In my previous post, I wrote about the philosopher and Christian apologist, Professor William Lane Craig, who has been widely criticized for some remarks he made on animal suffering in a debate with the atheist philosopher Dr. Stephen Law, in October 2011. Although Craig made several scientific errors, his key claim that animals do not suffer in the same way that we do is a scientifically defensible one. Surprisingly, it turns out that science is not currently able to demonstrate with even a high degree of probability that animals suffer at all, and I cited various experts in the field of animal consciousness who admitted as much. Consequently any atheist claiming to know that animals suffer will have to appeal Read More ›

Today is academic freedom day (February 12th). Share this graphic on your facebook page or blog and help raise awareness of academic freedom issues in the US and elsewhere.

Some of the materialists’ comments on both my and UprightBiped’s posts on the relationship between semiotics and the DNA code seem to suggest that this is not even a fruitful field for inquiry.  Interesting.  I commend to you Wikipedia’s article on “biosemiotics” (as KF likes to say, “testifying against known ideological interest”): To define biosemiotics as “biology interpreted as sign systems study” is to emphasize not only the close relation between biology as we know it (as a scientific field of inquiry) and semiotics (the study of signs), but primarily the profound change of perspective implied when life is considered not just from the perspectives of molecules and chemistry, but as signs conveyed and interpreted by other living signs in Read More ›

One of Pavlov’s dogs. The next time you see yet another talking head in the MSM spewing about climate change, think of this: “Talk about something else that’s falling from the sky and that is an asteroid. What’s coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming, or is this just some meteoric occasion?” CNN’s Deborah Feyerick asked Bill “The Science Guy” Nye, head of the Planetary Society, in a Saturday segment. The MSM has been so thoroughly conditioned to believe that every bad thing is linked to climate change, that the response has become positively Pavlovian.  Pathetic.

The Online Dictionary’s Thesaurus tells us: contradiction in terms – (logic) a statement that is necessarily false; “the statement `he is brave and he is not brave’ is a contradiction” As a capital, classic example, say the following words: “Square Circle” Now, riddle me this, riddle me that, guess me this riddle and perhaps not: DRAW ME ONE. I confidently assert [HT: Peter Cech], this cannot be done: You will observe that the square and the circle show how a circle and a square can by degrees be transformed or mapped into each other, but that the one and the same object in the same place and time cannot have the essential properties of squareness and circularity. In short, we Read More ›

Here’s a recent lecture given by Bill Dembski at a recent conference back in June of 2012. Enjoy!

Are you currently enrolled as a student in the natural or social sciences and wanting to take your ID involvement to the next level? Consider applying to participate in one of two intensive summer seminars hosted by the Discovery Institute, running from 12-20 July and hosted at Seattle Pacific University. As an alumni of the summer seminar program, I can attest that the seminar is one event that you do not want to miss out on. Featuring leaders in the field of ID, the seminar will give you a unique opportunity to interact with many of the major figures in the ID community, including William Dembski, Michael Behe, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, Richard Sternberg, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, and many Read More ›

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia In his “UB Sets It Out Step-By-Step” UprightBiped argued that the transfer of recorded information in the genome is like any other form of recorded information – i.e., it is an arbitrary relationship instantiated in matter. After several months and over 1,400 combox comments, UB’s argument has withstood a barrage of attacks from our materialist friends.  This post is a response to one such attack. UB’s opponents argue they cannot understand what he means by “arbitrary” in his argument.  Of course, UB has good responses to this objection, and I invite you to read them in the combox.  But as I was thinking about the matter this morning, it occurred to me that there is a Read More ›

Julian Savulescu’s recent comments suggesting that parents have a “moral obligation to select ethically better children” were more than just another move in the on-going eugenics revival. The Oxford professor’s misrepresentation of the science, and castigation of opponents, was another entry in the growing list of uses of evolution’s Warfare Thesis which is at the heart of today’s culture wars.  Read more

I’d like to invite my readers to take a look at the following three quotes on animal suffering: 1. “[A]nimals like horses, dogs, and cats … do not experience … the awareness that one is oneself in pain… Even though your dog or your cat may be in pain, it really isn’t aware of being in pain, and therefore it doesn’t suffer as you would when you are in pain.” (Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in a debate held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, 17 October 2011, in Westminster Central Hall, London, U.K., on the topic, “Does God Exist?”) 2. “[N]onhuman animals may indeed feel pain but cannot suffer in the way that we can.” (New Atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett, Read More ›

The Foundation for Thought and Ethics have just released a kindle-format version of an interview that our own Bill Dembski did for “The Best Schools” website. Download it here. Be sure to also  check out Bill Dembski’s response to Thomas Nagel’s critics over at Evolution News & Views.  

Let’s consider that atheistic, Darwinstic materialism is true. Let’s say that what we believe and think are evolution-generated phenomena, the result of the physics of biology as it interacts with the environment.  For instance, if I believe in God and think demons are real and that putting my socks on before I put my pants on brings me good luck, I think those things for no reason other than that I have been compelled by the cumulative interactive physics of billions of years of physical processes to believe such things and think such thoughts. If this is so, am I responsible for my beliefs and thoughts in any significant manner other than, say, I am responsible for what color my Read More ›

Salmon swim thousands of miles out into the open ocean only later to return to the precise fresh water stream where they were born and a new study suggests that this navigational miracle, in part, is due to geomagnetic imprinting. That is, the salmon sense, remember, and later use a map of the Earth’s magnetic field in and around their home river inlet.  Read more

A review at TNA: Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn, then a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, released a thin volume entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn challenged the traditional view of science as an accumulation of objective facts toward an ever more truthful understanding of nature. Instead, he argued, what scientists discover depends to a large extent on the sorts of questions they ask, which in turn depend in part on scientists’ philosophical commitments. Sometimes, the dominant scientific way of looking at the world becomes obviously riddled with problems; this can provoke radical and irreversible scientific revolutions that Kuhn dubbed “paradigm shifts” — introducing a term that has been much used and abused. Paradigm shifts interrupt the Read More ›