul Davies, Peter Atkins, physicists, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Texas, The Nature of Nature, William A. Dembski}

John Horgan on the Madness of “Scientific Omniscience”

_{Paul Nelson
August 14, 2023

Intelligent Design, Origin of Life, Physical Sciences

3}

“As for life, Dawkins’s claim that it is no longer a mystery is absurd. We still don’t have a clue how life began." Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Paul Nelson

Date
August 3, 2023

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Life Sciences
Metaphysics
Tagged
, Asa Gray, biologists, caterpillars, cats, chance, Charles Darwin, Dogs, evolution, evolutionary theory, Isaac Newton, mice, mutations, randomness, theology, Twitter, UC Davis}

A Debate on the “Randomness” of Mutation

_{Paul Nelson
August 3, 2023

Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Metaphysics

2}

The historical wellspring of randomness in evolutionary theory is Darwin’s own insistence on “chance” at the causal foundations of life. Read More ›