Barry Arrington

It has been more than a year since I posted Nick Matzke – Book Burner?  Which I reproduce here: Nick Matzke famously got the publishing company Springer to suppress the publication of the papers of a conference held at Cornell.  See here. He did this without having seen, much less read, any of the papers.  Obviously, his motivation could not have been the content of the papers.  He was motivated by the mere fact that several of the conference participants were well-known ID proponents. Let us do a little thought experiment.  Suppose that Nick had published his famous piece on Panda’s Thumb a few days later, and the head of Springer had called him up and said, “Hey, Nick, I’ve got some bad Read More ›

Living things appear to be designed for a purpose. That statement is entirely non-controversial. Even the world’s most famous materialist admits it: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (New York; Norton, 1986), 1. I will go one step further and assert that the appearance of design in living things is far from ambiguous or equivocal; it is overwhelming. Honest materialists do not dispute this assertion either. Dawkins again: Living things “overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker . . .” Id., 21. To be sure, Dawkins Read More ›

Thank you to all of the materialists (and there were several) who rose to the challenge of my last post [Materialists: [crickets]]. We will continue the discussion we began there in this thread. Before I continue, please allow me to clear up some confusion. Several of my interlocutors seem to believe that the purpose of my post is to refute metaphysical naturalism. (See here for instance) It is not. Please look again at the very first line of the paragraph I quoted: “Let us assume for the sake of argument that metaphysical naturalism is a true account of reality.” Please read that line again carefully. I am NOT arguing that metaphysical naturalism is false (though I believe it is; that Read More ›

Over three months ago I posted Psychopath as Übermensch or Nietzsche at Columbine, in which I wrote: Let us assume for the sake of argument that metaphysical naturalism is a true account of reality. What if a person were able to act based on a clear-eyed and unsentimental understanding of the consequences outlined above? If that person had the courage not to be overwhelmed by the utter meaningless of existence, he would be transformed. He would be bold, self-confident, assertive, uninhibited, and unrestrained. He would consider empathy to be nothing but weak-kneed sentimentality. To him others would not be ends; they would be objects to be exploited for his own gratification. He would not mind being called cruel, because he Read More ›

I hope our materialist friends will help us with this one. As I understand their argument, entropy is not an obstacle to blind watchmaker evolution, because entropy applies absolutely only in a “closed system,” and the earth is not a closed system because it receives electromagnetic radiation from space. Fair enough. But it seems to me that under that definition of “closed system” only the universe as a whole is a closed system, because every particular place in the universe receives energy of some kind from some other place. And if that is so, it seems the materialists have painted themselves into a corner in which they must, to remain logically consistent, assert that entropy applies everywhere but no place Read More ›

As I viewed the animation of the working of molecular machinery Dr. Torley posted below, two things occurred to me. 1. It is the very acme of absurdity to assert those machines assembled themselves spontaneously through the accretion of random errors sorted by a fitness function. 2. Many highly educated people assert just that. Then a third thing occurred to me. 3.Vast amounts of education do not necessarily insulate one from making absurd asertions; to the contrary, for many people it appears to have equipped them to do so.

In a comment to a prior post Dr. JDD captures in a nutshell typical Darwinist dismissal and bluster disguised as argument: Darwinism Critic:: “I don’t accept evolution” Darwinist: “Evolution has been proved many times! Just look at antibiotic resistance! You are stupid for not accepting evolution! I am justified in not engaging with you anymore because you don’t even accept observed facts.” -Darwinist leaves- Critic: “Actually I meant Darwinian evolution…” -Darwinist in the distance- “that’s not a thing…” Critic: “I meant macro-evolution” -Darwinist on the horizon- “no one in science even uses that term. All your arguments are rejected. I win!”

Awareness of the subjective self that is aware has been called the “primordial datum.” It can be denied only on pain of descent into absurdity on the order of “I do not believe that I exist.” Sadly, these pages have seen all too many who have rushed eagerly off that particular cliff.

Thought of giving it all away To a registered charity Sir Paul McCartney If any of our readers have had similar thoughts, we hope you will keep UD in mind, because we are now just such a registered charity. Last week the IRS issued our determination letter under Section 501(c)(3).  Now when you click on that “Donate” button to further our work here at UD, you can reap the benefits of a nice fat deduction come tax time (the bigger the donation the fatter the deduction!!!)

“Charles” posted the following in the combox to VJ’s excellent Free Will post: Scientist: OK, Charles, when you’re ready, just click the + key or the – key, whichever you choose. Charles: Copy that. Scientist: Let’s begin. Charles: Copy that. …. Charles: (humming a tune) …. Scientist: Charles, it’s been several minutes now and you’ve not clicked either key. Charles: Golly. Scientist: OK, Charles, we’ll start again. Just click the + key or the – key, when you’re ready, whichever you choose. Charles: Copy that. …. Charles: (drumming fingers) Scientist: Er, ummm … Charles, you’ve still not clicked either key. Charles: Boy, you guys don’t miss a thing. Scientist: Why haven’t you clicked either key? Charles: I didn’t want to. Read More ›

UB takes down the “life is only fancy chemistry” shibboleth: AVS: The transcription and translation processes are entirely based on chemistry.  Can you explain why functional sequence specific DNA cannot be reduced to chemistry? UB: Because there is a chemical discontinuity between the nucleic medium and the amino acid effect that must be preserved in order for translation to be obtained. AVS: And what is this chemical discontinuity exactly, Upright? UB: There is nothing you can do to the nucleic pattern GCA to relate it to Alanine, except translate it. Which is what the cell does. AVS: It’s related by another nucleic pattern, bound to alanine, that has a specific sequence that associates with that GCA. UB: The base pairing Read More ›

Conclusion: Not even remotely close. See here. Yet we are still expected to bow and scrape to our lab-coated betters?  

My dictionary defines a “bogart” as: “a person who hogs or monopolizes something; or a person who acts in a tough or aggressive way.” In a recent exchange Upright Biped took down a bogart in his usual inimitable way. The last paragraph pointing out the position of many materialists is ultimately faith-based is a gem. Acartia_bogart: Finally: Scientists clearly admit that they don’t know how life originated, and will never know (unless they invent time travel). But they will narrow it down to a small number if good contenders. And intelligent design won’t be amongst them because that still leaves the question of how the intelligent designer originated. By definition, an intelligent designer must be alive. You can call it Read More ›

Physicist Alan Lightman demonstrates the existence of Zeus in his review of Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir D. Aczel For those who prefer not to have a Divine Engineer tuning the dials, the alternatives are unpalatable. The most natural are multiverse theories, according to which all possible universes exist simultaneously and we simply find ourselves in the one that makes our existence possible. This is not out of the question, but there is no actual evidence for it. It is just an “atheism of the gaps,” calling imaginary entities from the vasty deep to plug a theoretical hole. The postulation probably involves gods, too—maybe not the omnipotent creator of the Abrahamic religions, but surely some unlikely combination Read More ›

David Filvaroff was my torts professor. Professor Filvaroff was one of those teachers who drill a mile deep and an inch wide. He really did not care whether his students understood what lawyers call the “black letter” of tort law (e.g., the elements of a negligence cause of action are A, B, C . . . ). I suppose he assumed we would pick up the black letter on our own as the occasion arose. Instead, he wanted us to understand the philosophical underpinnings of tort law, which made his class terrible for bar exam prep (the bar exam emphasizes “black letter” law) but unparalleled for increasing our understanding of the general philosophy of law. Even after all these years Read More ›