From Wikipedia:  “The motte-and-bailey fallacy** (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions with similar properties, one modest and easy to defend (the “motte”) and one much more controversial (the “bailey”).” It occurs to me that the entire Darwinian project is often portrayed in terms of a motte-and-bailey fallacy.  How many times have you heard the statement “evolution is as certain as gravity”?  Well, given a certain sense of the word “evolution,” the statement is true or nearly so.  Consider the following proposition:  Evolution means “change in the biosphere over time.”  No one – from the most ardent materialist atheist to the most fervid young earth creationist – Read More ›

Thanks to News for plugging our new book here: Excerpt from new ID book: Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell Couple of follow-up items worth checking out, for those interested in the origin of life. How much progress are we really making in abiogenesis research? From Evolution News: Origin Stories — RNA, DNA, and a Dose of Imagination From ID the Future podcast: https://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2020/06/new-id-book-puts-self-replicating-molecules-under-the-microscope/ (Apologies for the audio quality in the latter; I think the second episode, hopefully coming out next week, will be slightly better.)

IHU- Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, is a significant French research institute that has continued its work on CV 19. For the record, here are excerpts from some recent work, headlined from threads where such would be buried: EXH 1: >>COVID-IHU #15 Version 1 du 27 Mai 2020 Early diagnosis and management of COVID-19 patients: a real-life cohort study of 3,737 patients, Marseille, France Abstract Background: In our institute in Marseille, France, we proposed early and massive screening for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Hospitalization and early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (HCQ-AZ) was proposed for the positive cases. Methods: We retrospectively report the clinical management of 3,737 patients, including 3,054 (81.7%) treated with HCQ-AZ for at least three days and 683 (18.3%) Read More ›

Evidence is the enemy: In their more candid moments, some leading lights in the evolutionary community admit that the Darwinian worldview comes complete with a set of blinders. They even urge the wearing of the blinders. The great biophysicist Francis Crick, for example, said, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”1 Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin was even more explicit. In an essay he wrote for The New York Review of Books, he defined science as ruling out, by definition, the possibility of God intelligently designing life — never mind that belief in a rational, orderly cosmic Creator was the soil from which modern science sprang. Jonathan Witt, “Darwin’s Silver Chair” at Read More ›

As philosopher Richard Johns explains, sims do not understand simhood: How can Alice determine whether the strange little man in her apartment who claims to be her Programmer is telling the truth? Recently, philosopher Richard Johns (left), whose work was profiled here at Mind Matters News in “A philosopher explains why thinking matter is impossible,” has now written a piece for Medium. In it, he explains why we cannot create a sim that is a conscious, rational being. He uses a dialogue between “Alice” and “The Programmer” to unpack the idea: The dialogue begins with Alice returning from school to find a strange little man in her apartment. He seemed not to notice her entering the room, and remained seated Read More ›

In the midst of defeat, conquest, devastation, chaos and want, Jeremiah expresses confidence in and loyalty to God: Lamentations 3:22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;[b]    his mercies never come to an end;23 they are new every morning;    great is your faithfulness.24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,    “therefore I will hope in him.” 25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,    to the soul who seeks him.26 It is good that one should wait quietly    for the salvation of the Lord. [ESV] We find an echo in the “actual” definition of faith in Heb 11: Heb. 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those Read More ›

A video: Of course, in a day of revisionism and anti-Westernism, it is sometimes said that this was not a decisive event for the course of WW2. It is pointed out that after Stalingrad and Kursk, Germany was on the retreat, never mind the huge disparity in casualties. That’s true. Instead, it was a Geostrategically decisive event for the course of C20 history, for it meant that the Iron Curtain ran through Germany rather than the English Channel. And that’s a lot bigger than WW2. END