I’ve been quiet on UD for a while, but after seeing the (however qualified) praise VJ Torley has handed Myers for his limp-wristed opposition to a moralizing Richard Dawkins, I feel the need to offer another view. Myers deserves no praise for his opposition to Dawkins on the issue of the morality of (mandatory) aborting children with Down Syndrome, and people who are pro-life do themselves a disservice by choosing to offer him even an ounce of respect on this issue. In this case, the enemy of your enemy is still your enemy. I’ll keep this succinct. First, Myers is not rushing to the defense of children with Down Syndrome. Ask him if he thinks a woman who aborts a Read More ›

Hot on the heels of Denyse O’Leary’s recent post on Richard Dawkins’ tweet that it would be immoral to bring a kid with Down syndrome into the world by choice, P.Z. Myers has weighed in against Dawkins. Myers writes: I’m fully in agreement with Dawkins that abortion is not an unethical choice. The woman can choose whether to keep a child or not, and it is perfectly reasonable, and even responsible, for her to include any information about genetic disorders in making her decision. However, singling out children with Down Syndrome is seriously problematic — it is not immoral to have a child with Downs. It is immoral to insist that a fetus with Down Syndrome should be aborted. I Read More ›

Robert Marks has an article “Biological Information: New Perspectives from Intelligent Design” at Human Events today. If you have comments, please post them there.

From Phys.org: A new replica of an early modern human brain has provided further evidence for the theory that the human brain has been shrinking. The skull belonged to an elderly Cro Magnon man, whose skeleton is called Cro Magnon 1. The entire skeleton was discovered in 1868 in the Cro Magnon cave in Dordogne, France, and has since become one of the most famous Upper Palaeolithic skeletons. Using new technology, researchers have produced a replica of the 28,000-year-old brain and found that it is about 15-20% larger than our brains. Actually, it doesn’t matter much because intellectual capacity is mostly governed by the wiring: The finding doesn’t suggest that humans today are less intelligent than earlier humans. Although previous Read More ›

Those who have been following recent exchanges at UD will recognise that the headlined summarises the current objection highlighted by objector RDFish, an AI advocate and researcher. A bit of backdrop will be useful; a clip from Luke Muehlhauser in the blog/site “Common Sense Atheism” will aid us in understanding claim and context: Contra-causal free will is the power to do something without yourself being fully caused to do it. This is what most people mean by “free will.” Contra-causal free will is distinct from what you might call caused free will, which is the type of free will compatibilists like Frankfurt and Dennett accept. Those with caused free will are able to do what they want. But this doesn’t mean that their actions Read More ›

Atheist and feminist blogger Greta Christina recently wrote an essay for AlterNet titled, Why You Can’t Reconcile God and Evolution, which has been re-published in Salon magazine under the title, The truth about science vs. religion: 4 reasons why intelligent design falls flat. The article was then critiqued by an agnostic called Andy Ihnatko and finally, New Atheist P. Z. Myers commented on both the article and the critique over at his science blog, Pharyngula. Although I disagree with Greta Christina on many subjects, she writes well and is generally a fair-minded person, so I thought her piece deserved a reply from the Intelligent Design community. Let’s have a look at her four reasons why God-guided evolution won’t work. Greta Read More ›