2014

This morning a friend said she had recently heard an atheist make the “I am atheistic about just one more god than you are” argument. Ricky Gervais makes the argument this way: So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869. Like many things the new atheists say, the argument has a kind of first blush plausibility but does not hold up on even a moment’s reflection. As David Bentley Read More ›

Background: In this post we have this exchange: Box asks Tinitinnid whether there is a difference between a Lego castle and a random pile of Legos. In comment 124 Tintinnid says that a pile of Legos randomly strewn across the floor is the same as a Lego castle. Let us take up the thread here: BKA @ 125: Box, let it go. When someone says something as staggeringly stupid as the comment in 124 there is literally no sense trying to argue with them. They have proved they are beyond the reach of rationale argument. I am accused of making an ad hominem attack against Tintinnid. StephenB takes up the issue @ 128 You don’t understand. An ad hominem attack Read More ›

Last year, I reviewed Daniel Friedmann’s best-seller, The Genesis One Code, which argued that the Bible, when properly interpreted, teaches that the universe is 13.74 billion years old – which is about as old as scientists currently believe it to be (13.798 billion years). Friedmann’s book also made a number of scientifically falsifiable claims – including the striking prediction that the Earth would turn out to be 9 billion years old and to pre-date the solar system (which sounds unlikely but just might turn out to be true). Friedmann’s scientific background as a professional engineer with a master’s degree in engineering physics who is also the CEO of a leading aerospace company undoubtedly lent his book extra credibility. Friedmann’s second Read More ›

The concept of information is central to intelligent design.  In previous discussions, we have examined the basic concept of information, we have considered the question of when information arises, and we have briefly dipped our toes into the waters of Shannon information.  In the present post, I put forward an additional discussion regarding the latter, both so that the resource is out there front and center and also to counter some of the ambiguity and potential confusion surrounding the Shannon metric. As I have previously suggested, much of the confusion regarding “Shannon information” arises from the unfortunate twin facts that (i) the Shannon measurement has come to be referred to by the word “information,” and (ii) many people fail to Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: what seems like a counter-intuitive move against survival, within animals, some cells are fated to die from the triggering of an elaborate cell death program, known as apoptosis. Now, Sakamaki et. al., have honed in on understanding the evolution of caspase-8, a key cell death initiator molecule that was first identified in humans. By performing the most extensive evolutionary analysis of the Casp8 protein to date, they found that Casp8 activity arose very early (more than 500 MYA), and is universally conserved throughout evolution, demonstrating its functional significance throughout the animal kingdom. … Thus, the cell death toolkit is of core importance to animal evolution, with cell death occurring to eliminate unnecessary, non-functional, unhealthy, or dangerous cells from Read More ›

Dear Readers, In recent days we have been working on our “Darwinian Debating Devices” series.  Links to each entry in the series are set forth below. CALL FOR COMMENTS:  UD is opening up the series to comments from our readers.  When you see a Darwinist using faulty reasoning, logical fallacies or otherwise unfair argument, please bring it to our attention, and we will consider it for addition to the series.  Is predict we will have a fairly lengthy list before we’re done.  Here’s a challenge to start:  Does anyone have an example of a Darwinist using the following fallacy: “No True Scotsman.” REQUEST FOR CATEGORIZATION:  When debating Darwinists it is often helpful to call them out on the exact type Read More ›