Science

In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller purported to refute Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade, but actually badly misrepresented Behe’s arguments to Judge Jones. In short, the purported knockout experiments (in the form comparative biochemistry) that Ken Miller cited to Judge Jones, where the blood-clotting cascade still worked in the absence of certain factors, dealt entirely with factors that Behe specifically did not claim were part of the irreducibly complex core of the blood-clotting cascade. Behe explained this problem in Miller’s argument to Judge Jones, but apparently Behe’s testimony fell on deaf ears. In Part 2, I discussed how Miller might not have even refuted the more expansive arguments for irreducible complexity of Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: For a full and comprehensive review and response to Edward Humes’ book, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, and the Battle for America’s Soul, please see A Partisan Affair: A Response to Edward Humes’ Inaccurate History of Kitzmiller v. Dover and Intelligent Design, “Monkey Girl.] In his book Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Edwards Humes says that, “if the evolution wars are to continue, let the combatants be armed with facts, not fiction.” (pg. viii.) Yet as discussed in my previous post, it seems that Humes is more interested in mud-slinging against intelligent design (ID) proponents than providing a balanced discussion of the facts. In particular, Humes engages in name-calling in response to Traipsing Read More ›

Dr. Steven Novela believes that the brain (matter) entirely explains the mind. I challenge him to answer the question raised by this thought problem:

Imagine a tutor who specializes in teaching children about color. He’s a materialist, named…Steve. He knows all that is known about color. He knows the physics, the optics, the chemistry, the neurobiology, everything. A family retains him to teach their child, a prodigy, all that can be known about color.

[Editor’s Note: For a full and comprehensive review and response to Edward Humes’ book, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, and the Battle for America’s Soul, please see A Partisan Affair: A Response to Edward Humes’ Inaccurate History of Kitzmiller v. Dover and Intelligent Design, “Monkey Girl.] For someone who boasts a Pulitzer Prize (for a work other than Monkey Girl) and claims to be objective and neutral journalist, Edward Humes’ book Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul is an incredibly partisan and inaccurate portrayal of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. At many points it simply parrots Darwinist talking points and retells many of their patently false urban legends about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, leaving out Read More ›

Steven Novella has a recent post on SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Like many of us, Dr. Novella is fascinated by the prospect of finding evidence for intelligent alien life in outer space. Dr. Novella:

I am a strong supporter of SETI – the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. To me this is a fascinating scientific endeavor with a potentially huge payoff…

Dr. Novella defends SETI against the claims by some that it is not real science:

In Part 1, I showed how Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments about the irreducibility of the blood-clotting cascade to Judge Jones during the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, such that Judge Jones wrongly ruled that “scientists in peer-reviewed publications have refuted Professor Behe’s predication about the alleged irreducible complexity of the blood-clotting cascade.” To briefly recap, Miller told Judge Jones that Behe’s discussion of the blood-clotting cascade in Darwin’s Black Box was “essentially identical” to the discussion of the blood-clotting cascade in Of Pandas and People, implying that any critiques of Pandas also applied to Behe. But unlike Pandas, Behe explicitly did not argue that all of the components of the blood-clotting cascade were required for it to function properly. Read More ›

Dr. Steven Novella is a Yale neurologist with whom I have been having a blog debate about the mind-brain question. Dr. Novella asserts that neuroscience has proven the strict materialistic understanding of the mind — that the mind is caused entirely by the brain, and reducible entirely to it — is true. I disagree. Although the mind and brain correlate to a high degree, the mind is ontologically irreducible to the brain. I believe that some form of dualism is necessary for a satisfactory explanation of the mind.

I have written several posts about qualia, which is the subjective nature of sensory experiences, such the experience of the color red, or the smell of coffee, or the ‘hurt’ of pain. The neurophysiological correlates of these phenomena, such as the physiology of retinal mediation of color vision, or the olfactory nerves in the nose that mediate the smell of coffee, or the neurochemistry of C-fibers that mediate pain, can be explained materialistically, but the experience of color, smell, and pain — qualia — elides material explanation.

Here is my description of the problem that qualia poses, from a previous post:

[Editor’s Note: For a full and comprehensive review and response to Edward Humes’ book, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, and the Battle for America’s Soul, please see A Partisan Affair: A Response to Edward Humes’ Inaccurate History of Kitzmiller v. Dover and Intelligent Design, “Monkey Girl.] Any book with an icon of evolution on its cover — in this case, the fanciful diagram of ape-like skeletons transitioning into a human skeleton — is bound to be unfriendly towards intelligent design (ID). When I received my copy of Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Edward Humes’ book about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, I expected no less. Humes’ FAQ on evolution and ID on his website made Read More ›

Here is another hilarious example of a just-so story from Science Daily. (In fact, this one is more just so-so.) Substitute the words “made up” whenever you read characterized. Were they in court, a judge would surely say: “Show me the evidence.”

I’m in the midst of an online debate with neurologist Dr. Steven Novella about this question: can the mind be explained entirely by the brain, or is there an immaterial aspect of mental states that defies materialist reduction? Dr. Novella and I are both well-acquainted with neuroscience (I’m a neurosurgeon), and we have quite different views on the mind-brain problem. Dr. Novella is a materialist, and he believes that neuroscience has demonstrated beyond question that the mind is entirely caused by material processes in the brain. I believe that there are properties of mental states that don’t admit material explanations, and I favor dualism. Dr Novella asserts: