Barry Arrington

Sometimes our commenters’ excellent insights need their own OP.  This is one of those times.  In the thread to the “naked, normal Darwinism” post Timaeus writes this regarding BioLogos’ Darrel Falk’s response to Bill Dembski’s BioLogos post: Falk concluded his column with the words: “Darwin’s views on teleology, human exceptionalism, and miracles were not compatible with Christianity. Quite simply, this is why I do not consider my views to be Darwinian and why I am not a Darwinist.” What Falk is trying to do here — and what all TEs try to do — is to divide Darwinian evolution into a scientific part and a philosophical part, and call the philosophical part “Darwinism.” The standard TE move is then to Read More ›

Some of you have written privately to complain about some of the ads that show up on this site.  Believe me, we are not always thrilled with them ourselves.  However, we have a contract with an online ad company and the revenue we receive from these ads is a major factor in helping us keep this site operating.  Please be assured that we do not select the ads.  In fact, the ads showing up on your computer are probably not the same ads that show up on mine.  Web marketing is so sophisticated now that highly specific targeting is possible.  For example, a few weeks ago I inquired about purchasing a particular product.  Now, every time I go on the Read More ›

Cells   Imagine miniature cities Aswarm with bustling centers of activity, factories, powerhouses, post offices, libraries, trash collection and recycling, quality control, railroads and architecture, import/export centers, communication networks, and transport vehicles.   These cities organize themselves from seed cities, according to a complex negotiation process that assigns them their duties and location. Some cities specialize in manufacture and export, some in signal processing, some in reclamation or storage, some in warfare, and some preserve the heritage of the whole nation and pass it on.   Each city has no mayor or aldermen or police. Its multitudinous minions are self-directed, self-replicating wonders and each city cooperates with its neighbors to maintain balance, order, and peaceful exchange for the good of Read More ›

“The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth, 1843 “It’s not so clear that there will be any more revolutions in physics.” Ian Hacking, 2012 Do our readers know of more examples of astonishingly stupid and arrogant assertions along the lines of “We now know it all, or nearly so, and the only job left is to suss out the details”?

It will be helpful to have a standard succinct but thorough description of the cell that incorporates references to as much of its marvelous technology as possible.  Here’s an example from a recent post by KF:  “nanotech, informational polymer based digital code using information system constituting a metabolising, von Neumann self-replicator automaton” The contest is to develop such a description.  Remember, the winner will walk the best line between brevity and comprehensiveness.  Try to keep your entries under 50 words (few than 40 would be even better). The winner will receive two prizes: (1) a copy of The Nature of Nature, and (2) his/her work will be permanently posted as a reference on UD.

A friend sends along this link to sign up for propaganda training by a group called the “Climate Reality Project.”  The website boasts that “Climate Presenters are volunteers who teach their communities about the climate crisis using a training program produced by former Vice President Al Gore. These leaders are typically engaged in a number of activities aimed at this goal, but the slideshow developed by The Climate Reality Project is their signature tool.”  Why didn’t the physicists think of this?  Instead of relying on the facts and evidence to sort itself out through rigorous application of the scientific method, they could have organized groups called, oh I don’t know, the “General Relativity Reality Project.” 

Hoffman has been in the abortion industry since 1971 and is the cofounder of the National Abortion Federation.  She has a new book out, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom.  In it she writes, “the anti-choice movement claimed that if women knew what abortion really was, if only the providers had told them the truth, they would never have killed their babies. . . . But women did know the truth, just as I knew it, deep down, when I allowed myself to recognize it.  Mothers saw the sonogram pictures, knew that sound bites assuring them that abortion was no different from any other benign outpatient surgery Read More ›

Well, at least the first part of the headline is true.  See here.  Wasn’t it only a few years ago the alarmists told us the glaciers would be completely gone by 2035.  Well, that’s true if by “gone” they meant “bigger.”

I don’t know, but at the Max Planck Institute they think maybe their sperm can.  See here.

It turns out the Time magazine cover “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age” is a photoshopped fake.  However, while the cover is a fake, Time was in fact printing stories about fears of global cooling in the 70’s.  See here.  And so was Newsweek. See here.  And the National Science Board.  See here.  And Science.  See here.  And several other sources summarized here.  We regret the error of putting the fake Time cover up.  However, the point we were trying to make remains valid.

I admit that I am given to bouts of despair about the condition of Western Civilization. We find ourselves in the proverbial hand basket and it is getting warmer and warmer. Recently a friend asked if I thought he should get involved in politics. Eeyore has nothing on me, and I replied in a somewhat gloomy tone, “Of course, but don’t expect to win any more than you should expect to stand on the seashore and hold back the tide.” “Why even try if we can’t win,” he replied. In response I appealed to the somewhat fatalistic Norse ethos which holds that even in the face of overwhelming odds we should continue to fight until the inevitable end, and when we go Read More ›

On the one hand . . . “Vanity, vanity, says the teacher, all is vanity. . . So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:17 “To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To Read More ›

We are constantly reminded that our intellectual betters overwhelmingly believe the Darwinist party line and undoubtedly that is true.  So what?  It was not that many years ago that all fashionable intellectuals believed another party line, which, in retrospect, only a fool would believe.  I thought about that as I read this (which also might account for the sometimes hysterical tone our opponents take): [The anti-anticommunists at Time magazine] believed a number of things. Foremost among them was the belief that peace could be preserved, World War III could be averted only by conciliating the Soviet Union. For this no price was too high to pay, including the price of willful historical self-delusion. Yet they had just fiercely supported a war [i.e., Read More ›

It turns out the earth heats up and cools naturally with no human intervention.  Who ever thought that it didn’t?  Oh, the consensus.  

I date my break [from communism] from a very casual happening. . . . My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. . . . My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear — those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design.’ Witness Whittaker Chambers