Since it is liable otherwise to be lost in the flood of distractive tangential comments, I here headline my markup of PZM’s recent remarks on Dr Jonathan Wells.
Pardon some fairly direct comments, but unless we specifically expose capital examples of what we are objecting to, the destructive misbehaviour will continue:
[“They said it: Judge Jones of Dover …” is here. – UD News]
Darrel Ray thinks that atheists have better sex lives, citing his study to prove it:
But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.
Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah’s Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.
Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88 . In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively.
It’s quite true that devoutly religious people feel bad if they do something they think is bad. Some sources are more unsettled by people who aren’t like that.
Ray is best known as the discoverer of the God virus.
On the other hand, Read More ›
In further addressing the now commonly promoted idea that methodological naturalism is an innocent, “natural” part of the definition of science that properly keeps out those who wish to smuggle in “the supernatural” where it does not belong, I have had occasion to add an appendix to the recent June 17 post promoting Nancy Pearcey’s 2005 sleeper article on Christianity as a science starter, not a science stopper.
That appendix is worth a post in its own right, as — by utter contrast with Wikipedia’s enthusiastic citation of Judge Jones channelling the NCSE on how methodological naturalism has been the prevailing rule for doing science since the 1500’s & 1600’s — we can see how in his 1704 Opticks, Query 31 Newton blows apart the Wikipedian talking-point:
You can tell how much the notion of the multiverse pervades popular culture when a media release for the latest woo-woo train advises, Patricia McLaine’s Cosmic Conspiracy explores the common humanity that we all share as members of the Universe or Multiverse, which intricately connects us all. It is a result of the intense emotion generated within the “Mass Mind” that psychics, “regardless of the level of awareness or education” are far more in tune with—picking up negative patterns then positive ones—in predicting future world events.When asked by journalist Hal Jacques to make world predictions for The Star in January of 1977, … Twenty-five years ago, who knew the term “multiverse” so well? File with: What the Bleep Do We Read More ›
Here: Why didn’t polytheistic religions produce modern science? The answer is that finite gods do not create the universe. Indeed, the universe creates them. They are generally said to arise out of some pre-existing, primordial “stuff.” For example, in the genealogy of the gods of Greece, the fundamental forces such as Chaos gave rise to Gaia, the great mother, who created and then mated with the heavens (Ouranos) and the sea (Pontos) to give birth to the gods. Hence, in a polytheistic worldview, the universe itself is not the creation of a rational Mind, and is therefore not thought to have a rational order. The universe has some kind of order, of course, but one that is inscrutable to the Read More ›
Steve Fuller, reviewing Conor Cunningham’s Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Eerdmans, 2011) for Times Higher (24 March 2011), comments,
Let me start by conceding the central, most controversial thesis argued in this book: that neo-creationism and ultra-Darwinism are opposing offshoots of the same modernist root. Both read the Bible literally and take nature itself to possess a crackable code. Neither wishes science and theology to exist in separate spheres. To be sure, William Dembski and Richard Dawkins, say, differ radically on what should happen once the two are brought together: one infers natural theology, the other atheistic naturalism. These are the terms on which the ongoing “Darwin wars” are fought.My disagreement starts with the suggestion in the subtitle that Read More ›
In “Human consciousness is much more than mere brain activity,” Mark Vernon writes, “When we meditate or use our powers of perception, we call on more than just a brain” (The Guardian, June17, 2011):
How does the animated meat inside our heads produce the rich life of the mind? Why is it that when we reflect or meditate we have all manner of sensations and thoughts but never feel neurons firing? It’s called the “hard problem”, and it’s a problem the physician, philosopher and author Raymond Tallis believes we have lost sight of – with potentially disastrous results.Vernon, reviewing Raymond Tallis’s new book Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, offers,
What is astonishing about this rampant reductionism is that it is based on a conceptual muddle that is readily unpicked. Sure, you need a brain to be alive, but to be human is not to be a brain. Think of it this way: you need legs to walk, but you’d never say that your legs are walking. Read More ›
Steno tells us that Jay Richards’ (ed) God and Evolution won World Magazine’s Book of the Year (American), as did Norman Nevin’s (ed) Should Christians Embrace Evolution (British).
Don’t miss Marvin Olasky’s thoughtful discussion of why these two books deserved to lead. First, because
Think about the three main intellectual influencers of the 20th century: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. Two of the three—Freud and Marx—have lost most of their influence. The exception is Darwin. Two years ago his millions of fans celebrated the bicentennial of his birth, which was also the 150th anniversary of his famous book On the Origins of Species.He highlights the role of the Templeton Foundation in fronting Christian Darwinism, which most Christians actually do not and cannot accept.
Or, as I like to say, “Your church would make a nice little block of condos, but why are you giving it money in the mean time? Shouldn’t you be buying shares?” Read More ›
World Magazine has this year nominated two books for its Book of the Year. Should Christians Embrace Evolution? (ed) Norman Nevin, and Jay Richards (ed) God and Evolution. http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18207
In his new book, The Science of Evil, developmental psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen thinkshe has the mysteryof evil worked out, or so Katherine Bouton explains, in “Book sees evil as zero empathy: Baron-Cohen’s study could stir controversy” (Halifax Chronicle-Herald, June 18, 2011):
“My main goal is to understand human cruelty, replacing the unscientific term ‘evil’ with the scientific term ‘empathy,’ ” he writes at the beginning of the book, which might be seen as expanding on the views on empathy expressed in his 1997 book, Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind (Bradford). Evil, he notes, has heretofore been defined in religious terms (with the concept differing in the major world religions), as a psychiatric condition (psychopathology) or, as he puts it, in “frustratingly circular” terms: “He did x because he is truly evil”).[ … ]
“What leads an individual’s Empathizing Mechanism to be set at different levels?” Baron-Cohen asks. “The most immediate answer is that it depends on the functioning of a special circuit in the brain, the empathy circuit” …
Must be somewhere near the charity neurons but far from the God circuit, right?
Baron-Cohen reckons without my friend Five Feet of Fury, who took his test and found it flawed: Read More ›
I don’t have much of a lead-in for this post, so I’ll get right to the point: I think it’s important to draw a distinction between two concepts when it comes to ID. Namely, the distinction between the Design Question, and Intelligent Design itself.
When I say ‘the Design Question’, I mean more or less this: The question of whether X is designed, where X is some particular artifact, some particular part of nature, or nature as a whole.
And by Intelligent Design, I think a good, concise view was given here by Jonathan Wells: Intelligent design maintains that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than unguided natural processes.
The purpose of this post is to point out that while ID and the Design Question are related (not to mention very important) they are nevertheless distinct: It’s possible to answer “yes” to the Design Question, and still reject ID as stated. Likewise, it’s possible to affirm an ID inference in many cases, yet still answer in the negative on the Design Question (say, affirming that organism X was designed, while still believing that nature as a whole was not designed.)
More below.
Atheist Raises Money for Vandalized Church For those who are not intimately familiar with the ID debate and its substance (I assume that some who visit this website fall into this category) there is an acronym, FSM: Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is an attempt by those who oppose any inference to design (the evidence be damned) within the cosmos or living systems, to portray such proponents as being out of touch with reality and incapable of thinking logically or rationally. Of course, it is the Darwinist who has abandoned reason and logic in pursuit of a materialistic philosophical agenda that is being devastated on a daily basis by the discoveries of legitimate modern science. As anyone who is familiar with Read More ›
Caroline Crocker, author of Free to Think, on Darwin trolls harassing students on campus:
At a recent conference in Hawaii I was approached by a group of about eight students lamenting about how only one side of the evolution issue is taught in their classrooms and that anyone who suggests that there may be scientific evidence for the other side is ridiculed. In fact, at universities throughout the country, faculty and administrators harass students who attend Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) club meetings, where they just want to openly and freely investigate the evidence supporting evolution versus intelligent design. The IDEA club organizers at some universities complain that Read More ›
According to a report by CNN political correspondent, Peter Hamby, US Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann recently went on record as saying:
“I support intelligent design” . . . “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides” . . . “I would prefer that students have the ability to learn all aspects of an issue” . . . “And that’s why I believe the federal government should not be involved in local education to the most minimal possible process.”
This is in itself interesting, as it means that significant numbers of policy makers are increasingly aware of the problem of Lewontinian-Saganian, NAS, NSTA style a priori imposition of evolutionary materialism on science education.
But, this is not the main issue for this post.
That comes up when Mr Hamby provides a “definition” of ID:
Intelligent design suggests that the complexity of the universe cannot be explained by evolution alone, and must also be attributed to a creator or supernatural being.
By now, surely, CNN’s reporters and editors — never mind that artful wriggle-room word, “suggests” — know they could easily find a reasonable, non-loaded, accurate definition of ID, such as is provided by New World Encyclopedia:
According to the Bible, God created the universe so that He and His creatures could enter into an eternal, loving relationship. Christians, insofar as they accept that teaching, can readily understand their role in the cosmos and the broader context in which they find life’s meaning. In this context, God acted as both creator and designer: God brought time, space, and matter into existence and then “formed” man out of the dust of the earth.
Like all visionary designers, the God of the Bible knew exactly what He wanted and, like all competent builders, He saw to it that His finished product would conform to his original specifications. What is the point of being an all-wise Creator if you don’t know what you want to create? What is the point of being an omnipotent creator if you can’t get what you want? What is the point of being an all-good creator if you don’t care what you get? Whether or not God used an evolutionary process to produce man’s body is irrelevant to the point. What matters is that, regardless of how God might have arranged for the arrival of homo-sapiens—slowly and gradually, quickly, or in spurts– He intended that result and nothing else. From a Biblical perspective, evolution, if true, could only be a maturation process that unfolds according to the Creator’s plan and produces a result that conforms to His specifications.
Opposing the teleological paradigm, Darwinists posit a non-teleological model, a “purposeless, mindless process that did not have man in mind.” According to this world view, evolutionary change does not aim toward any final end because there is no final end to move toward. Evolution doesn’t know where it is going because the mutations are random and the environment, which determines the selection process, also doesn’t know where it is going. The process does not “unfold” or “mature” because there is no plan to direct the unfolding, nor is there a final end point into which the process can mature. So the purposeless, process moves aimlessly along, producing emergent mindless accidents for no reason at all.
Christian Darwinists, who make up the majority of Theistic Evolutionists, seek to reconcile the Biblical teleological with the Darwinian non-teleological model. In their view, a purposeful, mindful God could have used a purposeless, mindless process to create biodiversity. Of course, anyone who is capable of reasoning in the abstract will immediately understand that such a synthesis is logically impossible. Read More ›