Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Logic & First Principles, 20: What is law?

A good first step to understanding the ongoing failure of our civilisation is to contrast the common, positive law view of law summarised by Wikipedia (as a handy point of reference): Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. It has been defined both as “the Science of Justice” and “the Art of Justice”. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions Read More ›

Science philosopher attempts to repair split between science and philosophy

The main disadvantage of not acknowledging the philosophy from which we proceed is that we assume it to be “the correct view of all right-thinking people.” That’s almost a definition of narrow-mindedness. It’s worth considering that many Darwinians who can’t get with the times about problems in evolution may have precisely that problem: They have never asked themselves why they are attached to a picture of the world of life that does not appear to be correct or complete. Read More ›

Astonishing duplicity continues around Haeckel’s embryos

So stuff that isn’t true provides an “excellent foundation” and “compelling proof of the theory of common descent?”Wow. What a way to make people who never doubted common descent before start to do so…After all, one can only assume that an accurate presentation would not have supported the theory. Read More ›

Colin Patterson: Can you tell me anything about evolution that is true?

Further to the story we noted last night, that possibly one-third of biologists now question Darwinism, this might be a good time to bring up Colin Patterson (1933-1998) again. He was a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History and he offered an awkward question to colleagues one day: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?” He began to sense something amiss over forty years ago and this is the audio and transcript of a lecture he gave before the Systematics Discussion Group at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City in 1981: (two parts, transcript follows, courtesy Access Research Network): The question is: Can Read More ›

Educating oneself away from science denial: Two true stories

Our Danish friend Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution, read the dramatic story of the flight from fundamentalism and responded by publishing his own account of how he escaped science denial. It is a somewhat different story Read More ›

Defending Civilization, 2: Linking gospel-warrant and the naturally evident law of our morally governed nature

On the table is a warrant regarding the core gospel message, e.g. vid: . . . which is foundational to the civilisation which has come down to us. In effect, the Christian synthesis of the heritage of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome framed what became Christendom and has come down to us today, now usually styled Western Civilisation. The just linked also discusses through Schaeffer’s framework, . . . how for hundreds of years, there has been a growing push in thought, culture and general society to split apart “grace and nature” or reason and revelation, . . . leading to a breakdown of the unifying core in both worldviews and cultural agendas. This reflects the classic problem of the one Read More ›