Claims about what ought to be can’t be tested so they are not capable of being either true or false. Thus spoke Sev Let’s test Sev’s assertion. Genocide ought not to happen. Is this claim capable of being false? If it is capable of being false, under what circumstances would you approve of genocide? If it is not capable of being false, then admit your statement is wrong. Prediction: Sev will either ignore this or he will engage in mealy-mouthed “it is not capable for me to believe it is false, but damned if I am able to say the same to the next Hitler who comes along.” Sev, when your metaphysics force you to say stupid things, you should Read More ›

Welcome to the wonderful world of voice cloning (VC).  In the same way digital technology can be used to alter photos, VC can be used to literally create speech of someone’s actual voice.  All that’s needed is a five second sample of the target speaker and you can make them say anything!  “…Researchers …are now claiming that they can clone a person’s voice using just a 5-second clip. They explain that this can be done because they have trained a neural network, what we often call artificial intelligence or machine learning, on hours and hours of a wide variety of speakers so that it understands how we speak and then it can take a 5 second clip from an individual Read More ›

Sung to the tune of Fortunate Son (with apologies to CCR) Some people are born to get a job For which they have no qualification Making fifty thousand dollars a month To lie on the beach in the sun It ain’t me It ain’t me I ain’t no fortunate one It ain’t me It ain’t me I ain’t no VP’s son

Yesterday I had an exchange with Seversky that illustrates something I have observed countless times over the years.  Materialists have a blind spot regarding how their own arguments undermine, well, their own arguments.  Here is the exchange: Johnnyb wrote: The reason for this is the precise theorem that Hoffman states – in evolutionary competition, fitness beats truth. To which Sev responded: Unless fitness is truth in which case there is no competition. How does Hoffman – or Plantinga – distinguish between “fitness” and “truth”? Are they comparing like with like? I wrote: But Sev, you know for a certain fact that according to your own premises fitness and truth are not the same.  For 99% of human existence, 99% of Read More ›

In a couple of prior posts, here and here, we mentioned David Berlinksi’s new book Human Nature.  Here’s a podcast of Berlinksi being interviewed by Jonathan Witt, regarding the book.    On this episode of ID the Future, philosopher, mathematician, and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Berlinski answers questions from Jonathan Witt about Berlinski’s celebrated new book Human Nature. Is evolution carrying us upward to new heights of human goodness, as some have claimed? If not that, then will a computer-connected singularity take us on that upward trajectory, as Yuval Noah Harari argues in Homo Deus? With his famous quick wit, Berlinski says no, and warns of a new “explosion of religion,” but a new religion, one without rational grounding Read More ›

All that follows is from johnnyb’s comment to New Books On Consciousness Underscore Naturalism’s Fatal Problem posted by the UD News Desk yesterday. This plays very nicely into Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”. The evolutionary argument against naturalism basically states, “if evolution is true and theism is false, we cannot know that evolution is true. The only way to be able to know if evolution is true is for theism (or some other non-naturalistic alternative) to also be true.” The reason for this is the precise theorem that Hoffman states – in evolutionary competition, fitness beats truth. Therefore, if the orientation of our minds is from evolution, then we have no reason to trust it, which would include its thoughts Read More ›