Atheism

Nicholas Frankovich has written an excellent essay for the National Review Online, titled, Do Atheists Exist? A new “godless” church makes you wonder. Frankovich’s article is outstanding for its depth and maturity of thought, and I would highly recommend it to readers of Uncommon Descent. He begins his piece with a description of an atheist church (yes, you read that right) founded in the UK at the beginning of 2013: For people who like church except for the parts about God, a British couple have bodied forth a new denomination that cheerfully excludes him, raising the volume on the question “What is atheism?” several decibels overnight. The Sunday Assembly, a “godless congregation” founded in East London last January by standup Read More ›

I am thinking it is time we began a collection of Darwinist fever swamp fallacies found in the wild. (Make sure to get your Malaria shot before going there . . . ) After the now standard “your’e a quote miner” false accusation and the “it’s a Gish galloper” smear of a man not present to defend himself and associated false accusation of wholesale lying, we have been seeing a few choice ones recently. Let’s begin a collection: The Darwinist 1984-style Orwellian doubletalk definition slip-slide trojan horse. I think that about captures it: it’s not what it seems like, and it’s what’s inside the wrapper that counts. often used with false accusations like you’re quote mining or you’re on a Read More ›

On Christmas Day, WJM put the following hypothetical conversation in a comment. Since he has not headlined it himself, as promised yesterday, I now do so: Typical debate with an anti-ID advocate: ID advocate: There are certain things that exist that are best explained by intelligent design. Anti-ID advocate: Whoa! Hold up there, fella. “Explained”, in science, means “caused by”. Intelligent design doesn’t by itself “cause” anything. ID advocate: What I meant is that teleology is required to generate certain things, like a functioning battleship. It can’t come about by chance. Anti-ID advocate: What do you mean “by chance”? “By” means to cause. Are you claiming that chance causes things to happen? ID advocate: Of course not. Chance, design and Read More ›

In the OK thread, in comment 50, ID objector Mark Frank has finally laid out the root of ever so many of the objections to the design inference filter. Unsurprisingly, it is a worldview based controlling a priori of materialism: [re EA] #38 [MF, in 50:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about. It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation. But, just what what Read More ›

Yesterday, UD News  headlined a case of radical secularist censorship in Los Angeles being cheered on by Jerry Coyne et al. The case concerns the removal of the following sign (shown under fair use) that was formerly present at a Museum of Natural History in that city: Notice, what Coyne says in exultation over the removal of the sign: If I get any other information I’ll convey it, but for now I’m pleased that God is out of the Museum and no longer gets credit for “creatures.”  It’s a victory for secularism, for sure. Something is blatantly, deeply wrong. Wrong with the push to censor. Wrong with the willingness of the museum’s leadership to be intimidated by Darwinist thuggery — Read More ›

It seems that one of the pivotal issues in reasoned thinking about design-related questions — and in general —  is the question of self-evident first, certain truths that can serve as a plumb-line for testing other truth claims, and indeed for rationality. (Where, the laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle are foremost among such first principles. And where also, some ID objectors profess to be “frightened” that some of us dare to hold that there are moral truths that are self evident.) Where also of course, self-evident does not merely mean perceived as obvious to oneself, which could indeed be a manifestation of a delusion. Nay, a self evident truth [SET] is best summarised as one known to be Read More ›

It seems necessary — in the teeth of too much obfuscatory rhetoric spread out like a squid escaping behind a cloud of ink — to lay out some basics of reasoning in general and about morality in particular for record, yet again. This time, by clipping, slightly adapting and highlighting an in-thread comment here: ________________________ >> Try (as a first example and slice of the cake with all the key ingredients): 3 + 2 = 5 ||| + || = ||||| This is self evident, as one who understands what it asserts (in light of conscious experience of the world) will see it to be true and that it must be true on pain of immediate, patent absurdity. Similarly, for Read More ›