Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Study: Spirituality plays a key role in fighting depression

Traditional Christians expect some level of unavoidable suffering as part of life, accepting it as a test of character (not of faith, because their faith told them to expect it). The same situation might look very different to the person who honestly believes that if things aren’t going well, there is something wrong with him. Read More ›

Broader Implications of ID

In the popular media, ID is often portrayed as Creationism in new clothes.  And indeed, even among ID proponents, the creation implications tend to be predominantly emphasized.  Yet the theory underpinning Intelligent Design has implications beyond the realm of biological history, perhaps it is a much broader theory than most realize at first.  In fact, it may even describe a comprehensive worldview.  The primary reason that ID has such an impact is because materialism underlies many areas of modern thought, and ID is an alternative hypothesis to materialism. To understand the insights that ID brings, it is important to have a bit of philosophical background to begin with.  There are two basic concepts that are important to know: efficient and Read More ›

Scholar: Darwin did not invent the Tree of Life. He never called his diagram that

The concept was commonly used for centuries to represent order in nature, but it is dying.  Except in school, where your kid is forced to learn it. From Nathalie Gontier’s “Depicting the Tree of Life: the Philosophical and Historical Roots of Evolutionary Tree Diagrams” (Evolution: Education and Outreach, 19 August, 2011 ), we learn, It is a popularly held view that Darwin was the first author to draw a phylogenetic tree diagram. However, as is the case with most popular beliefs, this one also does not hold true. Firstly, Darwin never called his diagram of common descent a tree. Secondly, even before Darwin, tree diagrams were used by a variety of philosophical, religious, and secular scholars to depict phenomena such Read More ›

So, this is the best pop science TV show since Cosmos?

Calling Peter “Not Even Wrong” Woit, right this minute: In “Morgan Freeman Goes From God to Science” ( New York Times, August 26, 2011) Alex Pappademas writes what sounds like a parody of pop science TV – but takes it seriously: In the hands of a goofier host — and let’s face it, anyone other than Freeman would by definition be a goofier host — the series could have been “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” with string theory, or a bottomless can of mind-Pringles for freshman-dorm Castanedas. (Representative episode titles include “Does Time Really Exist?” and “Beyond the Darkness”; presumably, the producers are saving “Have You Ever Looked at Your Hand — I Mean, Really Looked at It?” and “No, Read More ›

“The universe is too big, too old and too cruel”: three silly objections to cosmological fine-tuning (Part One)

In previous articles, I have argued that even if our universe is part of some larger multiverse, we still have excellent scientific grounds for believing that our universe – and also the multiverse in which it is embedded – is fine-tuned to permit the possibility of life. Moreover, the only adequate explanation for the extraordinary degree of fine-tuning we observe in the cosmos is that it is the product of an Intelligence. That is the cosmological fine-tuning argument, in a nutshell. My articles can be viewed here:

So you think the multiverse refutes cosmological fine-tuning? Consider Arthur Rubinstein
Beauty and the multiverse
Why a multiverse would still need to be fine-tuned, in order to make baby universes

Scientific challenges to the cosmological fine-tuning argument can be ably rebutted, as this article by Dr. Robin Collins shows. However, there are three objections to fine-tuning which I keep hearing from atheists over and over again. Here they are:
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For johnnyb: How intelligent design can help with the education crisis

Here johnnyb talks about “Intelligent Design and the Education Crisis,” assuring us, “No I’m Not Talking About Evolution Today”. No need, johnnyb. I used to work in educational publishing, and heartily agree with this: Want to start a revolution in education? Start by looking at what motivates kids to love learning. Money can motivate kids to *do* the work, but that’s not what education is. Loving learning is what will make kids educated, whether they go through college or not. None of the standardized tests will tell you if your child loves learning. None of them will say, “this person wants to get to the bottom of things, and won’t stop until he finds it.” But here are some problems: Read More ›

Mike Behe’s son becomes “young humanist”, says father has no religious agenda

Here. Ryan Schaffer interviews Leo Behe, who hopes to study philosophy in the fall term: I’m going to a university this fall to study philosophy. In the future, I hope to write on the subject of religion and why I believe it is both harmful and false. – (“The Humanist Interview: The son of intelligent design heavyweight Michael Behe discusses his journey to atheism” The Humanist, September/October 2011) That said, he does not claim that his father forced religion on him. Rather, I would like everyone to realize that he doesn’t have any sort of religious agenda and he’s not trying to denigrate science in any way. And so … Long-held beliefs, especially beliefs developed during childhood, operate on a Read More ›

Large Hadron Collider proves physics still meaningful: Dumps string theory

At BBC News (August 27, 2011), Pallab Ghosh reports “LHC results put supersymmetry theory ‘on the spot’” : Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics. Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called “supersymmetric” particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory. Promising: “The fact that we haven’t seen any evidence of it tells us that either our understanding of it is incomplete, or it’s a little different to what we thought – or maybe it doesn’t exist at all,” he said. Relax, Nash. If you’re willing to admit that maybe it doesn’t exist at all, you know you are doing physics. Read More ›

First question: Are the Christian Darwinists at Biologos conscious fronts for atheism? Or unconscious ones?

(Of a series of seven) The Washington Post’s Paula Kirby unintentionally forces the first question. Kirby sounds like an utterly conventional legacy media journalist, a woman who would never have an idea that wasn’t trendy. She read a book by Dawkins and then one by Jerry Coyne and, guess what, she knows evolution is true. Period. Responding to Rick Perry’s claimed position on evolution, she explains (“Evolution threatens Christianity,”Washington Post, August 24, 2011) why she stopped being a Christian because of evolution (= Darwinism): But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That’s not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare Read More ›

Newly found mayfly unlike “all other known insects in anatomy and mode of life”

From “Mysterious Fossils Provide New Clues to Insect Evolution” (ScienceDaily, Aug. 15, 2011) , we learn: Scientists at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum and colleagues have discovered a new insect order from the Lower Cretaceous of South America. Though thought to be mayflies, Coxoplectoptera, however, significantly differ from both mayflies and all other known insects in anatomy and mode of life. The peculiar larvae, however, are reminiscent of freshwater shrimps. Their lifestyle turned out to be a major enigma: their mode of embedding and certain other characteristics clearly suggest a fluvial habitat. Their unique anatomy indicates that these animals were ambush predators living partly dug in the river bed. If so, all this raises another evolution conundrum: Darwinism (natural selection Read More ›

A specific plan for government control of the Internet

A while back, I wrote a note on how a government can gain control of the Internet (by criminalizing the hyperlink). Here’s another way: By making new rules that discriminate against blogs, vs. other sources of news. That’ exactly what the Canadian province of Quebec proposes, according to Franklin Carter at the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee: In Quebec, Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre is proposing to create “a new model of regulation of Quebec media.” Public consultations will be held across Quebec this fall. She wishes to distinguish in law between “professional journalists” who are committed to “serving the public interest” and “amateur bloggers.” State-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified “advantages or privileges” over other writers and Read More ›

Did you know how involved government now is in materialist neuroscience, to control citizens?

This Spiked interview by Tim Black with Raymond Tallis might be useful reading: This sense that our minds are not what we thought they were, that it’s our brains, and the natural-physical causal network of which they are part, that is really calling the shots has been lovingly embraced by politicos on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s a development that worries Tallis: ‘That’s when [neuromania] gets dangerous rather than merely irritating – when people start invoking brain science as a guide to social policy, as a guide to understanding criminal behaviour and so on. You’re then in the same territory as Cesare Lombroso [a nineteenth-century criminologist who believed criminality was physically inherited] and other characters who have since been Read More ›

Intelligent Design and the Education Crisis – No I’m Not Talking About Evolution Today

Education is one of the things that nearly every American agrees is important. I am one of those people. I do everything in my power to give my children every educational opportunity. I was well-pleased with my education choices when, today in my child’s 3rd-grade class, the teacher turned on some music, and half of the children were excited because it was Beethoven, and they each spontaneously told which Beethoven piece was their favorite.

However, to educate properly, the primary principle that you must operate with is this – education needs to be sensitive to the nature of humans. If your educational philosophy or your political philosophy of education fails to take into account the nature of humans and how they learn, the final result will be that you spend a whole lot of money, and no one gets educated. That’ pretty much sums up where we are headed.
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