Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

rhetoric

agit-prop, opinion manipulation and well-poisoning games

Debating Darwin and Design: Science or Creationism? (7) – Joshua Gidney’s Third Response

After another unfortunately lengthy break, we’re at it again. This post is my latest response to Francis Smallwood. Francis is first and foremost, a dear friend, but also a Christian neo-Darwinist. He writes at his blog Musings of Science. This response is part of a long-term (hopefully lifelong), dialogue on many different topics relating to the theory of intelligent design and neo-Darwinism. We are both very excited about continuing this project. Francis’ previous response can be found here: http://musingsofscience.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/debating-darwin-and-design-science-or-creationism-4/ Debating Darwin and Design A dialogue between two Christians 1. Is Intelligent Design science or ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’? 12th September 2013 Joshua Gidney – Third Response   One of the many benefits of taking part in a written dialogue, Read More ›

VIDEO: Jon Rittenhouse’s BB ST 450 course lecture on Scientism

Ran across this Biola video lecture (in course BB ST 450) on scientism in a thread from a few months back, HT BA77 as usual. I think it is well worth pondering: [youtube lnxrmF9O1ko] So, thoughts? END

They said it: “in the spirit of Carthago delenda est . . . ” — AF issues a strawman fallacy-tainted challenge to design thought

Longtime design objector AF has just issued an inadvertently revealing challenge in the Info by accident thread: AF, 224: >> And in the spirit of Carthago delenda est if anyone has a testable hypothesis of “Intelligent Design”, that would be good, too!>> This is brazen, and utterly revealing. Cato’s “Carthage must fall” was a declaration of implacable ruthless enmity that led to the final destruction of Carthage through a third war in a century, on a flimsy excuse. Here is my response at 225 (images added): KF, 225: >> AF has been at UD from the beginning. Eight years. He therefore full well knows — it having been stated in his presence umpteen times — that, for instance, a clear Read More ›

FYI-FTR, # 3: KeithS doubles down on sawing off the branch on which he sits, via po-mo certainty that we cannot be certain (oopsie . . . ), multiplies it by turnabout “liar-liar, your’e a hypocrite” rhetoric

We live in an intellectually impoverished and too often uncivil era, with the rise of evolutionary materialist scientism (as in: a priori evolutionary materialist “Science” is all of ‘real’ knowledge) having no small part of the responsibility. So, it is no real surprise to see one KeithS, one of the Darwinist anti-UD web patrol doubling down and trying to escape behind a squid-ink cloud of polarising and poisonous rhetoric,  in response to my expose of his fallacies over the past few days, and resorting to false, turnabout accusations of lying and hypocrisy to try to trumpet the pretence that he has “won” a ‘debate.” bearing in mind that earlier expose of the many errors and absurdities in KeithS’ reasoning, let Read More ›

FYI-FTR, # 2: KeithS of TSZ and other objecting sites, inadvertently shows the self-referential absurdity of evolutionary materialism and its fellow traveller po-mo ideologies regarding first principles of right reason and other self-evident first truths

We live in a post-modern [actually, ultra-modern . . . in Joe Carter’s sense of “modernity on volume level ELEVEN, not merely  ten” . . . ] world, or so we are commonly told. In that world, it is a commonplace to hear that “Aristotelian logic” exhibits a black- and- white thinking fallacy (strawman: any shade of pink, gold or green  etc. will do as NOT-WHITE . . . ). It is equally commonplace to see that truth and rationality are reduced in the minds of such to mere opinion, to be decided in the end by the nihilistic principle might and manipulation make ‘right.’ Which is in itself a big red warning flag. In such a situation, those who Read More ›

The issue of the dark triad in the debates over design — the danger of cossetting an asp of evolutionary materialism-driven cold, manipulative narcissism, machiavellianism and sociopathy from Alcibiades to today

“Cool” is often presented as the iconic, somewhat glamorous state of being calm, collected, in control.  It is often viewed as highly desirable, sexy, balanced, stylish, just plain “right.” Oh, soo, desirable . . . But, beneath the surface of “cool,” there too often lurks a reptilian coldly amoral ferocity that marks all the difference between the Christian virtue of self-control and the manipulative, demonically controlling. The dark triad, satanic side of cool. Dark triad? Though this sounds a little like an overly melodramatic movie title, it is actually a term of art in modern psychology, to describe a destructive cluster of personality syndromes that is increasingly seen. As Susan Whitbourne, writing in a Psychology Today article, sums up in Read More ›