In recent exchanges, design objector RH7, has made objections to the concept of cause, regarding it as an outmoded, deterministic and classical (in the bad sense) view.

Since this is now clearly yet another line of objection to design inference on detection of credible causal factors, we need to add a response to this to the cluster of ID Foundations posts here at UD.

A useful way to do so is to highlight an ongoing exchange, here on, in the Universe Portal thread:

JDFL: 20th century physics has called into question determinism. But determinism and causality are not necessarily the same thing. we may not be able to determine or predict an qm outcome but we can identify the set of causal factors. [T]he unity of the set of causal factors is the cause.

KF: JDFL: You are right, once we see the significance of necessary causal factors, we decouple cause from determinism.

RH7: Cites JDFL & responds:

This sets up my own response: Read More ›

This guy will cheer you up, if nothing lese: Government scientist: Working as a government scientist is a great idea, because the government is really popular right now. Read any newspaper and you’ll see stories about how much people love and trust the government. And Adjunct teaching: Ah, the free life of an adjunct instructor! Adjuncting offers freedom from the tenure struggle, freedom from the stifling responsibilities of a full-time professor, and freedom from the burden of income. As an adjunct, you’ll bounce among the local colleges, teaching classes on six different campuses a day, but you’ll know that you no longer have to worry about pointless things like research — all that matters is whether you can convince a classroom Read More ›

In “The First Americans: Mounting Evidence Prompts Researchers to Reconsider the Peopling of the New World” (Scientific American, October 18, 2011), Heather Pringle looks at the surprising information regarding the first North Americans: “Humans colonized the New World earlier than previously thought—a revelation that is forcing scientists to rethink long-standing ideas about these trailblazers” Archaeologists long thought the first Americans were the Clovis people, who were said to have reached the New World some 13,000 years ago from northern Asia. But fresh archaeological finds prove that humans reached the Americas thousands of years before that. (Paywall) Oh yeah, what that Indian guy said: He said, “We never asked modern science to make a determination of our origins.” Guy’s dead now, Read More ›

Some geology meeting. Like anyone should care. Coyne. Get. Over. Yourself. He’s also mad at Templeton for funding BioLogos, but Templeton funds way crazier crackpots.

Why are ID theorists skeptical of “man-caused carbon dioxide emissions leading to the destruction of the planet” theory? The reason is that we follow the evidence, and have a nose that smells out junk science in the name of an ideological (indeed, a religious) agenda. At a recent men’s church retreat I chatted with our pastor about how it seemed obvious to me that the global-warming thing exhibited all the attributes of a religion. Mother earth is a goddess. We have sinned against her with technology. If we do not repent and return to primitive living she will call down her wrath and fry us all with vengeance. Little did I know that Michael Barone, in his essay Collapse of Read More ›

Here.

Here. That’s how Discover is covering the xenophyophores, six miles down in the Marianas trench.

Here. With summary and notes. Tax TV is for losers.