Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Month

July 2014

Eric Harris Was Just Paying Attention

Thank you to all of the materialists (and there were several) who rose to the challenge of my last post [Materialists: [crickets]]. We will continue the discussion we began there in this thread. Before I continue, please allow me to clear up some confusion. Several of my interlocutors seem to believe that the purpose of my post is to refute metaphysical naturalism. (See here for instance) It is not. Please look again at the very first line of the paragraph I quoted: “Let us assume for the sake of argument that metaphysical naturalism is a true account of reality.” Please read that line again carefully. I am NOT arguing that metaphysical naturalism is false (though I believe it is; that Read More ›

It’s official: there are no ring species

Readers who were taught about ring species as evidence for evolution in high school are due for a surprise: it now appears that there aren’t any, after all. There were only a few alleged cases to begin with, but now, they’ve all been discredited. The last “good example” of a ring species has just been struck off the list, in a new paper by Miguel Alcaide et al. in Nature “What’s a ring species?” I hear some of you ask. In a recent post titled, There are no ring species, which is well worth reading, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne describes the process whereby ring species supposedly originate: It works like this: a species expands its range and encounters a roughly Read More ›

Materialists: [crickets]

Over three months ago I posted Psychopath as Übermensch or Nietzsche at Columbine, in which I wrote: Let us assume for the sake of argument that metaphysical naturalism is a true account of reality. What if a person were able to act based on a clear-eyed and unsentimental understanding of the consequences outlined above? If that person had the courage not to be overwhelmed by the utter meaningless of existence, he would be transformed. He would be bold, self-confident, assertive, uninhibited, and unrestrained. He would consider empathy to be nothing but weak-kneed sentimentality. To him others would not be ends; they would be objects to be exploited for his own gratification. He would not mind being called cruel, because he Read More ›