Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Of coin-tosses, expectation, materialistic question-begging and forfeit of credibility by materialists

Yesterday, I crossed a Rubicon, for cause, on seeing the refusal to stop from enabling denial and correct and deal with slander on the part of even the most genteel of the current wave of critics. It is time to face what we are dealing with squarely: ideologues on the attack.  (Now, in a wave of TSZ denizens back here at UD and hoping to swarm down, twist into pretzels, ridicule and dismiss the basic case for design.) Sal C has been the most prolific recent contributor at UD, and a pivotal case he has put forth is the discovery of a box of five hundred coins, all heads. What is the best explanation? The talking point gymnastics to avoid Read More ›

Arguing for Resemblance of Design (RD) instead of Intelligent Design (ID)

[This is a follow on essay to Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID] The irony is that one of the books most widely credited for inspiring the ID movement didn’t actually argue for ID! That book was Michael Denton’s book Evolution A Theory In Crisis. This book deeply influenced Phil Johnson, Michael Behe, and many others. So what was Denton’s conclusion at the end of his book? He said the mystery of biology is as enigmatic today as it was at the time of Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle. He offered no explanation for the apparent design in biology, and offered no suggestion that ID nor creation should even be put on the table as answers. He just stated Read More ›

Die to evolve

Matt Ridley, author of the book “Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters” (2006 Harper Perennial) is known to be a brilliant propagandist of Darwin. Perhaps also for this reason the Wall Street Journal gives him the opportunity to periodically write articles on this topic. In one of these, Ridley candidly writes: “Biological evolution, too, is anti-fragile. The death of unfit individuals is what causes a species to adapt and improve. Some could wrongly interpret here the “improvement” in a minor, reductive sense. In truth, Ridley, like all evolutionists, when speaks of “improvement” of species dreams its major all-comprehensive sense, nothing less than biological macroevolution of all species starting from the “primordial soup”, in other words, the “molecules-to-man” Read More ›

Even supposing ID is not science, it does not automatically mean it is religion, philosophy, or metaphysics

I found a comment by CLADIVS (Claudius) in Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID that is worth highlighting. But without a testable explanation, ID remains in the realm of metaphysics, philosophy or religion, not science. I responded: ID may not be science, but that does not mean automatically it is religion. If I have a coin in a box and shake it, look at it at 11:27 AM on 6/26/13 and determine it is heads. You have no way of scientifically verifying the claim via a process of repeated experiments 10 years from now. You’ll just have to take my word for it. The fact that a true claim about the history of the physical universe is not accessible Read More ›

Jerry Coyne – Afraid to Engage – Imagine That!

Over at his Why Evolution is True website, the infamous Jerry Coyne has given his lame excuses for not wanting to take up a genuine offer from ENV’s David Klinghoffer to debate and discuss Steve Meyer’s latest Book Darwin’s Doubt as well as discussing anything else Darwin related.  In his “I’m too busy and important to do that’ rant he writes: You ID advocates can also make your case, but the website rules are that we can then ask, before you post further, about your evidence for God The Intelligent Designer. This is the last time I’ll be engaging the Discovery Institute directly on these issues. DIers are not scientists but religious zealots concealing clerical collars beneath threadbare lab coats. I Read More ›

Dawkins mutation in the mind music video: “this is your brain on bad acid”

In the video, Dawkins gets his head split open and then all we see are his brains and eyeballs, then they multiply…. at the end he says, “as for me, I’d rather spread memes than genes anyway.” We then see him tooting his own horn while a dinosaur swallows a shark. The video that Richard Dawkins made for an advertising company in Cannes is like a particularly vivid anti-drug commercial: this is your brain on bad acid, except, of course, that this is a portrait of a brain wrecked by self-importance. Richard Dawkins Meaningless Meme Skip to about 4:50 to see the video. [youtube GFn-ixX9edg] Enjoy! HT: Mike Gene PS Despite all the sadness in the world, the few glimpses Read More ›