Denis Noble debates Richard Dawkins:
Is it time to retire the Selfish Gene?
High-level thinkers at Oxford University prodded Richard Dawkins to defend his Selfish Gene theory for years. He finally relented and debated Denis Noble in June 2022 at the UK’s How the Light Gets In festival. Read more »
LIVE DEBATE Oxford professor Denis Noble locked horns with Richard Dawkins in June at the How the Light Gets In UK conference. Is The Selfish Gene holding back medicine and cancer cures? The world’s most incendiary evolutionary biologist asks if we need to rethink DNA.
The debate was both cordial and revealing. One thing that is quite clear from this debate is that Dawkins’ knowledge of biology and genetics lags 20-30 years behind current research.
“Negentropy” or Negative Entropy is a term coined by Erwin Schrodinger in 1943 to describe how life turns disorder into order, which runs in the opposite direction of normal thermodynamics and even “Murphy’s Law.” Only life does this, and to date no one understands what principle or property enables life to do this.
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SECULAR NARRATIVE Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection vanquished childish notions of a creator. Life is ruthless competition of survival and reproduction. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Purpose in nature has been eradicated. Free will is an illusion. Science and religion are at war. There are no miracles. Skepticism is a virtue. Life is random. We are lumbering robots, vehicles for our selfish genes. |
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RENAISSANCE NARRATIVE The cosmos is divinely ordered and we are privileged to discover it. The signature genius of evolution is higher levels of cooperation. Life is a gift. It is purposeful at every level. Science explores a world that is orderly, mathematical, elegant and beautiful. Science is an act of worship, a window into the mind of a master architect. We are part of the ecosystem and have a responsibility to care for it.
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Martin Schweiger is a patent attorney in Singapore who has facilitated thousands of patent cases. Martin sees more innovations and inventions in a week than most people see in a year. In this article he reviews my book Evolution 2.0 from the perspective of an engineer who asks questions about biology.
Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0 and founder of the $10 million prize for the origin of a spontaneously arising communication system, joins Glen Reuschling, retired engineer, and Karen Wong to discuss the fundamental nature of information, choice, and the observer. Read more »
Karen Wong has a longtime interest in origins and evolution and we discuss what happens when you shift the definition of evolution. Old definition: Changes in gene frequencies acted upon by natural selection. New definition: Self-awareness at fractal levels of scale.
Why water is essential to life possessing the ability to choose, by Denis Noble of Oxford:
Life begins and depends on the strange physical and chemical properties of water. This lecture by Denis Noble was delivered to a Biology Congress in Iran in 2022. In simple language it shows why water is crucial to our ability to exercise free action in choosing our actions and in being creative. The lecture ends with a plea: water resources in many part of the world are threatened by global warming, while in other parts of the world people and animals are threatened by massive flooding. Recognising how important water is to life, and why that is so, is a major step towards convincing people and nations around the world to take action to prevent the catastrophes that threaten life on earth.
Glen Reuschling writes:
I’ve taken the opportunity to read, then reread several times, your recent paper “Biology transcends the limits of computation” (2021). I’m confused. Wouldn’t a working solution to your prize challenge effectively disprove the assertion of the paper’s title? Read more »
