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The section of interest starts at 12:30 where Dawkins is asked, “what would it take to make you believe in God.” Short answer by Dawkins, “nothing”. He presumes if he saw a miracle it would be a hallucination or technologically advanced aliens. This is a change from his previous claim that his mind could be changed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNcC866sm7s NOTES 0. Dawkins response reminds me of some of the Darwinists at UD responding to questions about 500 fair coins. Even if they saw credible evidence of design, they’ll find a way to disbelieve it, whereas by contrast they’ll rush to accept the most flimsy explanation in defense of mindless evolution and mindless OOL. 1. Regarding hallucinations, HT selvaRajan for finding the answer Read More ›

If there were one person in the world who might have converted me to Darwinism, it would have been love doctor Helen Fisher, a professor of love, romance, anthropology and evolution at Rutgers university. Her writings are an enchanting mix of real life romance stories sprinkled with the fictions of evolution. She has a truly brilliant and beautiful mind. She became a love doctor after she was married at a young age, became disappointed, and then divorced after 6 months. She then made it her life long journey to understand the nature of love and find the formula for romantic love that will last forever. She went on to publish her findings in famous books like Why We Love: The Read More ›

At the scandalous premiere of Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian Institution several years ago, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez said something to the effect “not only are we in the right place in the universe, we’re alive at the right time!” Dr. Gonzalez, normally unexpressive and soft spoken, was uncharacteristically emphatic about being alive at the right time in cosmic history, suggesting the window of arrival of homo sapiens and modern technology happened within an exceedingly narrow time frame. He was so emphatic that one would surmise he was seeing a miracle, as if whatever was the source of the universe specially ordained this time and place in the fabric of reality. From the prestigious scientific journal Nature: Caught in the Act Read More ›

Even if Ken Ham may have fumbled on presentation, the facts may show him possibly closer to the truth on some matters. Rather than focus on the immense claims that are part of most YEC models (young universe, young stars, young planets, intelligent design of life, Noah’s flood, the tower of babel, created kinds, etc.), let me focus on the question of lab and field reporting in historical geology and paleontology, and something Nye said would change his mind. He said something to the effect: Why do we not have examples of fossils mixed between layers; for instance, a mammal in trilobite layers He suggested if we found such things he might change his mind. The first thing to realize Read More ›

[I was incredibly impressed by the testimony of PasserBy11 in the thread Are dinosaurs the real reason young Christians in college desert their faith. He had the opposite journey that I had in some respects. I have to say however I can so relate to the effect of bad behavior in the Church and the friendship and warm welcome that some can receive in atheist and agnostic circles relative to the judgmental and presumptuous abuse some parishioners subjected me to when I struggled with my questions. (When I say atheists and agnostics, I’m not referring to the internet variety like PZ Myers, that’s almost a whole nother species. These were people I know personally.) Some may argue, “Sal why are Read More ›

[ HT: KRock] The aim of this essay is to set the record straight on behalf of Norm Geisler in the landmark creation-evolution case Mclean vs. Arkansas as well exploring a few connections of ID/creation/evolution with Extra Terrestrials (ETs) and certain religious ideas. Ironically, the Uncommon Descent weblog owes much of its existence to an advocate of Extra Terrestrial (ET) origins of life on Earth, namely DaveScot Springer who built up the UD blog for several years before getting separated from it. I have promoted the work of another ET-ID fan, Dr. Andras Pellionisz. And last but not least, UD’s very own Rob Sheldon offered his hypothesis that comets throughout the universe participated in a massive coherent computation that created Read More ›

[This is a light-hearted precursor to a more serious essay I’m writing about ID/Creationism and Extra-Terrestrials. Other than being a pre-cursor to that essay it has no ID content.] Denyse reported earlier on the former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer. Wiki has this to say about him: Hellyer is reported to have said other things: According to most, almost every report, is that the ETs are more spiritual than we are. And so, we really have to emulate them; not only in technology but in spirituality.” He then specifically references global warming and “changing the banking system” and follows up with: “the major religions who have been fighting each other and killing each other for millennia are gonna have to Read More ›

First, an excerpt from Dr. Herrmann’s personal history: I was associated with the occult from birth, but in 1946 when I was 12 years old, I suddenly became extremely interested in occult manifestations and simultaneously became, what is sometimes called, a “mental giant” – indeed, a child scientist. I delved into any aspect of the occult that had any meaning for a child of my age. For two or three months, I was a superior telepathist. I once telepathically identified more than forty-five cards out of fifty-two cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards. However, suddenly I lost this particular telepathic ability, I lost the “key” so to speak. Obviously, I was brokenhearted over this state of affairs and Read More ›

It is amusing to note that the way many scientists promote a novel theory is to argue that their theory is true because the alternative is to accept the hypothesis that the Earth is in a very privileged position in the universe. For those bored with my rejection of the chance hypothesis in 500 fair coins being heads, here is a far more technical question as to whether chance can create clustering of redshifts by quasars. If quasar redshift grouping is not the product of chance, this implies either the Earth is in a privileged position (which has all sorts of unacceptable metaphysical implications to materialists), or quasar redshifts are not due to expanding space of the Big Bang, or Read More ›

[This essay has marginal relevance to the UPB (which has relevance to ID) but might be of interest to the anti-Big Bang, anti Einstein General Relativity crowd, and hence is of marginal interest to YEC’s.

Nevertheless, Figure 4 page 28 in Brynjolfsson’s paper carries a lot of weight with me and I’m trying to find anyone who can give me more data points. I wish to thank Dr. Liddle for allowing me to post my essay at TSZ since I’m needing to get feedback on some of my speculations. Even if my speculations are wrong, investigating the them will be a good learning experience since there is lots of good physics to learn in understanding plasmas and electromagnetism, and there is always fun and benefit in studying science.]

This essay will outline some of the work of Ari Byrinjolfsson. He says some things I don’t agree with regarding eternal universes, but if Brynjolfsson is right then it has some negative impact on ID and creationism and the UPB, etc. So, let me be clear, Brynjolfsson’s paper is generally bad for ID, creation, and the Big Bang. That said, his papers most definitely got my attention, and there is much that I like about his work. Wikipedia has this entry on Ari Brynjolffson:
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If paleontology lives by radiometric dating, it also dies by radiometric dating. Either DNA trapped in 200 million-year-old Jurassic insect amber is young or it has some unexplained source. I argue it is young. Radiometric C-14 dates of fossils say the fossils are young. As I’ve said many times, the radiometric date of 65 million-year-old rocks is irrelevant to the radiometric date of the actual physical tissue of a fossil. I could bury a living dog in 65 million-year-old rocks, and the age of rocks will have nothing to say of the age of the dog. The best inferences for time of death of a fossil: half-life of C-14, half life of DNA, half-life of amino acids, etc., NOT the Read More ›

Why is it that humans can recognize the designs of other humans even for token objects like a system of 500 fair coins? Why does life resemble designs? Answer: designs frequently conform to simple organizing principles rather than explicit patterns. Simple organizing principles are a way to understand large amounts of data with our finite human minds and limited information. Ironically, the fact that humans have finite memory and limited information is one reason humans tend to think and design in terms of organizing principles, and thus design creation and recognition is possible in part because of finite human memory and limited human information. First, it would be helpful to compare and contrast design detection using organizing principles versus design Read More ›

In further commemoration of Halton Christian “Chip” Arp, Chip pointed out many star clusters are aligned in such a way that they point toward us. So severe has been the unease over this that some have called the phenomenon “The Fingers of God”. 😯 Quoting Chip’s website: What do they think this cluster is? In fact they are forced to say it is a structure that I would compare to a great sausage stretching out from us toward the outer reaches of the Universe. The miraculous aspect is that this sausage is pointing directly at us, the observer. But perhaps an even stranger aspect is that the far end would be receding from us at an appreciable fraction of the Read More ›

The Big Bang is both beloved and despised among members of ID’s big tent. William Lane Craig, Guillermo Gonzalez, etc. favor the Big Bang. But the YECs in ID’s big tent despise the Big Bang because it disagrees with YEC. Thus the YECs have formed a rather strange alliance with certain ID-haters who despise the Big Bang because of the Big Bang’s quasi-theistic implications. If the YECs succeed in solving the distant starlight problem and falsify the Big Bang’s chronology, then that will favor ID, but if the Big Bang is falsified in favor of an eternal universe, that will be unfavorable to ID since ID proponents might have to reject the Universal Probability Bound that is the core of Read More ›

Ludwitt is writing a paper. I’m answering his questions as if he were a student writing a paper. Let’s say hypothetically his professor hates ID like some of my professors, but were fair and just. I want him to be able to articulate ID clearly in his paper, but I want also for him not to overstate the case of ID as some ID proponents occasionally do. Since my views are not the same as other ID proponents, I invite their differing responses to Ludwitt’s questions. Here are his comments and questions from the Russel Crowe thread: Please note that I am writing a paper with the speculative hypothesis that ID is a valid scientific position. I do not know Read More ›