October 2013

Okay, due to technical hassles, we missed the Fri nite frite last week, but whaddayaknow, if it isn’t Halloween. We can’t do a spook frite because the Darwinian atheists beat us to it (at least one of them believes in them, and he isn’t the only one either). Believing in them ruddy spoils the fun! Here’s something to contemplate between the gaggles of kids showing up for treats, while you munch popcorn shrimp: First venomous crustacean found The blind “remipede” liquefies its prey with a compound similar to that found in a rattlesnake’s fangs. It lives in underwater caves of the Caribbean, Canary Islands and Western Australia, … The venom contains a complex cocktail of toxins, including enzymes and a Read More ›

Recently I came across a fascinating biography of Lord Kelvin over on the creationist Website, crev.info. That article gave me the idea for an interesting hypothetical question, which I’d like to put to evolutionary biologists and other defenders of Darwinism. If Professors Jerry Coyne, Larry Moran or P. Z. Myers want to weigh in, I’d be delighted. Darwin’s biggest problem in the nineteenth century: there wasn’t enough time for his theory of evolution to work First, a little bit of background. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection had numerous critics in the nineteenth century. By far the most formidable of these critics was Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) (pictured above, portrait by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, Glasgow Museum, image courtesy of Wikipedia). Read More ›

I appreciate all of those who participate here at UD. We have some great debates. Here’s one of them. Mark Frank (whom I thank for sparking this debate) thinks it is wrong to be certain: It has usually been the people who are sure they know what is right who have done the most terrible things. Barry No, this is obviously false. The most dangerous people, including the three most prolific mass murderers in history (Mao, Stalin, Hitler – in that order BTW), are those who do not believe there is such a thing as “right.” KF jumps in: Pardon, but the evidence is there all around, this is living memory history. On the part of the Marxist dictators, the Read More ›

Consciousness could not have evolved from “simpler” states of matter, because it is not a state of matter. To say that consciousness evolved from matter is like saying Newton’s theory of gravity evolved from apples. Even if for the sake of argument one concedes that natural selection might account for the development of a material body, consciousness remains a mystery. There is still a vast un-crossable gulf between the physical body and mind. In other words, the difference between body and mind is qualitative, not quantitative. You can’t get an immaterial mind no matter how many slight successive modifications of the body there may have been. David Bentley Hart puts it this way: It makes sense to say that a Read More ›

I always love a good survey, and the latest Yougov survey of the religious beliefs of Americans does not disappoint. The survey of 996 adults, conducted on 17-18 October 2013, contains quite a few interesting revelations about atheism and religious belief in America. Among the highlights: * Only 76% of Americans now claim to believe in God. (The question the survey participants were asked was, “Do you personally believe in the existence of God?”) 14% of Americans say they don’t believe in God, and an additional 10% are not sure. Who are the atheists, in the United States? Young people * In the United States, people aged 18-29 are more than four times as likely to say they don’t believe Read More ›

“To materialists, words are nothing more than an evolved form of feces which hairless apes fling at that which displeases them.” William J Murray