The enemy of my enemy..?

At the house next door: No one's home?

 New Analysis Casts Doubt on Claims for Life on Venus

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

A new study throws cold water (vapor?) on an earlier paper that suggested that aerial life forms could exist in Venus’s massive cloud cover:

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades, and found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

Any life form in sufficient abundance is expected to leave chemical fingerprints on a planet’s atmosphere as it consumes food and expels waste. However, the Cambridge researchers found no evidence of these fingerprints on Venus. 

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, “NO SIGNS (YET) OF LIFE ON VENUS” AT SCIENCE DAILY (JUNE 14, 2022) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

The contention in the earlier paper was that chemicals present in Venus’s clouds are consistent with production by life forms.

Not a Biosignature

Although the authors of the study published last week, Jordan Chortle and P. B. Rimmer, say that the specifics of Venus’s atmospheric chemistry are not a biosignature (evidence of life), they stress that the atmosphere on Venus is nonetheless “strange.”

They hope that their work will assist in identifying other promising sites for extraterrestrial life:

”To understand why some planets are alive, we need to understand why other planets are dead,” said Shorttle. “If life somehow managed to sneak into the Venusian clouds, it would totally change how we search for chemical signs of life on other planets.”

“Even if ‘our’ Venus is dead, it’s possible that Venus-like planets in other systems could host life,” said Rimmer, who is also affiliated with Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We can take what we’ve learned here and apply it to exoplanetary systems — this is just the beginning.”

They hope their method of analysis will prove a help later this year when the James Webb Space Telescope starts returning images of planets outside our solar system.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Paleo Darwinism V. evolution in general?

 Jason Rosenhouse, a Crude Darwinist

William A. Dembski

I am reviewing Jason Rosenhouse’s new book, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism (Cambridge University Press), serially. For the full series so far, go here.

For Rosenhouse, Darwin can do no wrong and Darwin’s critics can do no right. As a fellow mathematician, I would have liked to see from Rosenhouse a vigorous and insightful discussion of my ideas, especially where there’s room for improvement, as well as some honest admission of why neo-Darwinism falls short as a compelling theory of biological evolution and why mathematical criticisms of it could at least have some traction. Instead, Rosenhouse assumes no burden of proof, treating Darwin’s theory as a slam dunk and treating all mathematical criticisms of Darwin’s theory as laughable. Indeed, he has a fondness for the word “silly,” which he uses repeatedly, and according to him mathematicians who use math to advance intelligent design are as silly as they come.

Anti-Evolutionism or Anti-Darwinism?

In using the phrase “mathematical anti-evolutionism,” Rosenhouse mistitled his book. Given its aim and arguments, it should have been titled The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Darwinism. Although design theorists exist who reject the transformationism inherent in evolutionism (I happen to be one of them), intelligent design’s beef is not with evolution per se but with the supposed naturalistic mechanisms driving evolution. And when it comes to naturalistic mechanisms driving evolution, there’s only one game in town, namely, neo-Darwinism, which I’ll refer to simply as Darwinism. In any case, my colleague Michael Behe, who also comes in for criticism from Rosenhouse, is an evolutionist. Behe accepts common descent, the universal common ancestry of all living things on planet earth. And yet Behe is not a Darwinist — he sees Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting on random variations as having at best very limited power to explain biological innovation. 

Reflexive Darwinism

Rosenhouse is a Darwinist, and a crude reflexive one at that. For instance, he will write: “Evolution only cares about brute survival. A successful animal is one that inserts many copies of its genes into the next generation, and one can do that while being not very bright at all.” (p. 14) By contrast, more nuanced Darwinists (like Robert Wright) will stress how Darwinian processes can enhance cooperation. Others (like Geoffrey Miller) will stress how sexual selection can put a premium on intelligence (and thus on “being bright”). But Rosenhouse’s Darwinism plays to the lowest common denominator. Throughout the book, he hammers on the primacy of natural selection and random variation, entirely omitting such factors as symbiosis, gene transfer, genetic drift, the action of regulatory genes in development, to say nothing of self-organizational processes.

Rosenhouse’s Darwinism commits him to Darwinian gradualism: Every adaptation of organisms is the result of a gradual step-by-step evolutionary process with natural selection ensuring the avoidance of missteps along the way. Writing about the evolution of “complex biological adaptations,” he notes: “Either the adaptation can be broken down into small mutational steps or it cannot. Evolutionists say that all adaptations studied to date can be so broken down while anti-evolutionists deny this…” (p. 178) At the same time, Rosenhouse denies that adaptations ever require multiple coordinated mutational steps: “[E]volution will not move a population from point A to point B if multiple, simultaneous mutations are required. No one disagrees with this, but in practice there is no way of showing that multiple, simultaneous mutations are actually required.” (pp. 159–160) 

“Mount Improbable”

And why are multiple simultaneous mutations strictly verboten? Because they would render life’s evolution too improbable, making it effectively impossible for evolution to climb Mount Improbable (which is both a metaphor and the title of a book by Richard Dawkins). Simultaneous mutations throw a wrench in the Darwinian gearbox. If they played a significant role in evolution, Darwinian gradualism would become untenable. Accordingly, Rosenhouse maintains that such large-scale mutational changes never happen and are indemonstrable even if they do happen. Rosenhouse presents this point of view not with a compelling argument, but as an apologist intent on neutralizing intelligent design’s threat to Darwinism. 

Next, “The Silence of the Evolutionary Biologists.”

Editor’s note: This review is cross-posted with permission of the author from BillDembski.com.

It looks like technology because it is?

 Physicist Brian Miller: The Fruitful Marriage of Biology and Engineering

David Klinghoffer

Discovery Institute physicist Brian Miller spoke at the recent Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. His theme was “The Surprising Relevance of Engineering in Biology.” 

Afterward, moderated by John West, he took some very thoughtful questions from the audience. Miller notes the fruitful marriage of biology and engineering, as in, for example, the study of control systems: “What you find is parallel research: that biologists are understanding these systems, engineers independently discover these systems, and when they work together they’re looking at the overlap. So, what’s happening now is engineers are learning from biology to do engineering better.” If biology isn’t designed, which is another way of saying “engineered,” wouldn’t this state of affairs be pretty counterintuitive? Enjoy the rest of the Q&A with Dr. Miller:

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A peacemaker between mathematics and Darwinism?

 The Challenge from Jason Rosenhouse

William A. Dembski

I am reviewing Jason Rosenhouse’s new book, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism (Cambridge University Press), serially. For the full series so far, go here.

To show readers that he means business and that he is a bold, brave thinker, Rosenhouse lays down the gauntlet: “Anti-evolutionists play well in front of friendly audiences because in that environment the speakers never pay the price of being wrong. The response would be a lot chillier if they tried the same arguments in front of audiences with the relevant expertise. Try telling a roomful of mathematicians that you can refute evolutionary theory with a few back-of-the-envelope probability calculations, and see how far you get.” (Epilogue, pp. 270-271)

I’m happy to take up Rosenhouse’s gauntlet. In fact, I already have. I’ve presented my ideas and arguments to roomfuls of not just mathematicians but also biologists and the whole range of scientists on whose disciplines my work impinges. A case in point is a 2014 talk I gave on conservation of information at the University of Chicago, a talk sponsored by my old physics advisor Leo Kadanoff. The entire talk, including Q&A, is available on YouTube:

In such talks, I present quite a bit more detail than a mere back-of-the-envelope probability calculation, though full details, in a single talk (as opposed to a multi-week seminar), require referring listeners to my work in the peer-reviewed literature (none of which Rosenhouse cites in his book). 

My Challenge to Jason Rosenhouse

If I receive a chilly reception in giving such talks, it’s not for any lack of merit in my ideas or work. Rather, it’s the prejudicial contempt evident in Rosenhouse’s challenge above, which is widely shared among Darwinists, who are widespread in the academy. For instance, Rosenhouse’s comrade in arms, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who is at the University of Chicago, tried to harass Leo into canceling my 2014 talk, but Leo was not a guy to be intimidated — the talk proceeded as planned (Leo sent me copies of the barrage of emails he received from Coyne to persuade him to uninvite me). For the record, I’m happy to debate Rosenhouse, or any mathematicians, engineers, biologists, or whatever, who think they can refute my work. 

Next, “Jason Rosenhouse, a Crude Darwinist.”

Editor’s note: This review is cross-posted with permission of the author from BillDembski.com.