worldview

Sometimes, we see a classic comment by objectors that reveals much about what we face. Accordingly, it is appropriate to headline the remark and a response (which I will use original post powers to augment slightly): Here is AS: Rebuttals of what? The simple fact is that religious dogmas are made up. They have no existence in reality beyond human imagination. The boot is one the other foot. If you have evidence of the objective reality of some religious concept, then, bring it on. Here is my response: _______________ >> AS: I saw Timaeus commenting [–> cf. here, especially], who is always worth a read. In your exchange with him you tossed this atheistical talking point, which drips with contempt Read More ›

I keep getting pulled away from an intended post [– U/D, Feb 18 2015: cf here — ]  on FSCO/I  and that famous little round reel as an undeniably concrete case in point: I have to get around to it . . . Anyway, a couple of days ago, given some recent exchanges in and around UD, I took time to post a William Lane Craig animation on morality, which has excited quite a debate. It’s probably worth re-posting the animation: [youtube OxiAikEk2vU] Along the way, the significance of the IS-OUGHT gap and of the inherently good God, a necessary and maximally great being as the only serious candidate IS who can ground OUGHT has come up (e.g. cf here). Read More ›

Here: [youtube OxiAikEk2vU] In this video, Dr Craig argues that we have good reason to accept the objectivity of ought, and from that we see that there is a credible ground of such, God. In slightly more details, if one rejects the objectivity of the general sense of OUGHT as governing our behaviour, we are implying a general delusion. Where, as there are no firewalls in the mind . . . a general delusion undermines the general credibility of knowledge and rationality. And in practice even those who most passionately argue for moral subjectivity live by the premise that moral principles such as fairness, justice, doing good by neighbour etc are binding. That is, there is no good reason to Read More ›

An article in Salon caught my eye while looking at other things online: Saturday, Jan 3, 2015 10:00 AM -0400 God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified A young MIT professor is finishing Darwin’s task — and threatening to undo everything the wacky right holds dear Paul Rosenberg The triumphalistic tone and immediate leap to a socio-cultural and/or aggressive materialistic agenda backed up by denigratory caricatures, published in a seemingly respectable magazine, already speak inadvertent volumes. But the lead-in to the piece (leaving off some rhetorical points-scoring off the bogeymen Mr Rosenberg particularly targets and evidently views as insane) is where the other shoe, proverbially, drops: Darwin also didn’t have Read More ›

In recent exchanges  in and around UD on origins and the tree of life, Theobald’s 29 evidences claims (and by implication the sort of summary presented by Wikipedia in its articles on Abiogenesis and Evolution) have come up. [NB: to carry forward discussions, I suggest here on. I intend to do a for reference in support of discussion here in this FTR post.] That leads me to point out the case of the UD pro-darwinism essay challenge and the strange absence of and reluctance to provide a guest essay here at UD over the course of a full year, Sept/Oct 2012 – Sept/Oct 2013. The big issue seemed to be that in my challenge as explained, I required tackling the Read More ›

Islands of function in a space of configurations, of course, are used as a metaphor for special zones T, which has been visualised at UD as follows, based on the underlying Mathematics of phase spaces and configuration spaces, using among other inputs, Dembski’s remarks in his No Free Lunch: U/D: A way to visualise the search challenge on the gamut of our solar system: A good way to visualise what is happening in physical, ordinary 3-d space as we inject functionally specific complex organisation and associated information would be to take a pile of lego bricks: . . . and contrast it with the functional organisation of a lego brick castle: . . . or that of the “exploded view” Read More ›

2350 years ago, in The Laws, Bk X, Plato gave a sobering warning on the morally and socially corrosive nature of evolutionary materialism and resulting ideologised factions (and by extension, enabling fellow travellers) that the past few days here at UD, sadly, bring back to mind:  >>Ath. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as Read More ›

I was just challenged to reply to the KS “bomb” claim, and though I am busy, I will pause to note briefly, and will link this FYI-FTR to the thread of discussion where the challenge was made. I think WJM, in his post on the failure of the bomb, ably put his finger on the first main failure: Ultimately, keiths asks the question of IDists (to paraphrase) – “why did the designer pick just one form of life and utilize just one lineage, when it could have utilized any number of alternate, non-nested systems?” – yet, keiths fails to ask the same question of the natural forces argument – why just one form of life, why one lineage, why one Read More ›

One of the saddest aspects of the debates over the design inference on empirically reliable signs such as FSCO/I, is the way evolutionary materialist objectors and fellow travellers routinely insist on distorting the ID view, even after many corrections. (Kindly, note the weak argument correctives, accessible under the UD Resources Tab, which address many of these.) Indeed, the introduction to the just liked WACs is forced to remark: . . . many critics mistakenly insist that ID, in spite of its well-defined purpose, its supporting evidence, and its mathematically precise paradigms, is not really a valid scientific theory. All too often, they make this charge on the basis of the scientists’ perceived motives. We have noticed that some of these Read More ›

Perhaps the most deep-rooted Darwinist debate tactic is hyperskepticism. While I have done a briefing note on this, I like HeKS’ nice summary raised a little while back, in an Oct 9th 2014  remark that deserves to be headlined: Normal skepticism is generally equitable and a good thing. It applies a reasonably consistent demand for warrant across the board before some claim of fact or some argument is accepted. It prevents one from being credulous, but allows one to believe what is reasonable to believe once one has received a reasonable amount of supporting evidence and/or argumentation. There’s obviously some subjectivity here in terms of what one person considers to be a sufficient or reasonable amount of evidence or argumentation Read More ›

In recent days, objector ES has been twisting the concept of Wickensian functionally specific information-bearing complex organisation into post-modernist deconstructionist subjectivist pretzels, in order to obfuscate the plain inductive argument at the heart of the design inference and/or explanatory filter. For example, consider these excerpts from the merry go round thread: ES, 41: . . . If a conscious observer connects some observed object to some possible desired result which can be obtained using the object in a context, then we say that the conscious observer conceives of a function for that object . . . . In science, properties of the material just are, without purpose, because everybody knows purpose is subjective. Functionality comes in when you get engineerial, Read More ›

I just now noticed the above clip by Mr Shallit, who by making such a sophomoric blunder,  thereby disqualifies himself from being taken seriously. I suggest that he spends a bit over an hour with this 101 level video: [vimeo 17960119] U/D: GeoffR gives  useful link to a Peter Williams Lecture, also: [youtube r5Ylt1pBMm8] U/D Oct 16: This video lecture by Habermas on the minimal facts issue is even more pivotal: [youtube ay_Db4RwZ_M] (For more I suggest here on, which inter alia addresses the minimal facts held to be well grounded by an absolute majority of relevant scholars to an overwhelming one regarding Jesus of Nazareth. Also, the video course here and onwards.) We need to ask serious questions about Read More ›

I had originally intended to post this in the comment thread to my first article here as a guest author, titled, Does It Matter What We Believe About Morality? In the end, however, it turned out to be sufficiently long and detailed that it seemed to warrant a new original post. If it’s preferred that this type of thing simply stay in the comments section then please let me know for future reference. In comment #39 for that article, Popperian made some thoughtful contributions. This is a reply to that comment, with most of his original text reproduced for reference. —————————————- Popperian, you said:   Think of it this way… Before one could actually apply any set of objective moral principles, wouldn’t this necessitate a way Read More ›

A recent post by Barry Arrington started an interesting and lively discussion about morality, whether it is objective and, if so, how it might be grounded. Barry provided the job description for a clinical ethicist and then asked how a materialist could apply for such a job in good faith, given the inability of the materialist to ground his moral and ethical views in anything more solid, objective and enduring than his own subjective opinions and the opinions of his fellow materialists. In the ensuing discussion, it seemed that many attempts were made to divert attention away from the core issue that materialism can offer no ultimate grounding for objective moral values and duties. Instead, comments were made in which Read More ›

The inimitable BA77 observes: I [used] to think that if ID could only get its evidence to the right people in the right places then they would change their mind about Darwinian evolution and we would have a fundamental ‘paradigm shift’ from the ‘top down’. But after a few years of banging my head on that wall to no avail, I realized that it is not a head problem with these people so much as it is a heart problem. i.e. many influential people in academia simply don’t want Design to be true no matter what evidence you present to them. Indeed, in many educational institutions, there is a systematic effort in academia to Expel anyone who does not toe Read More ›