Welcome Nullasalus, a new contributor to Telic Thoughts, drinks are on me.

Those attending religious services at least once per week showed a 20 percent mortality risk reduction mark compared with those not attending services at all. These findings corroborate prior studies that have shown up to a 25 percent reduction in such risk.

[...]

The study adjusted for participation of individuals within communal organizations and group activities that promote a strong social life and enjoyable routines, behaviors known to lead to overall wellness. However, even after controlling for such behavior and other health-related factors, the improvements in morbidity and mortality rates exceeded expectations.

“Interestingly, the protection against mortality provided by religion cannot be entirely explained by expected factors that include enhanced social support of friends or family, lifestyle choices and reduced smoking and alcohol consumption,” said Dr. Schnall, who was lead author of the study. “There is something here that we don’t quite understand. It is always possible that some unknown or unmeasured factors confounded these results,” he added.

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Mike Gene authored The Designer’s Identity at The Design Matrix. The piece addresses an old objection to ID which appears an opportunistic one in my view. Those posing the objection do not complain for example, that SETI cease and desist unless and until an intelligent designer of a signal is identified in advance. But let's look at what Mike has to say on this. Quoting:

There is nothing arbitrary about the constraint of remaining agnostic when it comes to the identity of the designer in ID. It’s the intellectually honest thing to do. If someone has a method for reverse-engineering the identity of a designer from the artifact, I am all ears (been so for years). But no one seems to have such a method.

That being said, there are forms of inquiry that can get us closer to the identity issue.

I think it is quite fair to ask an ID proponent what was designed. And the answers may not be as neutral with regard to the designer’s identity.

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Frank Beckwith wrote The truth about me and Intelligent Design which has been panned by some IDists. Beckwith wrote this:

Despite my interest in this subject and my sympathy for the ID movement’s goal to dismantle materialism and its deleterious implications on our understanding of what is real and what counts as knowledge, I am not, and have never been, a proponent of ID. My reasons have to do with my philosophical opposition to the ID movement’s acquiescence to the modern idea that an Enlightenment view of science is the paradigm of knowledge.

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Proteins With 'Cruise Control' Act Like Adaptive Machines

"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton. "Our new theory extends Darwin's model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness."

The paper presents the first quantitative experimental evidence that evolutionary control strategies in the organisms themselves work to maximize their fitness to the environment they inhabit. Chakrabarti calls this an application of "Control Theory," which is basically an appeal to engineering and… design. He of course denies that the findings support the notion of ID, but ID encompasses the notion that design can be entirely 'natural' if one allows for the actual participation of organisms in their own design and evolution. Something biologists have been notoriously reluctant to do for the last 150 years. Looks like now they're going to have to go ahead and admit what the evidence demonstrates to be true.

It's about time.

The Genius Behind the Ingenious is a Biologic Institue article. This appears in it:

Actually, as you may have guessed, attempts to harness the principles of evolution on computers have been underway for many years now. The field dedicated to this undertaking is known as evolutionary computing, and the results are not altogether encouraging for evolutionary biology.

It’s not that evolutionary design has failed on computers—far from it. One of the most celebrated successes, for example, is a NASA antenna that looks like a bent paper clip. [2] It may not be much to look at, but this odd little design works better than any known alternative, which is why NASA has deployed it in space.

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The nature of consciousness has long defied empirical resolutions. The First Few Minutes After Death discusses a study which may shed some light on the puzzle. It is known as the Human Consciousness Project and intends to explore what have been dubbed as near death experiences. Reports have depicted near death experiences as analogous to floating outside one's body. So a capacity to see things, that could not be physically observed from the vantage point of an individual undergoing a near death experience, could indicate a mind/brain duality. On the other hand perhaps differences in biochemically based brain states account for the floating sensation. Maybe we'll find out.

How old is the oldest evidence for complex life forms? The Science News article Oldest evidence for complex life in doubt discusses that matter. I would hasten to point out that one of the hallmarks of even unicellular organism is intrinsic complexity. It's not as if simple life forms are available to serve as contrasts. Nevertheless there have been attempts to ascertain when it was that ancient organisms related to cyanobacteria first appeared on earth.

In 1999 researchers published a finding indicating that the origin of cyanobacteria was at least 550 million years closer to the time origin of the earth itself. It is believed that single celled organisms were the first life forms followed by cyanobacteria which had photosynthesis capabilities. That in turn is important in assessing when it was that the earth acquired a significant amount of atmospheric oxygen. The article states:

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