Atheism

An article in Salon caught my eye while looking at other things online: Saturday, Jan 3, 2015 10:00 AM -0400 God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified A young MIT professor is finishing Darwin’s task — and threatening to undo everything the wacky right holds dear Paul Rosenberg The triumphalistic tone and immediate leap to a socio-cultural and/or aggressive materialistic agenda backed up by denigratory caricatures, published in a seemingly respectable magazine, already speak inadvertent volumes. But the lead-in to the piece (leaving off some rhetorical points-scoring off the bogeymen Mr Rosenberg particularly targets and evidently views as insane) is where the other shoe, proverbially, drops: Darwin also didn’t have Read More ›

Last week, one of my comments relating to the KS “bomb” argument was made the subject of an OP, which can be found here. In that comment, I had offered a few preliminary thoughts on Keith’s argument (originally found here, and summarized by him here) and asked a few questions to better understand the assumptions informing his argument. Unfortunately, the issues raised in my OP comment, as far I can tell, were never actually addressed. Instead, the ‘responses’ in the ensuing conversation revolved almost entirely around what the participating ID proponents considered obviously false analogies, which invoked “Planetary Angels”, “Rain Fairies”, “Salt Leprechauns”, and “Toilet Whales”. Regarding these analogies, Keith, Zachriel, and other ID opponents, seemed to be arguing as though ID Read More ›

The latest cluster of dismissive talking points on the design inference pivot on caricatures describing invisible fairy-tale like supernatural entities. These need to be answered for record, and so let me headline a comment post that addresses these in the context of the agit-prop message dominance rhetorical tactics they represent, augmenting a bit using the facilities provided for a WP blog post: _____________ >>we need to understand some agit-prop rhetorical strategies that are at work: 1: Notice how the focus has been pulled away from the central issue put on the table across the ’70′s by Orgel and Wicken, ORGEL, 1973: . . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the Read More ›

New Contributor HeKS, has had occasion to comment a few hours ago on KS’ claimed bomb argument (cf. my own headlined for record response here, WJM’s here and here,  VJT’s here,   BA’s Black Knight Taunt summing up here and other responses at UD . . . KS’s  repeated boasts that he has not been answered are groundless).  I think his comment is worth headlining as a pivot for discussion on the issue and on what has been happening rhetorically: ______________ HeKS: >> In this thread, I noticed Keiths posting a summary of his supposed ‘bomb’ argument. I haven’t been around much lately and haven’t seen too much of the discussion around his argument that has apparently been taking place, but Read More ›

From recent “challenges” by KS as a representative of a certain line of design objection thought, we find various unfortunate examples of a type of objection that pivots on a deep misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the design inference, empirical evidence based inductive reasoning process.One that even more regrettably, seems strongly resistant to correction on evidence and reason; raising questions of the fallacy of the closed mind. A representative example (cf. my clip- respond- on- points here)  is the following distortion of Newton’s thought on Gravitation as both scientist and design-oriented, theistic philosophical thinker in his own right: Bob and another friend, an astronomer, observe the positions of the planets over several years. They determine that the planets are moving in Read More ›