Intelligent Design

The explosion lasted only about 20 million years, their research shows, and the subsequent 520 million years featured more even rates of change: At (or shortly before) the start of the Cambrian Period (541 million years ago), modern animals evolved. They rapidly diversified into all the major groups (phyla) of animals we see today, such as jellyfish and corals, segmented worms (such as earthworms), molluscs (such as snails), arthropods (such as crabs), and even vertebrates (backboned animals, which eventually included ourselves)… If modern animals first evolved at the very beginning of the Cambrian, then their global adaptive radiation took a mere 20 million years. While this is still substantial, it represents only 0.5% of the 3.5-billion-year history of life on Read More ›

In a review, one reviewer has decided to talk about what Michael Behe actually says in Darwin Devolves. For example, In a section called “The Blind Metaphor,” Behe notes: “The primary way by which natural selection makes evolution self-limiting is by promoting poison-pill mutations. Whatever genetic alterations that help an organism survive and reproduce better than its competitors will be fodder for natural selection—even if the alterations make a species less able to adapt in the future (200). In hindsight, that is what we should have expected. Despite the boost in plausibility it receives from its metaphorical name, over multiple rounds natural selection is clearly nothing like the opposite of chance, no more than, say, gravity is the opposite of Read More ›

When they say they “know” that an AI machine is conscious.  How can I be so sure?  Easy.  As I have discussed before, we cannot in principle “know” that even other humans are conscious; far less can we know that an AI is conscious.  By its very nature, consciousness, as evidenced by subjective self-awareness, can be known for certain only by subjective experience.  It is self-evident to a person who is subjectively self-aware that he is conscious.  Indeed, this has been called the “primordial datum” – “me” and “not me” exist – from which all other knowledge proceeds.  By definition, I can have subjective experience only of my own self.  I cannot be subjectively self-aware of any other self.  It Read More ›

Two recent posts have highlighted the moral and intellectual rot that threatens Western Civilization.  In the first, materialist Seversky expressed a moral nihilism that is breathtaking in its scope.  I asked him if the ancient practice of killing unwanted girl babies was an affirmatively good thing.  His answer:  “It was an affirmatively good thing for them.”  He hastened to add that he personally does not approve of the practice.  But he added that there is no standard against which to measure whether his preference in the matter is superior to those who would kill the little babies.  I asked Sev if the same reasoning applied to slavery, human sacrifice and genocide.  His answer:  “Yes, it does.”  So, infanticide, slavery, human Read More ›