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Philosophy

In a meaningless world, does truth always have value over delusion?

I care about truth if there is a God. But why should I care about truth if there is no God? In fact if there is no God, maybe I shouldn’t care about truth because it would be too sad to know…I’d rather live out my life with the illusion of happily ever after in that case. Two thousand years ago, someone echoed those sentiments: What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Paul of Tarsus 1 Cor 15:32 There was an exchange between KeithS and I in another thread, and he fired off this comment: Your comment epitomizes one Read More ›

When designed errors are the perfect design

Shannon’s legendary paper: Mathematical Theory of Communication unwittingly lends support to the philosophical notion that perfect designs in one dimension must of necessity have imperfection in other dimensions. We intuitively understand that we communicate much better with someone in a quiet room versus a noisy room. But Shannon’s genius was that he quantified this notion by relating maximum data transmission rate to the signal-to-noise ratio. The result of the paper was the now famous Noisy channel coding theorem. To make his argument, he defined measures of information relevant to communication, the famous notion of “bit”. The notion of “bit” plays a central role in ID theories, but ironically, the notion of “bit” wasn’t the focus of Shannon’s legendary paper! How Read More ›

ID is a “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones”

[This is a follow on to a conversation began by RDFish/Aiguy which was crossposted at UD and TSZ: here and here] Perhaps, however, one just really does not want to call intelligent design a scientific theory. Perhaps one prefers the designation “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.” Fine. Call it what you will, provided the same appellation is applied to other forms of inquiry that have the same methodological and logical character and limitations. In particular, make sure both design and descent are called “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.” This may seem all very pointless, but that in a way is just the point. As Laudan has argued, the question whether a theory is scientific is really Read More ›

Why did Bill Dembski make this apparent “concession”

Thus, a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Philosophers of science would call this a constructive empiricist approach to design. Scientists in the business of manufacturing theoretical entities like quarks, strings, and cold dark matter could therefore view the designer as just one more theoretical entity to be added to the list. I follow here Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote, “What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of Read More ›

Holy Rollers, Pascal’s Wager, If ID is wrong it was an honest mistake

A scandalous documentary about Christian gamblers was released in 2012 with me listed in the credits. 🙂 The documentary is about a group of Christians, the Holy Rollers, that took the casinos for 3.5 million dollars. Myself, by comparison, I’ve accumulated a relatively paltry sum of $30,000 or so over the years. I’ve been tossed out of casinos and abused because I tried to use my brain in the casino. Casinos, like Darwinists, will say: Expelled No Intelligence Allowed!. I took Turtle Creek Casino in Michigan for $6,000 before they illegally backroomed me. Similarly, I was forcibly escorted out of Hollywood Tunica (thankfully Hollywood got sued for $729,000 for pulling such stunts on other honest players like myself in an Read More ›

Arguing for Resemblance of Design (RD) instead of Intelligent Design (ID)

[This is a follow on essay to Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID] The irony is that one of the books most widely credited for inspiring the ID movement didn’t actually argue for ID! That book was Michael Denton’s book Evolution A Theory In Crisis. This book deeply influenced Phil Johnson, Michael Behe, and many others. So what was Denton’s conclusion at the end of his book? He said the mystery of biology is as enigmatic today as it was at the time of Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle. He offered no explanation for the apparent design in biology, and offered no suggestion that ID nor creation should even be put on the table as answers. He just stated Read More ›

Even supposing ID is not science, it does not automatically mean it is religion, philosophy, or metaphysics

I found a comment by CLADIVS (Claudius) in Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID that is worth highlighting. But without a testable explanation, ID remains in the realm of metaphysics, philosophy or religion, not science. I responded: ID may not be science, but that does not mean automatically it is religion. If I have a coin in a box and shake it, look at it at 11:27 AM on 6/26/13 and determine it is heads. You have no way of scientifically verifying the claim via a process of repeated experiments 10 years from now. You’ll just have to take my word for it. The fact that a true claim about the history of the physical universe is not accessible Read More ›

Jerry Coyne – Afraid to Engage – Imagine That!

Over at his Why Evolution is True website, the infamous Jerry Coyne has given his lame excuses for not wanting to take up a genuine offer from ENV’s David Klinghoffer to debate and discuss Steve Meyer’s latest Book Darwin’s Doubt as well as discussing anything else Darwin related.  In his “I’m too busy and important to do that’ rant he writes: You ID advocates can also make your case, but the website rules are that we can then ask, before you post further, about your evidence for God The Intelligent Designer. This is the last time I’ll be engaging the Discovery Institute directly on these issues. DIers are not scientists but religious zealots concealing clerical collars beneath threadbare lab coats. I Read More ›

Stolen Concepts: All Materialist Arguments Are Self-Refuting

The stolen concept fallacy is a form of self-refutation. From Wikipedia: Stolen Concept – the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends. In an ongoing, multi-thread sub-debate at The Skeptical Zone, I have been making the case that when materialists argue, they necessarily employ stolen concepts, such as those referred to by the following terms and more: “I”, “we”, “prove”, “evidence”, “reason”, “logic”, “determine”, “conclude”, “error”, “fact”, “objective”, “subjective”, etc. Generally agreed upon by many of those at TSZ (although now I suspect we’ll get a barrage of disagreement via DDS), human beings are material computations of physics, meaning that everything a human does, says, Read More ›

Space Shuttle Denying Darwinists (SSDD)

SSDD is an acronym for “Same Stuff Different Day”. In debate with Darwinists, it’s always the same stuff, different day. SSDD can be also an acronym for Space Shuttle Denying Darwinists — that is to say Darwinists that are so against ID that they will even deny that Space Shuttles are intelligently designed. Such people suffer from SSDD syndrome. There is no remedy for their philosophical malady. Over at ARN the following exchange happened which I summarize: Sal: Is a man-made design an example of intelligent design? Alan Fox: NO!!! Sal: Given what you said, is the Space Shuttle an example of intelligent design? How about GMOs? Alan Fox: Nothing is an example of intelligent design unless you want to Read More ›