The Straw Man tactic is especially reprehensible, because it is fundamentally dishonest. Wikipedia describes the tactic as follows A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent’s argument. To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument. The so-called typical “attacking a straw man” argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent’s proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., “stand up a straw man”) and then to refute or defeat that false argument (“knock down a straw man”) instead of the original proposition In this post we took down a straw Read More ›

In this post Dr. Torley engages in a philosophical discussion about the nature of God. In the comment thread we have Graham2 saying: This site lost any claim to the practice of impartial science long long ago. And william spearshake says: UD, which purports to be in support of the “science” of ID, supposedly not religiously based, loses what little credibility it has when it’s moderator continues to allow articles that are purely religious. It should be noted for the record that Dr. Torley did not start this discussion. He was responding to a post by one of the world’s most prominent materialist atheists, Jerry Coyne. I did a quick check through the comment thread to Dr. Coyne’s post, and Read More ›

Let us follow an example being discussed in UD comment threads in recent days, of comparing two piles of “dirt”. (U/D, I add — on advice, a sample from ES, as a PS.) CASE A: The volcanic dome of Montserrat’s Soufriere Hills Volcano, a few miles south of where I am composing this post . . . CASE B: Another pile of “dirt” . . . Q: Is there an observable, material difference between these two piles that can allow an observer to infer as to causal source, even if s/he has not seen the causal process in action directly? A: Yes, and it is patent. A child will instantly and reliably recognise the difference, as will the most primitive Read More ›

Here. “During this week all Royal Society content will be completely free to access.” It’s going on in lots of other places too, so check. Open access is becoming a cause, and there are many issues to untangle. We sure hope so. For example, recently, one could have read Max Tegmark’s paper on consciousness as a fourth state of matter for free—but the New Scientist article about it was paywalled. Hmmmm. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Thank you to all who contributed to my recent request for comments. There were many excellent comments, and I have attempted to synthesize them into a WAC. (BTW, I like WJM’s name for the syndrome better than my own and have switched to it). Here is the WAC: Definition Deficit Disorder Definition Deficit Disorder (“DDD”), also known as the “me no speaka the English distraction” and “definition derby” is a form of sophistry by obfuscation that demands that one’s opponent fulfil unreasonable or even impossible definitional criteria, not to advance the debate but to avoid the debate by claiming one’s opponent cannot adequately define their terms. An example: ID advocate: Intelligent design theory asserts chance causes cannot account for the Read More ›

In this post Dr. Hunter shows us professor of English Terry Scambray completely destroying three Ph.D Darwinists on basic logic and reasoning.    Jeffrey Shallit takes to his website to rebut Professor Scambray’s arguments and falls flat on his face.  First Shallit takes Scambray to task for asserting that  “Animals and plants appear in the fossil record fully formed and remain unchanged through millions of years.”  Shallit dismisses the claim as “pure creationist babble.”  Eminent Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould wrote the following:    The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: (1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they Read More ›

One of the Darwinists’ favorite tactics is the “False Quote Mining Charge.” For those who do not know what “quote mining” is: Quote mining is the deceitful tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner’s viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don’t in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize. It’s a way of lying. In summary, to accuse someone of quote mining is to accuse them of lying. It is a serious charge. Let us examine a recent example of the charge to illustrate. In Origin of Species Darwin wrote this about the lack of transitional Read More ›