Barry Arrington

Some arguments are not merely wrong; they are evil. Eric Orts is a professor in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a progressive, and like most progressives he chafes at the checks on the unbridled power of numerical majorities built into the United States Constitution.  On Wednesday Professor Orts took to the pages of The Atlantic to vent his spleen against the unfairness of one of those checks, the provision that gives each state equal representation in the Senate.  It is not fair, declares Orts, for Wyoming to have the same representation in Senate as California, because Wyoming’s population is a small fraction of California’s.  Set aside for Read More ›

I will never forget the day many years ago when I first confronted the transgender issue (though we did not call it that then) in my law practice.  I received a call from a school principal asking for advice in dealing with a kindergarten boy whose mother was dressing him up in girl’s clothing and insisting that he be allowed to use the girls’ restroom.  I was shocked by the mother’s demands and advised the principal to deny her request. I might have used the word “duh” at some point in the conversation. I also advised the school to consider whether a report to Child Protective Services of possible child abuse was in order. Of course we are talking about Read More ›

I have often wondered what the point of materialist psychology is.  Set aside mental illnesses that are manifestations of biological pathologies.  I am talking about, for example, the man who goes to a therapist because he is having marital difficulties  Why shouldn’t the therapy session proceed along these lines: Patient (let’s call him John):  Doc, I feel terrible.  My marriage is on the rocks. Therapist (let’s call him Sigmund):  Let’s explore why that might be. John:  Oh, way ahead of you there doc.  My wife Jill caught me having sex with her best friend Sally.  Let me tell you; she was not keen on that.  And you know I feel kinda bad about it too. Sigmund:  Do you hope to Read More ›

From Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor

“I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. ” So says Peter Carruthers, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park in this article in Scientific American. Proving once again, that some ideas are so gobsmackingly stupid, it takes a lot of education to believe them. He might as well have said, “I have a conscious thought that there is no conscious thought.” There is really no need to argue against self-refuting piffle like this. There is only one thing to say:

“Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Everyone has a religion.  IOW, you gotta serve somebody.  

Everyone has heard of a “shoestring budget.”  But did you know that UD gets by on an “aglet budget”?  What is an aglet? you ask.  An aglet is that little plastic sheath at the end of a shoestring.  That’s right.  Our budget is so small that we only wish we could get by on a shoestring.  All of which is prelude to our annual holiday fundraising drive.  If you have benefited from our News Desk’s tireless chasing of the latest ID-related happenings, or KF’s in-depth analysis of the fundamentals, or gpuccio’s scientific insights, or any of our other UD features, please consider a donation to help fund our efforts.  The Donate button is there on the right of the homepage Read More ›

Leftists frequently bash ID proponents and climate change hysteria skeptics as science “deniers.”  This is ironic, because these same leftists insist that a man can be a woman by simply wanting to be badly enough.  This would be amusing if they did not often employ the levers of political power to force compliance with their anti-reality delusions, as a school board in Virginia recently did when it fired a teacher for refusing to join in the lie that one of his male students is a female.  See here.  We are rapidly arriving at a time when Orwell’s famous “2+2=5 if the party says so” passage is becoming a terrifying reality, except instead instead of “2+2=5 if the party says so,” it Read More ›

At the risk of appearing to engage in unseemly schadenfreude, I am going to discuss Neil deGrasse Tyson in this post.  Tyson, whom one wag labeled “the dumbest smart person on Twitter,” famously tweeted that we need a virtual country called “Rationalia,” with a one-line constitution – “All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.”  As Kevin Williamson noted shortly after the infamous tweet, “as men like him have done for ages, Tyson dreams of a world of self-evident choices, overseen by men of reason such as himself who occupy a position that we cannot help but notice is godlike.” Of course, as Williamson notes, the impulse behind Tyson’s observation is far from new.  In the fourth century Read More ›

A  software developer friend brought this article in The Atlantic to my attention:  The CRISPR Baby Scandal Gets Worse by the Day And he writes: I find it amusing that they keep referring to this kind of thing as “editing”.  They’re going to need to figure out if they’re going to keep using “editing” as the concept they want to convey and as such provide an opening for ID proponents to make the connection to the semiotic nature of genetic code (and thereby creating testimony against interest) or begin utilizing a different concept to bulwark their materialist approach. Even the notion of DNA being “code” is going to require alteration.  Granted, DNA is an amazingly efficient data storage mechanism, but again Read More ›

Pure democracies are inherently unstable.  Exhibit A for why that is so: Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The reason for the fiscal instability of a pure democracy was captured in a widely circulated quotation usually attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy . . .   Ocasio-Cortez has a list of goodies she wants the federal government to dispense, including Medicare for all, jobs guarantees, student loan forgiveness, free college, Read More ›

Climate contrarian uncovers scientific error, upends major ocean warming study “The findings of the … paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media,” Lewis wrote. “Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.” Really?  A casual review of the first page by one person with a modicum of skepticism found issues that a whole team of experts missed in their peer review process? Yes.  Why?  Easy.  When it comes to climate change, the politics come first.  Facts take the hindmost.  And sometimes that winds up biting them in their, ahem, nether regions, Read More ›

Today I coin a new Latin phrase in honor of our frequent interlocutor daveS.  Here it is:  Argumentum ad Gannitum – the argument from whining.  (“Gannitum” being Latin for “whining”). The argument from whining takes this form: Person A makes an argument supported by logic and evidence that he believes compels a conclusion. Person B, instead of making a counter argument based on logic and evidence, says something like “Admit that you may be wrong” or “It’s not my job to show you how you are wrong.” Here is an example from a recent combox discussion with daveS: Barry makes the following argument: Either there is a God or there is not. If there is a God, meaning is possible. Read More ›

Barry:  Can we know with absolute certainty that it is evil to torture a baby for pleasure? JDK:  “There is no possible answer to the question: it’s a meaningless question.” UPDATE: JDK has accused me of being intellectually dishonest for quoting him as saying (1)  there is no possible answer to the question; and (2) it is a meaningless question.  He has implied that the “context” of his statement makes it mean something other than what it appears to mean on its face. OK JDK.  I’ll bite.   Do you believe the question has meaning and it is possible to answer?  If so, answer it.  If not, apologize for saying the quotation was dishonest. SECOND UPDATE: JDK continues to post in Read More ›