William J Murray

Recently some of our opponents have trotted out the old, long-since debunked, unsupportable universal claim “there is no evidence of God”. Let me illustrate how this is just another emotionally-addicted, rhetorical maxim atheists cling to without any real thought in the matter. Facts, as defined by Merriam-Webster: something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence : a true piece of information”. According to Wiki, a scientific fact is: an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts.” Merriam Webster says the evidence is “something which shows that something else exists or is true”. Obviously, “something else” is not directly observable as a fact, or else Read More ›

Atheists/materialists/physicalist/naturalists are delusional. Here are 10 reasons why: 1. They dismiss morality as nothing more than strongly felt subjective preference, but admit they act as if morality is objective in nature. 2. They speak, act and hold others responsible for their behaviors as if we all have some metaphysical capacity to transcend and override the deterministic effects of our body’s physical state and causative processing, yet they deny any such metaphysical capacity (like free will) exists. 3. They deny truth can be determined subjectively while necessarily implying that their arguments and evidences are true and expecting others to subjectively determine that their arguments are true. 4. They deny that what is intelligently designed can be reliably identified when virtually every Read More ›

This is an expansion of a post of mine from another thread. Hat tip to HeKS for bringing the debate around to Ontology vs Epistemology. In another thread, Seversky rejects the objective nature of morality based on the fact you cannot prove its existence or specific values like you can, say, the speed of light or the gravitational constant. Seversky is making a claim that since there is no satisfying epistemological methodology for establishing – precisely – the good or evil value of a moral proposition, then it must be the case that good and evil, ontologically speaking, are completely subjective commodities. This is not, of course, a logically valid inference. Just because a commodity has no satisfying or precise, Read More ›

In another thread, after a lengthy debate about whether or not we treat morality like it is a subejctive preference or an objective commodity, Zeroseven graciously admits: Fair enough. I don’t disagree with most of what you say. I agree we behave as if morals are objective. But I don’t agree that this is because they are objective. … I see the argument of objective morals in the same way. Its a nice way to look at a human process for making decisions about the world. But of course its a pure fiction. First, I’d like to thank Zeroseven for having the courage to admit what few moral subjetivists will; all sane people act as if morality refers to an Read More ›

Many of our interlocutors here often complain about the lengthy comments KF often posts which frame the necessity of a cohesive and coherent worldview when it comes to moral views and arguments. With others, their arguments often hinge around the insistence that either morals simply are not objective in nature, or that there is no way to tell. Even when the logic shows how subjective morality fails to provide a sound basis for behavior or argument, and fails to differentiate any moral view from another, their mantra seems to be a big “so what?” IOW, so what if their worldview is rationally inconsistent with their behavior? So what if ultimately subjective morality endorses any and all behavior as moral equivalents? Read More ›

Transgenderism is when a person considers themselves to internally be the opposite sex of their physical body. They mentally “self-identify” in contradiction to the physical fact of their body sex. Transgender law advocates insist that self-identified “transgenders” be given legal right to have unfettered access to all public facilities currently reserved for one sex or the other (male and female restrooms, lockers, showers, women’s shelters, etc.) Obama has recently decreed that all schools that do not fully adopt transgender protections and policies will face the revocation of federal funding. Usually, when a person believes they are something in contradiction to the physical facts (such as believing one is Napoleon, or believing one is a horse), we call that view delusional, Read More ›

Does a man have the right to identify himself as a woman and enter their locker rooms and bathrooms, demanding equal rights for their self-identification?  Does a person have the right to identify herself as a native American and, when filling out forms for employment or college, indicate her ethnicity as such, even though she is not?   Should the force of law support such self-identifications which contradict the physical facts and insist that society accommodate any such self-identifications? Where is the line between socially protected self-identification in conflict with physical facts and delusion?  Can physically unrelated people identify themselves as family and represent themselves as such on legal forms?  Can an adult self-identify as a child and thus obligate his Read More ›

From this 2005 interview: “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society Read More ›

I used to make a joke here that quote mining, to a Darwinist, was any time an IDist or Creationist quoted a mainstream evolutionary biologist.  A recent thread at TSZ  has sadly revealed that my joke wasn’t a joke. That’s what they actually think. After looking over the site petrushka (the author of the thread) referred to, I realized that the people at that site presented no evidence for quote-mining, and one of the site authors attempting to characterize why a quote was “quote-mined” said this: So we see that Gould et al. don’t reject evolution, but claim that phyletic evolution takes a second seat to speciation. Did anyone actually try to paint Gould as “rejecting evolution”? That hardly seems Read More ›

Great article up at The Federalist. Excerpts: Political Correctness is all about Propaganda Compliance. PC is the engine of the propaganda machine that produces mass delusion. PC is basically a calculated process of molding public opinion through psychological manipulation. The process is twofold: saturation and suppression. Saturation is the practice of repeating a deception relentlessly and injecting it into every corner of public life so that it becomes accepted as truth. It involves control of most communications outlets. Political Correctness is all about Propaganda Compliance. PC is the engine of the propaganda machine that produces mass delusion. PC is basically a calculated process of molding public opinion through psychological manipulation. The process is twofold: saturation and suppression. Saturation is the Read More ›

The Age of Mass Delusion Highly illuminating.  You can see these undercurrents in many debates here and at TSZ. One of the best books that cracks the code on what we are living through was written by Dutch psychiatrist Joost A. M. Meerloo about 60 years ago. Mull over the first line of his book’s forward, and you will think he is writing about today: “This book attempts to depict the strange transformation of the free human mind into an automatically responding machine – a transformation which can be brought about by some of the cultural undercurrents in our present-day society as well as by deliberate experiments in the service of a political ideology.” (…) Ignorance was cultivated in the Read More ›

At TSZ, Elizabeth Liddle asks IDists what the “energy source” is for a designer to move matter in some specific manner?  One wonders what EL is talking about – what is the energy source for any human designer to generate intentional outcomes, like picking up tools and building a house?  The energy used is the same energy kind that is used as any physical process that occurs.  The difference between intentional outcomes and unintentional outcomes is not that a different kind of energy is used, but rather that the energy was used intentionally. Instead of the process being guided by what would be predicted by natural law or a stochastic process (unintentional), intentional activity is not plausibly derivable from those Read More ›

Irish Voters Do the Right Thing. Church Was On the Wrong Side, As Usual Referring to this article. There is no “the” right thing under materialism and moral subjectivism.  There is no “the” wrong side.  Had Irish voters elected to round up and execute all gays and lesbians, under materialism and moral subjectivism that too would have been a right thing.  Had they elected to lobotomize them, that too would have been a right thing, made right by that which legitimizes as right any subjective moral or ethical good under materialism: the individual, or the group, or the community, or the society, or the culture consider a thing to be good or right. That headline corrected for logical consistency under Read More ›

UD regulars might want to check out this thread at The Skeptical Zone. And follow it all the way through. In it you’ll get to see: (1) EL make assertions (and doubles down on them) about a book she later admits she didn’t even bother to read, assertions which were demonstrable false; (2) Keiths jump from the possibility of error/fraud in scientific studies on psi/the paranormal to the conclusion that the results must have been fraud/error; (3) Countless groundless, blanket assertions best epitomized by Alan Fox’s blanket statement “It doesn’t happen”, who remains silent on how he knows psi events “don’t happen”; (4) DNA_Jock completely misrepresent a past comment of mine on TSZ that concerned a video on spoon-bending saying Read More ›

In other threads, certain people have claimed that personal experience and testimony are not as valid as other forms of evidence. In fact, some would dismiss thousands of years and the accumulation of perhaps billions of witness/experiencer testimonies because, in their view, personal experience and testimony is not really even evidence at all. The problem with this position is that everything one knows and or believes is gained either through  (1) personal experience (and extrapolation thereof), or (2) testimony (and examination thereof), for the simple fact that if you did not experience X, the only information you can possibly have about X is from the testimony of others. In a courtroom, for example, the entire case depends on testimony, even Read More ›