worldview

I am thinking it is time we began a collection of Darwinist fever swamp fallacies found in the wild. (Make sure to get your Malaria shot before going there . . . ) After the now standard “your’e a quote miner” false accusation and the “it’s a Gish galloper” smear of a man not present to defend himself and associated false accusation of wholesale lying, we have been seeing a few choice ones recently. Let’s begin a collection: The Darwinist 1984-style Orwellian doubletalk definition slip-slide trojan horse. I think that about captures it: it’s not what it seems like, and it’s what’s inside the wrapper that counts. often used with false accusations like you’re quote mining or you’re on a Read More ›

On Christmas Day, WJM put the following hypothetical conversation in a comment. Since he has not headlined it himself, as promised yesterday, I now do so: Typical debate with an anti-ID advocate: ID advocate: There are certain things that exist that are best explained by intelligent design. Anti-ID advocate: Whoa! Hold up there, fella. “Explained”, in science, means “caused by”. Intelligent design doesn’t by itself “cause” anything. ID advocate: What I meant is that teleology is required to generate certain things, like a functioning battleship. It can’t come about by chance. Anti-ID advocate: What do you mean “by chance”? “By” means to cause. Are you claiming that chance causes things to happen? ID advocate: Of course not. Chance, design and Read More ›

In the OK thread, in comment 50, ID objector Mark Frank has finally laid out the root of ever so many of the objections to the design inference filter. Unsurprisingly, it is a worldview based controlling a priori of materialism: [re EA] #38 [MF, in 50:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about. It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation. But, just what what Read More ›

Yesterday, UD News  headlined a case of radical secularist censorship in Los Angeles being cheered on by Jerry Coyne et al. The case concerns the removal of the following sign (shown under fair use) that was formerly present at a Museum of Natural History in that city: Notice, what Coyne says in exultation over the removal of the sign: If I get any other information I’ll convey it, but for now I’m pleased that God is out of the Museum and no longer gets credit for “creatures.”  It’s a victory for secularism, for sure. Something is blatantly, deeply wrong. Wrong with the push to censor. Wrong with the willingness of the museum’s leadership to be intimidated by Darwinist thuggery — Read More ›

Yesterday, News put up a post on the mysterious origins of the moon, invoking a classic song on being caught between the Moon and New York City. (Niwrad added a post here on the multiverse that is also worth seeing. Kindly bear in mind this earlier ID Foundations post on fine tuning.) Mahuna aptly comments: “As the number of steps increases, the likelihood of a particular sequence decreases.” OK, so Earth is not merely “very improbable”. It’s very VERY very improbable. I don’t see this as a problem for Earth, which I think we can prove actually exists. I do see it causing a problem for all those “Earth 2″ exo-planets, of which we can subtract 99% (or something) based Read More ›

It seems that one of the pivotal issues in reasoned thinking about design-related questions — and in general —  is the question of self-evident first, certain truths that can serve as a plumb-line for testing other truth claims, and indeed for rationality. (Where, the laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle are foremost among such first principles. And where also, some ID objectors profess to be “frightened” that some of us dare to hold that there are moral truths that are self evident.) Where also of course, self-evident does not merely mean perceived as obvious to oneself, which could indeed be a manifestation of a delusion. Nay, a self evident truth [SET] is best summarised as one known to be Read More ›

For some little while now, RDF/AIGuy has been advocating a strong AI claim here at UD.  In an exchange in the ongoing is ID fatally flawed thread, he has said: 222: Computers are of course not conscious. Computers of course can be creative, and computers are of course intelligent agents. Now before you blow a gasket, please try and understand that we are not arguing here about what computers can or cannot do, or do or do not experience. We agree about all of that. The reason we disagree is simply because we are using different definitions for the terms “creative” and “intelligent agents” . . . This seems a little over the top, and I commented; but before we Read More ›

A few days ago, UD News posted a comment on a scare mongering story in a British popular science magazine, on how “Creationists” in Texas were allegedly tainting textbooks through the buying power of that state. By comments 3 and 4 we read: 3 wd400October 7, 2013 at 2:05 pm First, how do they know? I dunno, why don’t we ask… News at uncommon descent 4 Alan FoxOctober 7, 2013 at 2:09 pm *Applauds* Hilarious, wd400! This seems to be a part of a recent wave of comments that target the UD News desk. It pivots on the ASSUMPTION that “Creationists” are tainting textbooks in Texas, and therefore the purchasing power of Texas spreads that taint far and wide. But Read More ›

Sometimes, it is necessary to shine a spotlight on behaviour that is beyond the pale of reasonable civil discourse. Especially if, after repeated attempts to call for correction, we see instead the blog owner — here, EL of TSZ — and others insistently pretending that such falls within the circle of reasonable freedom of expression. Here, then, are relevant excerpts from davehooke in his post: Sure, ID proponents are passionate about the tenets of their faith . . . As Kierkegaard noted, there is always an unbridgeable emptiness for the theist, the “leap of faith.” So no matter how much reason one applies to religion, religious belief is at heart irrational. Those who attempt to trowel reason over the gap Read More ›

Today marks a full year since I issued an open challenge to Darwinists to ground their theory and its OOL extension and root, in light of actually observed capabilities of blind watchmaker mechanisms of chance and necessity through an essay I would host here at UD. The pivot of the challenge is the modern version of the very first Icon of Evolution, Darwin’s Tree of Life (which in an incomplete form is the ONLY image in original editions of Origin of Species), here typified by a case from the Smithsonian:   I first did so in an exchange thread, specifically responding to Jerad, then headlined it some days later. In lieu of prompt serious replies, I set up Wikipedia articles Read More ›

I looked at the date and thought, quite a lesson from history, and a follow up from those of 9/11. Summer, 1940, when  The Few in their Hurricanes (mostly!) and Spitfires stood between civilisation, however flawed, and a nightmare of aggressive barbarism, with the peak being Sunday, Sept 15, 1940. (That day and date thing caught my eye.) Vid: [youtube Td8bF6Xgb_Y] (And while the narrator has a point on broader themes, if Fighter Command had been knocked out, the Germans would have been able to dominate the battle from the air, and would have won. More thoughts here.) A lesson for us as we stand in the gap today, against fairly long odds. And, coming off a shower, let me Read More ›

Trinidadian Genelle Guzman-McMillan, the last WTC 9/11 survivor to be pulled from the rubble of the collapsed towers, has a story of miraculous survival, complete with her angel, Paul, who held her hand as she awaited rescue. In summary: [Genelle] was a Port Authority worker, working on the 64th floor of one of the WTC towers, on September 11, 2001 when she felt the building shake and heard the noise of the first impact. A look out the window showed papers floating in the sky, but it was not clear what had happened until she saw news reports on a TV in a conference room. Strange as it seems today, she and her co-workers were instructed to stay in the Read More ›

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

Anyone who has done any serious mathematics needs no introduction to the name Leonhard Euler, one of the all time greats of Mathematics. For those who do, let me simply clip the opening words of the Wiki biographical article: a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy. Euler spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, Prussia. He is considered to be the pre-eminent mathematician of the Read More ›

BA 77 has found another vid on the Slaughter of the Dissidents that reminds us of what the sort of evo mat promotion stunts we see going on in and around UD can all too often end up as: [youtube T_nh0zDMwJA] A couple of stills can help us understand what Darwinist agit-prop enabling behaviour by spreading false accusations and willful misrepresentations, demanding a ‘right’ to defame as if that is a part of free speech and the like can all too easily end up as; through, creating a toxic and deeply polarised, destructive climate in our civilisation and especially in key institutions: Something to ponder, for those who imagine there is a ‘right’ to directly participate in or enable falsely Read More ›