Barry Arrington

Remember that Intergovernmental Panal on Climate Change report that all the glaciers in the Himalayas were going to melt by the mid 2030’s?  Turns out it was complete bunk.  Is it time to start adding scare quotes around the “science” part of “climate science”? Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science Read More ›

In a comment to a prior post Johhnnyb makes the following excellent points (see here): One thing which I think ID can contribute to any historical aspect of earth history is shaving off hypothetical creatures. While there are certainly many creatures which haven’t yet been found, and I’m sure many of these creatures include chimeras of existing features in existing creatures, there is no reason to believe that there must be creatures where none have been found or evidenced. Darwinism has a bad habit of perpetually adding dashed lines in-between creatures for where it expects to find relationships. Instead, ID says that, perhap we can just take the fossil record as we find it. Perhaps what we need to be Read More ›

At the First Things blog.

 In an earlier post I commented on Alasdair Cochrane’s efforts to jettison “inherent dignity” as a criterion for determining whether it is moral to treat certain classes of humans as objects.  Cochrane is impatient with the “dignity criterion,” because it prevents actions that he deems beneficial, for example medical experiments on human guinea pigs that might lead to advances in medicine.  As I thought more about Cochrane’s thesis, it became clear to me that our old friend Nietzsche was lurking just beneath the surface of his arguments.  Nietzsche had no use for what he called “slave morality.”  For Nietzsche, “good” does not mean adherence to a moral standard.  Instead, it is more or less a synonym for “strong.”  Thus, the Read More ›

Alasdair Cochrane works at an organization called the Centre for the Study of Human Rights in the UK.  The journal Bioethics has just published Cochrane’s article “Undignified Bioethics” (subscription required), in which he argues that the concept of inherent human dignity should be rejected. Cochrane correctly notes that treating all humans as though they possess inherent dignity merely by virtue of the fact that they are human gets in the way of the really nifty medical experiments we could perform on the defenseless among us if we were to jettison that notion: This conception of dignity as inherent moral worth certainly seems coherent enough as an idea. Indeed, we can also see why this conception of dignity is employed in Read More ›

In UD Contest 19 Denyse asked readers to identify the several errors in a passage from David B. Hart’s blurb about the “problems with ID.”  Over at First Things Joe Carter also goes after Hart (here).

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:  We must ever bear in mind that the great end in view is righteousness, justice as between man and man, nation and nation, the chance to lead our lives on a somewhat higher level, with a broader spirit of brotherly goodwill one for another. Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy. We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but Read More ›

Al Gore in Slate responding to climategate: “The physical relationship between CO2 molecules and the atmosphere and the trapping of heat is as well-established as gravity, for God’s sakes. It’s not some mystery.…” Now where have I heard the “as well established as gravity” mantra before?  Hmm.  It’ll come to me in a moment.

From this article: Science is about probability, not certainty. And the persisting uncertainties in climate science leave room for argument. What is a realistic estimate of how much temperatures will rise? How severe will the effects be? Are there tipping points beyond which the changes are uncontrollable? Does this mean we can wait for a retraction of all of the NYT’s “Evolution is a fact, fact fact!” histrionics?  I’m not holding my breath.

From Blake Hounshell Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55 Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39 Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36 Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34 Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34

Go here.

In the post below Andrew Sibley links to an extraordinary article in The Times about the link between Darwinism and the recent spate of school shootings, and in the comments Leviathan steps up to give us the obligatory “this doesn’t disprove Darwinism” response.  Leviathan, you are missing the point.  I read the article and there is not one word in it that attacks Darwinism per se.  For all you or I know the author could be a Darwinian fundamentalist.  I take it that the point of the article is that some school shooters are influenced by Darwinian theory.  That is undeniable.  Actually, I take that back.  I am sure there are Darwinian fundamentalists out there who would deny that any Read More ›

Thoughtful atheists admit that Darwinism cannot account for the human mind.  In a recent edition of The Philosophers Magazine atheist Raymond Tallis writes:  Consciousness makes evolutionary sense only if one does not start far enough back; if, that is to say, one fails to assume a consistent and sincere materialist position, beginning with a world without consciousness, and then considers whether there could be putative biological drivers for organisms to become conscious. This is the only valid starting point for those who look to evolution to explain consciousness, given that the history of matter has overwhelmingly been without conscious life, indeed without history. Once the viewpoint of consistent materialism is assumed, it ceases to be self-evident that it is a Read More ›

We would like to remind our readers that Michael Behe has a sub-blog here at UD, which can be accessed at the sidebar under “Intelligent Design Links.”   Last week Behe put up a four-part series replying to science writer Carl Zimmer’s comments about Behe’s response to Joseph Thornton’s recent work.  The final paragraph is classic Behe:  As for “no scientific controversy”, even a brief excursion into the history of science shows many uncontroversial, widely-accepted theories that were in fact wrong. There was no scientific controversy in the 19th century about the existence of the ether, or the adequacy of Newton’s laws. And, if one relies on science journals for her entire perspective, there is no controversy today about whether undirected Read More ›

This is UD’s 4,000th post.  Congrats and a hardy well done and thank you to all of our posters!