Barry Arrington

From the responses to a Q&A sent out by Nature here. Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools? Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny. Any questions? HT to Winston Macchi Update (added by DaveScot): In Biden’s own words yesterday: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on Read More ›

With the media swooning over Dicky Dawkins’ fulminations against all things religious, who would have thought that the Dickster actually belongs to the less rational (statistically speaking) group:  Check out the report at the WSJ.  Here’s an excerpt: The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us. “What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness Read More ›

See the coverage at the Onion.  

“The beliefs which we have the most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Burt, n.d.), pp. 38-39.

I’ve been thinking today about the ACLU’s favorite former liquor control board member (i.e., Judge Jones) and his decision in the Dover case.  In my post today I want to focus on only one of Jones’ many errors – his reliance on the subjective motives of the Dover school board members in striking down the ID policy in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist. 400 F.Supp.2d 707, 748-762 (M.D.Pa. 2005).  I will demonstrate that under very clear United States Supreme Court precedent, the subjective motives of a policy maker are simply irrelevant in determining whether the policy violates the Establishment Clause.

Read More ›

Paul Giem’s comment to my Faith and Reason post below is so good, I thought it deserved its own post. Read on to see how Paul demonstrates decisively that in the origin of life context (OOL) the materialists’ faith commitment is the sort of blind-leap-in-the-dark-in-the-teeth-of-the-evidence stretch of which they delight in accusing theists of making.

Read More ›

The comment threads to several recent posts have contained spirited discussions of faith, reason and the relationship between the two. This issue comes up quite often on this blog, so I decided it was time to devote a post to it. Many of the comments assume a dichotomy, namely that materialists operate solely within the sphere of reason, and theists operate solely within the sphere of faith. In this post I will demonstrate that this dichotomy is not only false, but obviously false. I will show that everyone operates in varying degrees in both spheres. I will then show that far from being a bastion of pure reason, materialism actually requires greater faith commitments than theism.

Read More ›

As DaveScott has pointed out in this space on several occasions, increased levels of atmospheric CO2 is, in at least some very important respects, a good thing.  Now Nature reports scientists are reaching the same conclusion here (sub required). Barley, beets (for those who like food that tastes like dirt) and wheat production increased by 10% when exposed to the year 2050 CO2 levels predicted by some climate models.

Dr. DeWitt will appear on my radio talk show tomorrow to discuss his book, “Unraveling the Origins Controversy.”  The show begins at 6:00 Eastern and will stream live on KRKS.com.  Dr. DeWitt is the Director of the Center for Creation Studies and a professor of Biology at Liberty University.  He is a young earth creationist.   While I respect YEC’s, I do not count myself among them, so the give and take should be interesting.

Any effort to give precise gradations of quantification to CSI is doomed to failure.  It reminds me of certain economists’ effort to quantify “utility” through a measurement called a “util.”  See here.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the concepts are very much the same.  We can all agree that the concept of “utility maximization” is very important and represents a real phenomenon.  But while we can say of utility there is a lot, there is a little, or there is none at all, there is no way to measure it precisely.  The “util” is useful as a hypothetical measure of relative utility, but it has no value as an “actual” unit of measurement, such as inches, pounds, meters, or grams.

Read More ›

Suppose you come across this tree: You know nothing else about the tree other than what you can infer from a visual inspection. Multiple Choice: A.  The tree probably obtained this shape through chance. B.  The tree probably obtained this shape through mechanical necessity. C.  The tree probably obtained this shape through a combination of chance and mechanical necessity. D.  The tree probably obtained this shape as the result of the purposeful efforts of an intelligent agent. E.  Other. Select your answer and give supporting reasons.

Many scholars believe Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written.  I don’t know if that is true.  I am not qualified to judge, but I do know the novel moved me as no other ever has.  So I was intrigued when SteveB referred to a passage from the novel in a comment to my earlier post.  In this passage Ivan is exploring man’s capacity for cruelty, and he says to his brother Alyosha (warning, not for the faint of heart):

Read More ›

In Bass Ackwards Darwinism (below) my friend DaveScott writes:

 “Good people do good things.  Evil people do evil things.  Knowledge (like Darwinian evolution and the recipe for dynamite) is inanimate and can be employed by good people for good things and evil people for evil things.”

The issue is not whether “good” people do good things.  Of course they do.  That’s why we call them “good.”  The issue is not whether “evil” people do evil things.  Again, of course they do.  That’s why we call them “evil.”  The issue is what do we mean when we say “good” and “evil.”  From the answer to that question everything else about our ethics follows.

Read More ›

Researchers publishing in Nature report that parts of North America and Europe are expected to cool over the next decade.  See the story here.   But the author of the report remains a global warming zealot and fears that his science will be used to undermine his religion: “We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don’t want it to be turned around in the wrong way,” Keenlyside said. “I hope it doesn’t become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.”

In a prior post EJ wrote:  “I think natural intelligences are to be preferred above supernatural intelligences in design detection, for the simple reason that we have experience with the former, but not the latter.” 

I replied:  “Says who? You are repeating Hume’s error of circular reasoning. “Miracles do not happen because they are counter to universal experience.”  In other words, “miracles do not happen because miracles do not happen.”  That may satisfy you and Hume.  Those who would like to have their conclusions demonstrated rather than assumed might not be as impressed.” 

Then evo_materialist wrote:  “BarryA, you may have experience with miracles.  Alas, I do not, and neither has anybody I know in a way that’s not better explained naturally.” 

Pace evo’s comment, I never said I personally have had experience with miracles.  My comment is a matter of the application of logic to EJ’s (and Hume’s before him) position.  In other words, my point is that Hume’s position fails on logical grounds, not because my experience is different from his.   

Hume (and EJ and Evo) asserts a univeral principle of natural law, which Karl Popper calls ‘the principle of causality.’

This is what Karl Popper says about this principle in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (which, as far as I know, is the only scientific text with the force of law in the United States): 

Read More ›