Here The 95 percent confidence limit reflects a long tradition in the history of science that valorizes skepticism as an antidote to religious faith. But when it comes to climate alarmism, it is time to dump that standard.
Yes, according to Anthony Watts.
Our four year-old grandson Zeek was sitting on his Nonni’s lap at Christmas Eve service. A little boy in the next row had a book, and the following conversation ensued: Zeek: What does that boy have Nonnie. Nonnie: That’s a Bible Zeek. Zeek: Why? Nonnie: Because the Bible has everything God wants us to know in it. Zeek picked up the Bible in the seatback in front of him and started turning the pages pretending to read. He turned a page and said “God loves us.” He turned another page and said “God loves us.” He turned another page and said “God loves us.” Yep, that’s pretty much what it says Zeek.
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority. Soren Kierkegaard, The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard, pt. 5, sct. 3, no 128 (1850)
All that follows is from commenter “Redwave”: Prior to taking a long road to a juncture at which I became a scientist, I was an hospice chaplain who had visited hundreds of people at the precipice of life, at death … at death’s appearing and intruding into every fibre that intertwined what we have thought to be an ontological whole. Death is as overwhelming, as consuming, as saturating, as Life, though often compacted into a moment of breath. The moment of breath visits remind me of Derrida’s Epilogue … one must know the end of it to fully appreciate its beginning. And so we face a conceptual paradox, a transformative continuum from which we can not escape … the precipice Read More ›
We here at UD want to take a moment to thank all of our loyal readers over the past year. We get tens of thousands of visitors here each month, and we hope that in 2014 we lived up to our motto: “Serving the Intelligent Design Community.” UD is a mostly volunteer effort but we do have some significant expenses, not the last of which is our hefty server fees in order handle all of that traffic quickly and efficiently. We wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas and a happy new year and hope you will remember us in your end of year giving plan. To give, please click on the “Donate” button Read More ›
Paul Giem provides the following guest post today: The following three pictures were made to represent trays with 560 coins with either white (heads) or black (tails) showing. At least one of them was created by shaking coins and then spreading them out on a table (actually multiple shakes of 20 or so coins) and copying the pattern of heads and tails produced. Which one or ones are they, and why? Were the ones, if any, that were not done by this process designed, and if so by whom, and using what method? 1. 2. 3.
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the world’s greatest playwright, towering head and shoulders over all who came before and all who came after. Maybe Shakespeare was so good because he wasn’t a human at all but a member of a hyper-intelligent alien race who happened to be visiting earth in the late 1500’s. If you subscribe to Cromwell’s rule, you cannot dismiss this hypothesis out of hand. It is not logically impossible. Therefore, Cromwell’s rule suggests that we should assign some probability to the possibility even if it is one in a hundred billion. Otherwise, like the “green cheese” example in the Wikipedia article, we would not be convinced even if we were to find the schematics to Shakespeare’s Read More ›
Recently a commenter suggested that by not taking moderation action on an inappropriate comment, UD’s moderators had tacitly endorsed it. I would like to set the record straight on this once and for all. UD is no one’s day job. We have no staff. This is a 100% volunteer effort. I have a job and my duties at that job ebb and flow. When I have time, I am more active, both in posting and moderating. And the converse is also true. For example, on Monday I am leaving for China on a business trip. I will be gone for a week and doubt I will have much time for UD during that time. Therefore, if you see an inappropriate Read More ›
In his 1973 book The Origins of Life Leslie Orgel wrote: “Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.” (189). In my post On “Specified Complexity,” Orgel and Dembski I demonstrated that in this passage Orgel was getting at the exact same concept that Dembski calls “specified complexity.” In a comment to that post “Robb” asks: 500 coins, all heads, and therefore a highly ordered pattern. What would Orgel say — complex or not? Orgel said that crystals, even though they display highly ordered patterns, lack complexity. Would he also say that the highly ordered pattern Read More ›
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Bill Dembski often uses the term “specified complexity” to denote a characteristic of patterns that are best explained by the act of an intelligent designer. He defines the term as follows: What is specified complexity? An object, event, or structure exhibits specified complexity if it is both complex (i.e., one of many live possibilities) and specified (i.e., displays an independently given pattern). A long sequence of randomly strewn Scrabble pieces is complex without being specified. A short sequence spelling the word “the” is specified without being complex. A sequence corresponding to a Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified. William A. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), xiii. Read More ›
The chutzpah Darwinists sometimes bring to the table is often breathtaking. This tactic is based on the old saw about the wife who catches her husband in flagrante delicto with another woman and the following exchange ensues: Wife: “How could you?” Husband: “How could I what?” Wife: “Be in bed with another woman of course!” Husband: “I’m not in bed with another woman.” Wife: “I see her right there.” Husband: “No you don’t.” Wife: “Yes I do” Husband: “Who are you going to believe, me our your lying eyes?” It is not unusual for an exchange with a Darwinist to go like this: Darwinist unambiguously advances proposition X. IDer quotes the Darwinist and demonstrates that proposition X is an error. Read More ›
Sometimes an example of Darwinist Derangement Syndrome (see UD’s glossary) is just too delicious to allow it to languish deep in a comment thread. Here’s an exchange between Adapa and WJM in the Way Forward thread: First, Adapa claims that science has “conclusively demonstrated” that unguided evolution can produce observed diversity of life: Adapa @99: . . . science has already conclusively demonstrated that the observed natural process of random genetic variations filtered by selection and retaining heritable traits is sufficient to produce the biological life variations we see today . . . @ 587 William J Murray disagrees and says unless a P(T|H) calculation can be made for a naturally occurring biological phenomenon “evolution cannot be vetted as ‘unguided.’” Read More ›
The next time you hear some maroon* tell you that science is an objective, neutral, self-correcting project whose only purpose is to conduct a dispassionate search for truth, show them this chart. 95% of the models are wrong. It would be one thing if 50% came out predicting warmer than actual and 50% came out predicting cooler than actual. But what does it say when over 95% of the models are BOTH wrong and wrong in predicting warmer than actual? That was a rhetorical question. Usual liberal response to facts like this: ” Shut up you officious climate denier! And give me your money.” Say what you want about “science.” The fact remains that science is conducted by scientists, and scientists are Read More ›