Long-time visitors or regulars at UD will know that (along with StephenB who drew the significance to my attention . . . ) I champion the idea of self-evident, plumb-line first principles of right reason: That is, if we contemplate say a bright red ball on a table, we see a world-partition: W = { A | ~A } . . . which leads to manifesting the classic laws of identity [A is A not non-A], non contradiction [(A AND ~A) = 0] , and excluded middle . . . this, best expressed as (A X-OR ~A) = 1. Likewise, I have argued for a weak-form principle of sufficient reason. Contemplating that ball on the table, it is natural to Read More ›

Over at The Skeptical Zone, there has been an amusing discussion. It can be found under the column “The Reality of Intelligent Design!” by Alan Fox. I want to respond to this discussion, as I believe it is instructive concerning the state of mind over at TSZ.  I am sure that Alan will again find my comments here “a bit wordy,” but hopefully he will not be able to say that they are “grumpy.” 🙂 Let’s start with the column itself. Alan Fox is one of those (relatively few) Skeptical Zone writers whose tone is actually merely skeptical, as opposed to polemical. However, some of his comments here leave something to be desired. Alan writes: “I’ve seen no genuine effort Read More ›

In his Guardian piece this week Atheist Benjamin Jones is spot on when he says that science works. Cosmology and evolutionary biology, Jones explains, have answered the question of how the world came to be. Indeed, evolution is a fact. What Jones misses, though, is why evolution is a fact. It makes all the difference.  Read more