Barry Arrington

I blew it when I predicted in 2020 that the Covid scare would be like the many scares before it, much hyped but not nearly as deadly as the fear mongers suggested it would be. But I was spot on when I pushed back against the lockdown being pushed by the Imperial College London crowd (which recommendations were ultimately adopted by most nations). So concludes a new paper out of Johns Hopkins University, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” As summarized in National Review, the “paper starts by noting that “an often cited model simulation study by researchers at the Imperial College London (Ferguson et al. (2020)) predicted that a suppression strategy based Read More ›

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 ›

That is the question they are asking over at Science Friday. Now, scientists are questioning whether that’s actually true—or if mutation is more likely to occur in some parts of the genome than others. New research published in the journal Nature this week looks at just that question, in a common weed called Arabidopsis thaliana. After following 24 generations of plants for several years and then sequencing the offspring, the team found that some genes are far less likely to mutate than others. And those genes are some of the most essential to the function of DNA itself, where a mutation could be fatal. Conversely, the genes most likely to mutate were those associated with the plant’s ability to respond to its environment—potentially a handy trick Read More ›

WARNING! The video linked here is extremely disturbing. Four days ago Alexis Avila, a woman in New Mexico, had a baby. She put the baby in a garbage bag and threw him in a dumpster. She is being charged with attempted murder. The good news is that a passerby found the baby (umbilical cord still attached) still alive and called 911. The medics were able to save his life. Ms. Avila could have gone to an abortionist a couple of hours earlier and had her baby chopped into pieces in utero. The abortionist could have then removed the pieces, put them in the same garbage bag and thrown it in the same dumpster. In that case, Ms. Avila would have Read More ›

December 19, 1971 was a Sunday, the last one before Christmas.  I was ten.  My sister was eleven.  We went with our family to the evening service at Trinity Baptist Church in Boyd, Texas.  After services my parents left us with a group that was going Christmas caroling.  We never made it to the first house. Our church was on the highway on the western edge of town.   Our group of about 20 carolers walked along the side the highway toward the first neighborhood a few hundred yards away.  The leaders were in the front and back of the group.  My sister and I were with the kids in the middle.  My memories of what happened next are episodic.  I Read More ›

A professor sums up a lecture on the evolutionary explanation for why religion has been ubiquitous in every human culture: Professor:  So, in summary, every human culture going back thousands of years has been religious because religion is either itself an adaptive behavior or it is a spandrel, a byproduct of the evolution of some other trait upon which natural selection acted.  Under the first view, religion itself was adaptive, perhaps because it enhances cooperation and cohesion within groups, and group membership in turn provides benefits which can enhance an individual’s chances for survival and reproduction.  Under the second view, perhaps religion evolved as a byproduct of adaptive selection of some other trait, although it is not clear what that Read More ›

It is time for my annual plea for support of our work. 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 any of our other UD features, please consider a donation to help fund our efforts.  The Donate button Read More ›

We are deeply divided. On the one hand, there are those of us who believe Lincoln was right when he said this nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We insist that the fundamental character of this nation – grounded as it is in the transformative and revolutionary principles of the Declaration – is very good indeed. We concede that these ideals have sometimes been imperfectly realized. Nevertheless, that goodness has always been central to our national character and has been demonstrated by the great strides we have made over the centuries toward realizing the ideals of our founding charter. On the other hand, there are those who believe Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Read More ›

We now have the highest inflation in 30 years. This was entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted it. See my post from April 20, 2020. Hang on. We are just getting started. The new “infrastructure” bill that just passed is the monetary equivalent of pouring gasoline in a dumpster that is already on fire. You go from this: To this: Believe me. I am not claiming any special insight. My conclusions were a combination of paying attention and making common sense deductions from observations. If you see someone opening the spigot on a fire hydrant, you are not a genius if you predict the street is going to get really wet. If the government says they are going to dump Read More ›

From the Wall Street Journal: Medieval thinkers pretending to infallibility often claimed to have received a direct revelation from God. Since the 19th century, secular thinkers have invoked science. As Anthony Fauci said in June, “a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly are attacks on science.” … Science operates by a process of criticism. Scientists don’t experience divine revelations, they propose hypotheses that they and others test. This rigorous process of testing gives science the persuasiveness that mere journalism lacks. If a scientific periodical expels editors or peer reviewers because they don’t accept some prevailing theory, that process has been short-circuited. Those who call for such expulsions have missed the whole point of how science Read More ›

Neitzsche’s conclusions are sound, some would argue inexorable, if one grants his fundamental premise, that God is dead. The “good” beyond good and evil is the strong man, the superior man (ubermensch), imposing his will on the weak. In a world without God, there is only power, and those who have it and those who do not. A strong man brutally subjugates a weak man or even a weak people. That is good because it is the natural course of the world once the strong man throws off the fetters of Christianity’s unnatural “slave morality.” You can have God and the transcendent moral principles that flow from His Being. Or you can have the ubermensch. There is no middle ground. Read More ›

As I explained in a previous post, “Critical Race Theory,” with its denial of objective morality and neutral principles of justice, is essentially metaphysical materialism applied to race relations.  While CRT has received a lot of media attention in recent days, “critical studies” of various stripes have been around for a long time.  I was first exposed to them when I was in law school in the 80’s and learned about critical legal theory (“CLT”).  Proponents of CLT (often called “Crits”) assert that the law is just another tool oppressors use to victimize the oppressed.  Harvard’s The Bridge project summarizes CLT as follows: A family of new legal theories, launched since 1970, share commitments to criticize not merely particular legal Read More ›

The story about Rolling Stone’s “update” (which should have been called a retraction) is here.

KF’s comment to a prior post deserves its own OP. If only people understood the simple, yet profound, point KF is making. KF writes: Proof is a term too often used more for rhetorical impact than for humble acknowledgement of the achievements and limitations of human reasoning and deduction especially. As such, we must bear Godel in mind, truth and proof are very different, and axiomatic systems for complicated areas face incompleteness and/or possible incoherence. Even mathematics is not an absolutely certain discipline. Science cannot prove beyond such and such has so far passed certain empirical tests and may be taken as so far reliable, when it is at its best. Too often it is not and becomes a lab Read More ›

Put this one in the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” category.  Though he was speaking to an English audience nearly 90 years ago, Churchill could have very well been addressing the American people yesterday afternoon. The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without.  They come from within . . . They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.  Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement, into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our intellectuals.  They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion Read More ›