Nicholas Upchurch

I was recently invited by Nicholas Upchurch to appear on his Believe! podcast. We ended up with over an hour of unusual content.  Now, here’s why I called this clip “unusual.”

There are many theories, models, and hypotheses that Nicholas and I may not agree on. And some of the remote fringes of science that he aspires to traverse may be very… “fringy.” However, what unites the two of us is our shared conviction that no verifiable fact can be ignored if we want the true science to happen.

We ended up visiting many rabbit holes in this very short time span. If there was a world record for that, we’d almost certainly smash it.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What mainstream scientists, researchers, and professors are most afraid of
• Was life brought to Earth from another planet? (And why the answer to that doesn’t answer anything.)
• Extraterrestrials and the Vatican
• What comes first, matter or consciousness?
• Pacemakers, Galileo, and the center of the Universe
• What science and the post office have in common

Listen to it here: Perry Marshall on Science vs. God

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Thanks to Mark D. Thompson for posting this helpful blog comment:

Richard Dawkins has been out of date since the day “Selfish Gene” hit the bookstores

This issue [re: “Memo to Dawkins & friends: Recess Is OVER”] was also debated in a Nature article in terms of niche construction:

http://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080

Richard Dawkins has been out of date since the day that he published the Selfish Gene. I admire his writing and his books were great enjoyment leading into my undergraduate.

However, Sewall Wright, Rupert Riedl, Conrad Waddington, and even Richard Lewontin were very skeptical. Some even published rebuttals of Dawkins in the peer-reviewed literature.

Stephen J. Gould’s writings should have been the tombstone marker on Dawkins’ thesis, but for some reason this never caught traction.

There is a grand divide between populist thinking in evolutionary biology and what is really going on in evolutionary peer-review.

Here we are with an article in 1978 on epigenetics:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mae-Wan_Ho/publication/22628078_Beyond_neo-Darwinism-an_epigenetic_approach_to_evolution/links/0deec52875c870b1c9000000.pdf

Dawkins still didn’t get the memo. He put out this horrific paper:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ABIPH.0000036180.14904.96?LI=true

It was essentially a re-hash of what he has already said and he ignores the evidence. I have admired Dawkins and many of the other neo-Darwinian) players, but they need to modify their views in light of the evidence (which they claim to do).

Interestingly, Charles Darwin would be more of a modern thinker in relation to his pangenesis theory, which started genetics and is really prescient thinking on the way that RNA intermixes with the proteome. Great article!

By day, Jason Vidaurri is a mild-mannered chemical engineer of about 16 years, whose day job consists of delving into the intricacies of turning raw materials into useful, everyday products. A perfectly respectable role for a man of his education and experience.

Outside of work (and likely unbeknownst to his coworkers), Jason is the engineer of www.storyhinge.com – a podcast committed to helping others find more of their own success in all aspects of life by giving people the freedom to tell their story – with the intent that listeners might find foundational material on which to build upon their own lives.  

Jason recently had me as his guest to talk about Evolution 2.0 and we immediately cut to the chase. In this episode we talk about my harrowing journey of slashing through the jungle of the creation versus evolution debate, how we spend our lives fighting random mutation, and my simple exercise of organizing the world into two halves: those with code and those without.

Here’s a few highlights guaranteed to awaken your inner geek:

• Theology is squishy, science is not – 9:02
• How DNA is mathematically identical to an ethernet packet (really) – 15:30
• Why evolution is simply a software engineering problem – 17:28
• What the cell does that no other human technology is capable of (sorry, Google) – 26:23

Enjoy:  StoryHinge – Episode 11

http://storyhinge.com/index.php/2017/01/03/perry-marshall/

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James MacAllister, curator of the Lynn Margulis archive at the University of Massachussetts Amherst. He wrote a thorough review of the London 2016 evolution conference at the Royal Society.

James MacAllister is the volunteer archivist for the Lynn Margulis archive at the University of Massachussetts-Amherst.

Jim runs envevo.org, the Environmental Evolution website. Lynn Margulis was the champion of Symbiogenesis theory.

She fought tremendous opposition from Neo-Darwinists to get the theory accepted. Today she is widely regarded as one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of all time.

I met Jim at the Royal Society evolution meeting in London, and in a very brief conversation discovered much in common. Jim runs envevo.org, the Environmental Evolution blog.

He wrote a fantastic synopsis of the Royal Society meeting. I encourage you to read his entire report. Meanwhile, some highlights:

Read more »

Is evolution a “red in tooth and claw” war of survival of the fittest? Or is it cooperative?

Is evolution slow and accidental? Or rapid and strategic?

Enjoy this video about real-time Symbiosis by John Perry of Stated Clearly.

Guest Blog by Ryan Ferguson

At the age of 6, I loved my family, my dog, my Lord Jesus, awesome flying kicks and Ankylosaurus. At the age of 6, this was considered perfectly normal and no one batted an eyelid.

At the age of 12, I was told I could love four of those five things, but when it came to the God who loves me and amazing ancient creatures, I had to choose.

Why? Because Ankylosaurus lived approximately 60,000,000 years ago, while the Bible “clearly” states that God created the world 6,000 years ago.

And, as the fundamentalists’ claims went, the Bible is inerrant, so if any of it is wrong, it’s all wrong.

In other words, if I’m not Read more »

Between North and South Korea there’s a “DMZ,” a De-Militarized Zone. A strip of land a couple of miles wide. A buffer between the two sides. A place where people from both sides can go… and not get shot.

The DMZ has a number of buildings for peace talks between the two sides.

Evolution 2.0 is a De-Militarized Zone for the evolution debate.

The rules of the DMZ are:

Read more »

Since giving my talk “If You Can Read This I Can Prove God Exists” in 2005, my thinking has evolved tremendously.

This continues to be one of the most hotly debated talks on Origin Of Life on the web.

It sparked a 7-year debate on Infidels. At the time, Infidels.org was the largest atheist website in the world. This went on to become the longest-running, most-viewed thread on the site.

No one overturned my argument. Eventually Infidels did their best to make the whole episode disappear.

“If you can read this” has been pounded hard by thousands of skeptics. Every scientific detail and technical fact still stands intact today, more than 10 years later.

However I must be clear:

I did not prove God exists. What I proved is: Read more »

“Evolution is too important to leave to evolutionary biologists.”

-Ray Noble MD

“I don’t consider my ideas controversial. I consider them right.”

-Lynn Margulis

In London from 7-9 November 2016 I witnessed a groundbreaking summit at the British Royal Society. 300 scientists from around the world gathered to evaluate a sea change in evolutionary theory.

When recalled at the end of the 21st century, this gathering may prove as pivotal as the US election that occurred at the same time.

No one can say for sure until December 31, 2099 whether this meeting was that influential. But in a few minutes I’ll explain why I predict it was.

I’ll also explain why Charles Darwin himself – a thoughtful, tentative, ever-questioning man who eschewed dogma – would likely be horrified at Neo-Darwinism, the mutant progeny of his own theory, that emerged in the 1940s and held sway for 70 years.

Mr. Darwin would surely be relieved that someone finally Read more »