Barry Arrington

Wow, the article News found contains one of the most cogent and succinct arguments I’ve read. Here’s more: First Averick quotes Bertrand Russell Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that since my assertion cannot be disproved [no one can doubt its truth], Read More ›

Quoted in the article to which News refers below: The origin of life is one of the hardest problems in all of science…Origin of Life research has evolved into a lively, interdisciplinary field, but other scientists often view it with skepticism and even derision. This attitude is understandable and, in a sense, perhaps justified, given the “dirty” rarely mentioned secret: Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin of life field is a failure – we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth. Certainly, this is due not to a lack Read More ›

I have decided to withdraw (perhaps temporarily) from these discussions, for the following reasons: (1) I [i.e., KN] no longer believe that Uncommon Descent is a hospitable forum for examination of my criticisms of design ‘theory’ (as distinct from the design hypothesis, which I accept as a reasonable abductive ‘leap’); (2) I believe that my pleas for a version of “liberal naturalism“, as distinct from “materialism”, in the sense of “whatever it is that design advocates oppose”, have fallen on deaf ears; (3) I am presently writing a book on intentionality, normativity, and naturalism, and I no longer can afford the time and energy that I expended on my contributions to Uncommon Descent and The Skeptical Zone. Too bad. I Read More ›

All that follows is from a comment by Jon Garvey: As far as the state of knowledge of any normal reader of this (my) post can tell, it poofed into existence on their monitor without explanation. Given our state of knowledge of the universe and its probabilities, most will suppose there is an intelligence at my IP address which instantiated it by some actual action rather than magic. We have no known mechanisms for any other alternative, and “sheer electronic fluke” is, in practice, a non-explanation. Though to be honest, if the stats of this Universe or a many-worlds multiverse allow one to countenance seriously astronomically low probabilities, then this post is no less likely to arise from a random Read More ›

Amazing video of cellular machinery.  [HT JGuy] See also KF’s post today. Blind watchmaker evolution is rapidly descending the epistemic slide to “turtles all the way down” status.  Perhaps it is already there despite the fact that it continues to be the reigning paradigm.

Update:  There is a question at the end of this post.  After the first several comments, no one has addressed it, much less answered it.  I really am curious how our readers would answer. In another thread Paul Giem made this statement:  “While some holes in a blanket assertion that a non-ID position can explain everything have closed, others appear to have opened up, the origin of life being one of them.”  Dr. Giem was responding to a common narrative among materialists:  “Materialist explanations always advance, and the number of phenomena susceptible to non-materialist explanations grows ever smaller.”   Let us consider this claim in the context of origin of life (OOL) and Neo-Darwinian Evolution (NDE).   NDE has a Read More ›

Today we have seen several cases of Darwinist Derangement Syndrome (DDS) at the “Yes, KN.  It is a Literal Code” post.  I invite you to peruse the combox to that thread and see: Jerad copying only half a definition and saying it lacks “rigor” when the rigor is in the half he left out. Kantian Naturalist:  Language means nothing or, better yet, it means anything I want it to mean, so I can always argue something is ambiguous. Reciprocating Bill:  “This doesn’t accomplish what you want it to accomplish, because the conclusion turns on what we know.”  Whaaazat?  My conclusion turns on what we know?  Well, yes, guilty as charged. Mark Frank misrepresenting the definition of CSI. Alan Fox’s ravings that are Read More ›

From: Origin of life on earth and Shannon’s theory of communication. “If the historic process of the origin and evolution of life could be followed, it would prove to be a purely chemical process . . . The question is whether this historic process or any reasonable part of it is available to human experiment and reasoning; there is no requirement that Nature’s laws be plausible or even known to mankind.” This statement is fascinating. It is perhaps the most astonishing leap of blind faith I have ever seen in a scientific paper. It is glaring materialist fideism* in its most crystalline form. One wonders if the author is so blinded by his materialist faith commitment that he does not realize this.  Read More ›

I stumbled across a howler today at Jeffrey Shallit’s blog.  Allow me to explain: A few weeks ago I posted Jeffrey Shallit Demonstrates Again That He is Clueless About Even Very Basic Design Concepts in which I completely dismantled Shallit’s argument about a coin-flip scenario. Today, I found out that Shallit had posted a “response” of sorts.  Here it is in its entirely, not a single word modified or deleted: Barry Arrington to the Rescue! And Sal Cordova, Breathless Liar How cute! Lawyer and certified public accountant Barry Arrington thinks that there is something called “design theory”, and furthermore, I am just too stupid to understand it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Barry, but there’s no Read More ›

Kantian Naturalist is always good for provoking a thought.  In a comment to a prior post he writes: I had a minor insight yesterday: that one way of characterizing the dispute between design theorists and their critics is in terms of the question, “is the ‘code’ in ‘the genetic code’ meant literally or metaphorically?” What I’m not sure is whether that question has a framework-neutral answer — whether one could give a fully satisfying answer to that question without presupposing either design theory or evolutionary theory. This is an interesting comment. A debate on this topic raged on these pages for several weeks earlier this year. See here. Summary: The genetic code is a literal code. Even prominent Darwinists admit Read More ›

Even honest Darwinists admit that some of their Darwinist colleagues are more interested in defeating ID than in getting at the truth of the matter vis-à-vis the human genome. See here. Finally, we suggest that resistance to these findings is further motivated in some quarters by the use of the dubious concept of junk DNA as evidence against intelligent design . . . There may also be another factor motivating the Graur et al. and related articles (van Bakel et al. 2010; Scanlan 2012), which is suggested by the sources and selection of quotations used at the beginning of the article, as well as in the use of the phrase “evolution-free gospel” in its title (Graur et al. 2013): the Read More ›

In a prior post I took Dr. Liddle (sorry for the misspelled name) to task for this statement: “Darwinian hypotheses make testable predictions and ID hypotheses (so far) don’t.” I responded that this was not true and noted that: For years Darwinists touted “junk DNA” as not just any evidence but powerful, practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. ID proponents disagreed and argued that the evidence would ultimately demonstrate function. Not only did both hypotheses make testable predictions, the Darwinist prediction turned out to be false and the ID prediction turned out to be confirmed Liddle resonds: Sorry Barry that that example simply does not work. Darwinian theory would only predict unused sequences of DNA were it to be Read More ›

Central ascribes to me this statement: “[The holocaust is] obviously evil, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re evil too.” And he asks me why I refuse to give a similar answer with respect to the Canaanites. Here is the difference between my demand for a “yes or no” answer regarding the holocaust and my refusal to give a simple “yes or no” answer regarding the Canaanites: The Nazis never claimed to be under a divine command to exterminate the Jews. They claimed their actions were based on their desire for racial cleansing within their territories. Central suggests that it is at least conceivable that someone could come up with a justification for the holocaust (e.g., the killers thought Read More ›

ID Proponent of yore: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic of yore: No it’s not. It’s purely chemical. You’re lying for Jesus in an effort to install a theocracy to control the world. ID Proponent of yore: No really, it’s semiotic. ID Critic of yore: Stupid creationist crank, when we say “information in the genome”, it’s just a metaphor. Idiot. – – – – – – – – – – – – – ID Proponent today: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic today: No it’s not, it purely chemical. You liars have been saying this same crap for 50 years (HT: Mike Elzinga). ID Proponent today: No really, I can use completely accepted observations within biology to demonstrate it. Not Read More ›

All that follows is RD Miksa’s: Dear Kantian Naturalist: You said: “My position, rather, is that at present, design theorists have not done the hard work of implementing the deductive and inductive stages of inquiry that would lend empirical warrant to the hypothesis. And that means that design theory does not yet deserve serious consideration as an alternative to other explanations of biological phenomena.” Consider, then, the following: Let’s start with the abductive leap that you accept: “The abductive leap would be: ‘It is surprising that there is complex, specified information in living things, but if living things were brought about by an intelligent agent, then the presence of complex, specified information in living things would be a matter of Read More ›