Barry Arrington

In a comment to another post that deserves its own post, the venerable Upright Biped hammers rvb8 and in the process gives us one of the most succinct and pithy summaries of the information issue I have seen: Pierce’s 1860’s model of signification (i.e. the ability to specify something among alternatives) suggested that all representation requires interpretation in order to exist. This model is not only consistent with naturalist views of reality, it is basically demanded by those views — and for good reason. It’s true. Then Turing showed that we can impute representation and interpretation into an arrangement of matter (i.e. a physical system) and cause novel function to come into being. Von Neumann then took Turing’s machine and Read More ›

A couple of years ago, I went to trial in a breach of contract case in which the defendant’s entire defense rested on denying that he knew something he obviously knew. I had a little fun with this.  When it came time to argue the case to the jury I pointed out that the defendant had employed the “Captain Renault Defense,” and to explain what I meant by this, I played this clip from Casablanca.  You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I won that case. I was reminded of this by one of the responses to my last post.   I pointed out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been caught massaging the global temperature numbers, Read More ›

See Here The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. Which leads me to wonder yet again, if the evidence is really so overwhelming, why do they feel compelled to exaggerate, mislead and outright lie about it?

Materialists often argue that the size of the universe is evidence that God does not exist.  As we shall see, this is a very weak argument. The argument from the size of the universe usually goes something like this:  The superstitious ancients who dreamt up the idea of God thought we lived in a cozy little universe.  We now know the universe is unimaginably vast and mostly empty.  God, if he exists, would not have created a vast, mostly empty, universe.  Therefore, God does not exist. Let’s examine these premises.  First, the materialist’s assertion that the ancients did not understand that we live in a vast universe is wrong is nothing more than a modern conceit.  Over 3,000 years ago Read More ›

In this post I argued that liberal (meaning conservative) democracy is based on an attempt to infuse politics with Christian doctrine, especially the inherent dignity and equality of all men.  In this article Peter Burfeind suggests a parallel on the other side of the political divide.  He argues that progressivism is rooted in an ancient Christian heresy known as Gnosticism: Gnosticism applied to politics is Leftism. The gnostic mind is cast in black and white absolutes. It says the world is inherently corrupt in every one of its systems and institutions, and the salvation it proposes is pure light and righteousness. Politically, the gnostic mind can only be revolutionary: a new humanity will arise with new thinking and lead history Read More ›

Last week we reported on Robert Tracinski’s take down of the New York Time’s misleading reporting on climate data.  Tracinski follows up with the Time’s reporter’s indefensible defense here. The comparison to 1998 is particularly important, because if the headline is that this year is not significantly hotter than temps 19 years ago, that take a lot of wind out of the “climate change” hysteria. It means we’re not seeing the runaway takeoff in global temperatures that the global warming theory predicted. As Judith Curry has been pointing out, recent temperatures are actually at or below the bottom range for all of the global warming predictions. That is the relevant context for this story, the failure of the data to Read More ›

Some people have an aura.  I’m not talking about spooky New Age weirdness here.  Some people just radiate a vibe, and you don’t have to be a swami to pick up on it.  Joe was like that.  If you could take a picture of quite joy mixed with contented serenity, it would look like Joe. I am pretty sure Joe was not always joyful and serene, especially during his chemo treatments.  But you would never know it from looking at him or listening to him, because I never heard him complain. I was shocked yesterday morning when I opened the email that announced Joe’s death.  I shouldn’t have been.  Joe was past 80 and had been ill for a long Read More ›

Wayne Rossiter holds a PhD in ecology and evolution from Rutgers and is an assistant biology professor at Waynesburg University.  In a comment to another post he writes: Literally, Jesus is their great stumbling block. Consider the words of Darrel Falk (one of the BioLogos founders): “Faith in Christ’s resurrection is thus the single most important belief that Christians hold. Is it scientifically credible? . . . It is not. Yet this is the position we hold. to a scientist . . . the belief in a risen body is irrational.” They think that purely scientific explanations for the world are compatible with Christian theism…except on Jesus. There, they will fly in the face of their science. But why? And Read More ›

In Snowflake Barbarians, I speculated about what a post-Christian polity looks like.  Here’s another clue from yesterday:

This article by Stephanie Margaret Bucklin in Astronomy Magazine is remarkably candid. Bucklin admits that any multiverse theory that is not testable (which, currently, is all of them) falls within the realm of metaphysics, not physics.  She writes:  “But how credible is a scientific theory that might not be testable? . . . theories like the multiverse have drawn criticism from some scientists, who warn of the danger of speculation beyond what data can tell us.” She also admits what ID proponents have known all along — fine tuning is a real thing crying out for an explanation, and a primary motivating factor behind multiverse theory is a search for a materialist answer to that problem: Though scientists have no direct Read More ›

Robert Tracinski reports on how recent reports that 2016 was the hottest year on record was, unsurprisingly, extremely misleading: They should have been in the first paragraph, but at least they’re in the third paragraph: “This puts 2016 only nominally ahead of 2015 by just 0.01C—within the 0.1C margin of error—but….” There’s stuff after the “but,” but it’s just somebody’s evaluation. Even this report can’t give us a straight fact and leave it alone. For the benefit of science reporters and other people who are unfamiliar with the scientific method, let me point out that the margin of error for these measurements is plus or minus one tenth of a degree Celsius. The temperature difference that is supposedly being measured Read More ›

Recently I read my first steampunk novel, Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass.  For those of you who have never heard of steampunk, it is a sub-genera of science fiction that anachronistically fuses Victorian steam powered technology into the digital age. It occurred to me that Darwinism is “steampunk science.”  It is an analog-based Victorian relic trying to make its way in the digital information age.  Darwin had no conception of the information problem facing any account of naturalistic evolution.  Darwin’s 21st century successors certainly know about the problem, but in 2017 they are no closer to solving it than Darwin was in 1859.  Naturalistic evolutionary science has not come remotely close to solving the problem of how the meaningful information on Read More ›

Why did liberal democracy arise in the West and nowhere else?  Because of the influence of Christianity on Western politics.  Consider the most famous expression of classical liberalism the world has ever known, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .” Compare that passage to Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul’s message in Galatians was not political.  He was making a theological statement about the equality of Christians in the body of Christ.  Read More ›

Climate scientist Judith Curry is a TENURED professor.  But she has had enough.  She announced her resignation last week, citing the literal craziness of the climate science authoritarianism.  She writes: A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc. How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus Read More ›

For years we have been deluged with science news stories about how this or that datum might finally be the breakthrough demonstrating that earth is not unique in the universe for harboring life.  Why are some scientists so obsessed with ET?  I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that this phenomenon is essentially religious in nature. Suppose you are a scientist with a strong faith commitment in atheistic materialism.  Maintaining any faith commitment can sometimes be hard even for true believers.  This is especially the case for materialists, who must grit their teeth and hang on to their faith in the face of overwhelming evidence that materialism is false.  Consider their origin of life Read More ›