2015

In response to Science writer boilerplate Jonathan Wells writes to say, Based on my reading of thousands of Peer-Reviewed Articles in the professional literature, I’ve distilled a template for writing scientific articles that deal with evolution: 1. Darwinian evolution is a fact. 2. We used [technique(s)] to study [feature(s)] in [name of species], and we unexpectedly found [results inconsistent with Darwinian evolution]. 3. We propose [clever speculations], which might explain why the results appear to conflict with evolutionary theory. 4. We conclude that Darwinian evolution is a fact. Yes, it’s a fact, all right. About the mindset of the people who do that. Wells is the author of The Myth of Junk DNA, which is not short of examples on Read More ›

So claims writer Mark Strauss at Slate: Ridiculing astrobiologists is a favorite sport at the Discovery Institute, which complains on its news site that “hardly a month goes by lately when the science media fail to breathlessly report the discovery of a new planet, in some star’s ‘habitable zone,’ that might hypothetically be capable of supporting life.” The institute attributes the coverage in part to hype purposefully generated by “organized science” to shake down the government for grant money. But the creationists also see a more sinister agenda than naked greed. They place astrobiologists among the ranks of the “Darwin Brigades” who have always been “eager to undermine human exceptionalism,” since “the alleged ordinariness of the human race was vital Read More ›

David Bentley Hart calls subjective self-awareness the “primordial datum.” It is a fact that cannot not be known. It follows that everyone knows it to be a fact. Denying that it is a fact immediately descends into absurdity. Consider “I deny that I am subjectively self-aware.” Here is a chart of the chemicals that make up the human body: A group of oxygen atoms do not have the capacity to deny a truth claim. I am sure you would agree that the sentence “the oxygen atoms denied truth claim X” is absurd, no matter what X is. What is true for oxygen is also true for the atoms of the other elements of the body, i.e., carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, Read More ›

It seems that this is the week in which eigenstate has insisted on making himself the poster child for materialist lunacies. OK. We will oblige him and use his latest as the basis for a post on the licit and illicit use of language. What is our goal when we use language? The answer to that question seems obvious. Unless we are intentionally trying to obscure, prevaricate, or dissemble, our goal is to convey our true meaning to those with whom we are trying to communicate. How do we convey meaning? To answer that we need to answer a more basic question. What does it mean to mean? I am sure most people will agree with Wittgenstein on this point. Read More ›

Recently, StephenB wrote, RDFish is wrong; Barry Arrington is right: Materialism cannot be reconciled with objective morality: In several previous posts, RDFish stumbled into a serious philosophical error that needs to be addressed. Barry Arrington had made the unassailable point that materialism (understood as physicalism) is incompatible with such concepts as good, evil, and objective morality. The reason is clear: Materialism reduces all choices to electro-chemical processes in the brain. With that model, all apparent moral decisions are really nothing more than chemcial-physical operations or functions. Though RDF failed to refute the argument, confront the argument, or even define his own terms, he sought, nevertheless, to attack it through the back door, claiming that past atheist philosophers embraced both metaphysical Read More ›

Astrophysicist Mario Livio shares some thoughts: Math: Discovered, Invented, or Both? The puzzle of the power of mathematics is in fact even more complex than the above examples from electromagnetism might suggest. There are actually two facets to the “unreasonable effectiveness,” one that I call active and another that I dub passive. The active facet refers to the fact that when scientists attempt to light their way through the labyrinth of natural phenomena, they use mathematics as their torch. In other words, at least some of the laws of nature are formulated in directly applicable mathematical terms. The mathematical entities, relations, and equations used in those laws were developed for a specific application. Newton, for instance, formulated the branch of Read More ›

Sir James Gray stated in a 1954 issue of *Nature *(v. 173; 227) that No amount of argument, or clever epigram, can disguise the inherent improbability of orthodox [Darwinian] theory; but most biologists feel it is better to think in terms of improbable events than not to think at all; there will always be a few who feel in their bones a sneaking sympathy with Samuel Butler’s skepticism. And why are those the only options? Essentially, Darwinian evolution is a cultural mood. Evidence isn’t really needed because it functions as a kind of religion for everyone from the biologists to the airheads on TV. From Dawkins: “My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining Read More ›

Further to Barry Arrington’s UD’s Helpful List of Materialist Dodges, I’ve been know to accuse science writers of waving pom poms and loudhailers. Two types of expressions come to mind that generally fit the description of boilerplate. 1. Claims that science is described as uniquely self-correcting. Rubbish. Business is self-correcting too (market discipline). So is religion (reformations and revivals, for example). In fact, all human endeavours that succeed for any length of time must be self-correcting. 2. Claims that science is about evidence, not belief or superstition Well, goodness, we would hope so. The trouble is, the current mess that peer review is in shows that science is about a bunch of other things as well. The idea that basing Read More ›

Asks nkendall. All that follows is his: Okay lets see what I can come up with. This is just one of several disproofs of materialism that I have tried out on atheist websites. Never once had anyone lay of glove on it: DREAM SEQUENCES – A SIMPLE DISPROOF OF MATERIALISM Here is a simple disproof of materialism that everyone can understand; consider dream sequences: ASSUMPTIONS: 1. Dreams always involve novel (NEW) content – they are not rehashings or restructuring of various memories; although the topics are in the context of one’s life experiences. 2. Dreams are high definition imagery. 3. Dreams are real imagery, i.e. you are unaware or unable to distinguish the dream imagery when it is going on Read More ›

Materialists employ the same dodges to rational argument over and over. It is really tiresome to have to read the dodges in full time and again. Therefore, as a service to the materialists who post on this site, UD is developing a list of materialist dodges. Instead of having to type your dodge out every time, to save time and effort, our materialist friends should feel free to cite their dodges by number. For example, instead of writing out some tedious version of “I have no answer for why materialism is not logically incoherent. Instead, I will poke fun at caricatures of dualism” you can just cite “MD1” (for “Materialist Dodge 1”). We will add to the list as the Read More ›

In recent days the issue of the want of rational coherence of evolutionary materialist scientism has become a major focus at UD. For cause. In the most recent thread on it, BA says in the OP: I had an epiphany today. I think, after all this time, I finally get it . . . . Eigenstate intends for us to believe that intentional states do not exist. Eigenstate desires for us to believe that desires do not exist. Eigenstate believes (and asks us to believe) that beliefs do not exist. Eigenstate wants us to know that the word “I” in the sentence he just wrote (i.e. “I encourage any and all . . .”) maps to an illusion – i.e., Read More ›

From Scientific American A happy accident led to the discovery of the ancient tools. Sonia Harmand of Stony Brook University and her team had been en route to a known fossil site on the western shore of Lake Turkana one morning in July 2011 when the group took a wrong turn and ended up in a previously unexplored area. The researchers decided to survey it and by teatime they had found stone artifacts. They named the site Lomekwi 3, and went on to recover dozens of tools—including flakes, cores and anvils–from both the surface and below ground. Harmand described the findings April 14 in a talk given at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco. “The cores Read More ›

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I had an epiphany today. I think, after all this time, I finally get it. I had the epiphany when I read this comment by eigenstate to my prior post: Materialists are quite clear about the illusory nature of, say, folk psychology, . . . materialism is the vehicle for making the case that these intuitions *are* illusory. Just so it’s clear, I encourage any and all to accept the illusory nature of what a scientifically-informed materialism would identify as illusions. Let us be clear about that phrase “folk psychology.” Here eigenstate is using a buzzword of eliminative materialism that refers to the following four general concepts: 1. ‘Belief,’ ‘desire’ and other familiar intentional state expressions are among the theoretical Read More ›

The philosophical and scientific discussions on this site are interesting to be sure, but the psychology displayed by the materialists who comment here is nothing short of fascinating. It is a wonder to behold, and I would not have believed such a thing is possible if I had not seen it myself. Self deception is absolutely essential to maintaining the materialist worldview. Again, WJM’s dictum: No sane person acts as if materialism were true. I was talking about this with my dad this afternoon and the following conversation ensued: Barry: The discussions on UD are fascinating. I have never seen a materialist change his mind about anything even when the logical incoherence of his view has been established beyond the Read More ›