worldview

ID debates often bring up foundational worldview issues, and the following exchange in the current Answering P thread is also worth headlining: ___________________ P, 62: >>Knowledge is information that, when embedded in a storage medium, plays a causal role in it being retained. This includes books, genomes and yes, brains. Furthermore, knowledge is objective in that is is independent of anyone’s belief. So, while I would agree that merely having a belief doesn’t make it true, we have a reason to suppose that our brains can genuinely contain knowledge. What explanation do you have for the growth of knowledge? Let me guess: the reason why our beliefs may be true is because “that’s just what God must have wanted”?>> KF, Read More ›

There are some key motifs that often come up in discussions of design theory and linked ideas. Popperian, as captioned, has posed one of these. Notice, his view, that we GENERATE emotions, suggesting a dynamo churning away and generating electricity. That is, the motif that would reduce explanations to mechanisms is here revealed.  I think it is well worth the pause to address it by headlining an in-thread response: ___________ >>Popperian, re: why doesn’t someone start out by explaining how human beings generate emotions, then point out how the universality of computation does not fit that explanation. Effectively stating “It’s magic and computers are not magic doesn’t cut it.” Pushing the problem into an inexplicable mind hat exists in an Read More ›

It is instructive to see this inadvertently revealing comment on a blog post by Jason Rosenhouse. But first, let’s remind ourselves of a very important visually made point: And now: >>eric April 15, 2015 Of course, you can challenge my definition. You can say that it’s just a product of my own subjective judgment that it’s bad to harm sentient beings. But so what? I have not read Arrington’s posts, but I would bet that he is exactly going after the subjective vs. objective distinction. There’s been a recent spate of philosophers and/or reasonably prominent atheists trying to propose an objective morality (without the need for a god). I would bet he is going after these ideas. It may be Read More ›

I think BA77’s reply deserves to be headlined, as a part of the issue on self-falsification of evolutionary materialism. First, a picture: Now, the clip: >>as to Lombrozo’s comment here: “in the last 20 years or so, research in psychology and the cognitive science of religion has increasingly focused on another factor that contributes to evolutionary disbelief: the very cognitive mechanisms underlying human cognition.” There is a mechanism underlying my cognitive abilities? Really??? Something smells rotten in Denmark! Let’s analyze this a bit more closely with our ‘mechanism’ of human cognition shall we?: Cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and “computation”, problem solving and Read More ›

As I ponder the ongoing debates over and consequences of a priori evolutionary materialism (especially when dressed up in the lab coat) I am more and more led to think that the issue of responsible freedom tied to rationality and to our inescapably being under moral government is utterly pivotal. An excellent place to begin is with Martin Cothran in ENV back in 2012, as he reflects on Sam Harris’ challenges in addressing responsible freedom: >>The first thing we must get clear about the book is something that Harris himself, given his thesis, must certainly agree with: he had no choice in writing it. But that has little to do with the neurological state of his brain. He operates under Read More ›

As was noted yesterday, psycho-social cascades can often create a locked-in, socially mutually reinforcing perception in a society at large or in a polarised sub culture, that can continue indefinitely. Regardless of true facts and duties of care to fairness. This is why the wedge document canard is particularly pernicious in and around discussions of intelligent design and the design inference. Especially, when it is joined to the further canards that ID is creationism in a cheap tuxedo, and that “intelligent design creationism” represents a right wing, antidemocratic, anti-science, anti-progress, totalitarian theocratic conspiracy. This toxic caricature often goes so far as to suggest that design theory was created as a way to evade the force of US Supreme Court rulings Read More ›

It is worth pausing to pull up more from the rich motherlode of the Kuran-Sunstein Stanford law review article on opinion and reputation cascades, to help us understand what has been going on: >> the probability assessments we make as individuals are frequently based on the ease with which we can think of relevant examples.‘ Our principal claim here is that this heuristic interacts with identifiable social mechanisms to generate availability cascades—social cascades, or simply cascades, through which expressed perceptions trigger chains of individual responses that make these perceptions appear increasingly plausible through their rising availability in public discourse. Availability cascades may be accompanied by counter-mechanisms that keep perceptions consistent with the relevant facts. Under certain circumstances, however, they generate Read More ›

Today, I must postpone my intended next FTR, but I believe we will find very useful,  the Olin Foundation paper as captioned, with abstract: >>Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation Timur Kuran* and Cass R. Sunstein** An  availability  cascade  is  a self-reinforcing process  of  collective  belief formation  by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception  increasing plausibility  through its rising availability in public discourse.  The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational  motives:  Individuals endorse  the perception partly  by  learning from  the apparent  beliefs of  others  and partly  by  distorting their public  re- sponses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance.  Availability entrepre- neurs–activists  who manipulate the content of public  discourse-strive  to trig- ger  Read More ›

It is appropriate to pause a moment to reply to RTH at TSZ: >>your FYI / FTR posts are a bad idea. Here’s why: By not allowing criticism to be directly attached to them you are not proceeding in the most intellectually honest way. You keep relinking to them so criticisms have to be redrafted after every ‘reboot’ You post on a blog that censors, edits and even DISSAPEARS whole commenters. No rationale or many times even acknowledgement is given by the moderators. The above are hallmarks of dogma, not honest inquiry. If your ideas are good, they’ll hold up under scrutiny. Exposing them to pointed criticism may help you refine them.>> The central problem with this is that it Read More ›

In a current UD News thread, we see how Megan Fox at PJ Media reports: >>If you want to know why people dislike atheists, it’s because they’re thoroughly dislikeable. And if you should find yourself on the wrong side of atheists, like I did by simply posting a video [–> perhaps, this] of myself walking through the Field Museum in Chicago asking questions about evolution — a topic many still view as controversial — be prepared to have to go to the police and file reports of harassment and cyberstalking. You are not allowed to question the gods of the atheists, namely Darwin and the scientists who bow at the altar of Darwin. If you do, you’ll face nothing but insults, Read More ›

The captioned comment comes by way of an email, from YM: >>nobody has solved the OOL challenge from an ID perspective either. And they never will until ID proposes the nature of the Designer (AKA God) and the mechanisms used (AKA “poof). >> (In addition, I have received a slander-laced remark from one of the denizens of the circle of hostile sites that confirms on the ground stalking and includes implicit threats. Duly shared with appropriate authorities. This sort of uncivil reaction strongly suggests that this series is having an impact.) The response as headlined indicates that there is now an attempt to shift the burden of warrant to ID regarding OOL. This, we will now address, first pausing to Read More ›

Not so. With all due respect, EL’s error here is a case of failure to think through the inductive logic of abductive inference to best explanation on a tested, reliable sign. (And indeed the statistics of Type I/II error extend that to cases of known percentage reliability, especially when multiple aspects or signs are involved that each have reasonable reliability: the odds of several reasonably independent tests, n, all being wrong in the same way [1 – p] fall away rather quickly. For simplicity, say odds of being right, p, are the same; the probability of n tests all being wrong the same way would be like (1 – p)^n. This is BTW the basis for correcting Hume’s error on Read More ›

One of the key diversions made by objectors to a design inference on empirically tested, reliable markers of design as causal factor, is to try to switch topics and debate about the designer. Often, this then bleeds over into assertions or suggestions on “god of the gaps” fallacies and even accusations of ID being “Creationism in a cheap tuxedo” artificially constructed to try to evade a US Supreme Court ruling of 1987 on banning the teaching of Creationism in schools. Okay, first, the series so far: Let’s discuss: >> Elizabeth Liddle: I do not think the ID case holds up. I think it is undermined by [want of . . . ???] any evidence for the putative designer . . Read More ›

One of the persistent dismissive assertions we see from objectors to design thought is the notion that there is “no evidence” for a designer. As we have already seen, that is questionable, immediately a reflection of selective hyperskepticism, but I believe something deeper lurks. For, the very intensity of this dismissive talking point is a clue: on evolutionary materialism, it is problematic for genuine design — based on freedom to reason, creative insight and genuine purposefulness — to exist. So, it is no wonder that those in the iron grip of this ideology will have problems acknowledging evidence of design, however strong. For, if matter, energy, space, time and blind chance and/or mechanically necessary combinations of such are all that Read More ›

Sometimes, one of the most telling issues in a debate is the point the other side utterly refuses to take up. The one it tries to pretend is just not there. Even, as it hastens off to a red herring dragged away to strawman caricatures laced with loaded accusations or insinuations and set alight to cloud, poison, confuse and utterly polarise the atmosphere; frustrating the process of seeking truth through reasoned civil discussion. That is why I think it is a strong indication that we are on to something serious when my clipping and citing Paley’s watch example in full form — not the common strawman tactic caricature —  led to an insistent attempt to deflect discussion into accusations of Read More ›