There has been much talk in scientific circles recently about a 2013 paper by Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb, titled, Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck2013. The authors of the paper question the cosmological theory of inflation, which postulates that the universe underwent a period of extremely rapid expansion shortly after the big bang, and that it has been expanding at a slower rate ever since. What I think their paper does instead is lend powerful support to the fine-tuning argument, which claims that the physical constants, initial conditions and laws of the universe were designed by God. This conclusion follows naturally if we assume that the Intelligent Designer of the cosmos wanted to not only make Read More ›

The commenter who goes by “jerry” writes: ‘What does the term evil mean?’ If we are going to use it, then we should define it . . . I have asked this question several times over the years on this site and so far no one has been able to answer it . . . no one will offer up a definition. I responded: OK, why don’t you offer up a definition? Your choices now are: 1. Dodge the question (which is what I predict you will do); 2. Offer up a definition; 3. Say the word has no meaning. Graham2 jumped in uninvited and responded: I would pick 3. Let’s test this. Consider the following truth claim: Torturing an Read More ›

A galaxy is speculated to form in only 700 million years. By way of contrast, in a comparable stretch of time (450 million years) the Living Fossil horse shoe crab has remained unchanged. In fact the Earth supposedly took only 20 million years to form out of a nebula, and that horse shoe crab remained immutable for 450 million years (22 times longer)! In the same time frame that the horseshoe crab remained the same, fish evolve into birds. Isn’t evolution (or lack thereof in the horseshoe crab) amazing? One test I suggest is whenever we have a living fossil plus a supposed real fossil of the same species (like a horseshoe crab), to the extent we can do a Read More ›

After all of these years of debating materialists one might think that I am inured to the silly things they say, but the depths of casuistry they will plumb in defense of the indefensible still has the capacity to amaze.  Consider my last post  in which I used the holocaust as an example of obvious evil. Graham2 pushes back: How is objective morality communicated to us ? Writing in the sky ? Voices in the head ? Barry seems to think ‘its obvious’ I responded: Suppose you were the only person in the world who believed the holocaust was evil. Would you be right and everyone else wrong? Graham2 writes: Barry: That is more or less my point. You cant Read More ›

For some little while now, RDF/AIGuy has been advocating a strong AI claim here at UD.  In an exchange in the ongoing is ID fatally flawed thread, he has said: 222: Computers are of course not conscious. Computers of course can be creative, and computers are of course intelligent agents. Now before you blow a gasket, please try and understand that we are not arguing here about what computers can or cannot do, or do or do not experience. We agree about all of that. The reason we disagree is simply because we are using different definitions for the terms “creative” and “intelligent agents” . . . This seems a little over the top, and I commented; but before we Read More ›

Eugene V. Koonin is a Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He is a recognized expert in the field of evolutionary and computational biology. He is also the author of The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (Upper Saddle River: FT Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-13-262317-9). I think we can fairly assume that when it comes to origin-of-life scenarios, he knows what he’s talking about. In Appendix B of his book, The Logic of Chance, Dr. Koonin argues that the origin of life is such a remarkable event that we need to postulate Read More ›

There are some things that you can’t not know.  For example, the holocaust is often used as the very quintessence of evil because you can’t not know that the Nazis’ murder of millions was evil.  The holocaust was objectively evil.  Now of course our materialist interlocutors cannot admit that “good” and “evil” are objective categories, and they frequently twist themselves into knots trying to elude the issue.  But occasionally you will get a perfectly candid materialist.  The commenter who goes by “nightlight” is one such. In the comment thread to an earliest post nightlife and I argued about whether there is an objective basis for ethical standards.  I argued from the “deontological” perspective that good and evil are real ontological Read More ›