Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

L&FP, 48n: The Fair Havens/Malta model for community change

The events recorded in Ac 27 (a ship getting caught in an early winter storm due to imprudence and defiance of counsel) are a historical micro case study on how key changes too often have to happen in a community: Ac 27:8 Coasting along it [the south coast of Crete, in the second ship for the voyage] with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. 9 Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast [Yom Kippur] was already over, Paul advised them, 10 saying, “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the Read More ›

Materialists Know What They Say is False. They Say it Anyway

Otherwise, they would have to give up their materialism. Recently I posted about a woman who was charged with attempted murder when she put a newborn baby in a garbage bag and tossed him in a dumpster to die. Here is an exchange I had with Seversky regarding that post: Barry: Is it objectively evil to put a baby in a garbage bag and throw him in a dumpster or is it just your subjective preference not to do so? Seversky: the overwhelming majority regard dumping newborns in dumpsters as being evil Barry: Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good? Seversky: Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the Read More ›

Michael Ruse lecture makes interesting admission re Darwinism and atheists, agnostics

Darwin's theory, Ruse writes meant that " the way was opened for sound non-belief, although almost always non-believers – agnostics and atheists – take their stance less on science and more on grounds of theology and philosophy." Read More ›

Commentator Vox Day has some harsh words for E.O’ Wilson’s detractors at Scientific American

The thing is, when Wilson was alive, Darwinians denied the racism or insisted it was irrelevant and that Darwin’s sacred cause was to oppose slavery, yada yada … Read More ›

L&FP, 48m: The legitimate authority of knowable moral truth in service to justice, thriving and prudence

In the current thread on an unfortunate event with a newborn, there is an exchange of comments: BA, 45: Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good? Sev, 56: Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the majority who approved of it. It would not be a good thing from my perspective. This, of course reflects the core relativist thesis that rejects objective, warranted, generally knowable moral truth, and so I commented, 57: “thereby hangs the fatal error of relativising and undermining knowable, warranted, objective moral truth reducing it to clash of opinions backed by power. Justice evaporates.” Such brings us back to a core issue, legitimate, morally anchored authority Read More ›

L&FP, 48L: Can we restore confident knowledge of moral truth?

Yes. But it will be contested. As Dallas Willard highlighted: Human life has an inescapable moral dimension. That is, it essentially involves choices with reference to what is good and evil, right and wrong, duty and failure to do what ought to be done . . . . What characterizes life in so-called Western societies today, however, is the absence, or presumed absence, of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice: knowledge that might serve as a rational basis for moral decisions, for policy enactments, and for rational critique of established patterns of response to moral issues. In short, we are up against a culture-dominating, institutionally entrenched narrative that even though lacking warrant, is backed by Read More ›