Some years ago I spent a couple of weeks in Malindi, Kenya. Early the first morning of my stay, I walked down to the shore to watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. As I stood on the beach taking in the breathtaking beauty, a steady stream of men, most barefoot, ran by. They Read More…
Author: Barry Arrington
attorney; specialist in school law and litigation; former member of Colorado House of Representatives
Correlation and Causation
My favorite statistics joke: Student talking to his friend: I used to think correlation implied causation. Then I took a statistics class. Now I don’t. Friend: Sounds like the class helped you understand that field. Student: Well, maybe. I was reminded of that joke last night while watching the game between the Seattle Seahawks and Read More…
Please Support UD This Year
As I have mentioned before, an “aglet” is that little plastic sheath at the end of a shoestring. And here at UD, our budget is so small we say we get by on an “aglet budget.” We would have to have a lot more money to say we are getting by on a shoestring budget. Read More…
Sev and Ed Respond to Upright Biped (and Fail Spectacularly)
Ed George asserted that morality is based on societal consensus. Upright Biped utterly demolished that argument. See here. Seversky and Ed tried to respond to UB’s arguments. Let’s start with Sev: I, like everyone else here, would also want [the rape] to stop. Why? I should not have to say this but it is because Read More…
Upright Biped Schools Ed George
Everything below is from a comment posted by UB: Ed at 34, [re: Ed on telling the truth]It is just one of the rules we have to follow if we want to be welcome in society. If I chose to live by myself in a cabin in the hills I would have no obligation to Read More…
Sev Should Check His Metaphysics
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 Read More…
[Off Topic] My Ode to Hunter Biden
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 Read More…
Why is Seeing the Glaringly Obvious So Hard?
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 Read More…
johnnyb, Nail, Head
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. Read More…
How Consequentialism Consumes Itself
Consequentialism always winds up devouring itself, and this is why: STEP 1: Define the “Good” That act is good which causes the most net [here insert synonym that allows one to pretend the statement is not a tautology, e.g. human flourishing, increased wellbeing, etc.]. What causes the most [net increase in flourishing]? Since there is Read More…
How Materialist Fundamentalists Are Like Islamic Fundamentalists
A few weeks ago I posted How Materialist Fundamentalists Are Like Christian Fundamentalists in which I argued that Christian and Materialist fundamentalists are alike in this respect: Their religious/metaphysical commitments come first and the evidence comes second. If the evidence seems to contradict conclusions compelled by their faith commitments, they will either reject the evidence Read More…
Life’s building blocks may have formed in interstellar clouds
Essential building blocks of DNA — compounds called nucleobases — have been detected for the first time in a simulated environment . . . See the story here. Presumably, one can create a simulation in which one may “detect” anything one wishes. Meanwhile, tucking the origins of life inside simulations of environments several light years Read More…
OOL Researchers Channel Steve Martin
The UD News Desk recently reported on obviously desperate origin of life researchers’ attempts to give themselves a leg up on the whole “how did life begin” issue. I had to chuckle when I read the article, because it reminded me of my second favorite* Steve Martin routine, “You can be millionaire and never pay Read More…
Once More from the Top on “Mechanism”
We often get some variation of “Until ID proposes a ‘mechanism’ for how the design is accomplished, it cannot be taken seriously as an explanation for origins.” Here is an example from frequent commenter Bob O’H (who, after years of participation on this site should know better): If ID is correct, then the design has Read More…
How Materialist Fundamentalists Are Like Christian Fundamentalists
In a comment to PaV’s recent post about the insurmountable problem the Cambrian Explosion presents for Darwinism, materialist fundamentalist Seversky writes: the Cambrian Explosion is no longer such a problem for Darwin’s theory Of course this is nonsense of a high order, which has been refuted 10,000 times including in the very post Sev was Read More…