In this post I want to consider another aspect of information.  Specifically, I want to consider the concept of “Shannon information.” First of all, I admit to having ruffled a few feathers when I mentioned in passing in a prior post that “Shannon information is not really information.”  As I have also written before in comments on UD, I don’t begrudge anyone referring to the Shannon metric as “information.”  That terminology has penetrated the English language and has become regularly-used in information theory.  So, no, I am not going to police everyone who puts the words “Shannon” and “information” next to each other. However, no small amount of misunderstanding has resulted from the unfortunate term “Shannon information.”  In particular, as Read More ›

Last Friday RealClearReligion.org, featured an article titled, The Pope Believes in Evolution (Aleteia, 13 June 2014) by M. Anthony Mills, a Ph.D. candidate in the history and philosophy of science at Notre Dame University. Mills’ article was written in response to an earlier article by George Dvorsky (io9.com, March 16, 2013), titled, Does the new Pope believe in evolution? In his article, Dvorsky argued that Catholicism and Darwinism don’t mix: you cannot accept both. Darwinian evolution, according to Dvorsky, is “a God killer,” “a stand alone system,” a “fully autonomous process that does not require any guiding ‘rationality’ ([Pope] Benedict’s term) to function.” In his reply to Dvorsky, Anthony Mills makes several concessions that are quite remarkable, for a Catholic Read More ›

One of the advantages of having an academic background in philosophy is that you learn how to spot bad arguments. The origin of life is a subject where fallacious arguments proliferate. In this post, I’ve put together a list of a dozen common fallacies that bedevil scientific speculations regarding the origin of life. The next time you come across a paper on the origin of life in a science journal, you might like to check how many fallacies the author of the paper commits. For the sake of convenience, I’ve listed the fallacies here: 1. The fallacy of begging the question. 2. The fallacy of conflating the issues. 3. The fallacy of confusing the unknown with the undemonstrated. 4. The Read More ›

The UK Independent is noting how Stephen Hawking says of the Film on AI, Transcendence — plot summary here at wiki, that ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence – but are we taking AI seriously enough?’ First off, I think “implications” is probably over the top — we seem to be more looking at materialist yearnings for eternity, resurrection and paradise. (As in, on the presumption that intelligence boils down to evolutionarily written software running on wetware neural networks, then we can upload ourselves to a machine of sufficient sophistication, and reconstitute our bodies as we will, then amplify intelligence and create paradise. Anyone who understands why power tends to corrupt will understand why even were that possible, Read More ›

A little over a year ago, I wrote a reply to a post by skeptic John Loftus, arguing that in a godless universe, senseless evils are precisely what we would expect to happen. Shortly afterwards, Jeffery Jay Lowder, President Emeritus (and co-founder) of Internet Infidels, Inc., posted a reply to my post, which I’d like to respond to today. In my post, I accused John Loftus of making seven philosophical errors. Jeffery Jay Lowder has responded to each of my seven points. I’d now like to reply to Lowder’s arguments. Mistake #1: Loftus’ failure to take account of prior probabilities In his reply, Jeffery Jay Lowder conceded that John Loftus had failed to take account of prior probabilities in his Read More ›

My previous post, An exchange with an ID skeptic seems to have kicked off a firestorm of criticism. So many readers of this post have rebuked me with the question, “Why didn’t you argue [XYZ], when you were debating Dr. McGrath?” that I feel obliged to respond. My goals, in engaging with Dr. McGrath First of all, my dialogue with Dr. McGrath was an exchange of views, as I clearly stated in my opening paragraph. It was not a debate, and it was never intended to be such. Consequently, questions about who won are entirely beside the point. I wasn’t aiming for a “knock-out blow.” Dr. McGrath did a very good job of defending his viewpoint; and for that, I Read More ›

Recently I posted a reply on Uncommon Descent, to a post by Dr. James F. McGrath, an Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University, criticizing Intelligent Design. Dr. McGrath and I then continued to exchange views over on his post. I hope he will not mind if I reprint our online correspondence on this post at Uncommon Descent, where readers can view it at their leisure. I would also like to personally thank Dr. McGrath for his courtesy, professionalism and kindness, in taking so much of his time to respond to my queries. First, a little bit of background information. In his original post, Dr. McGrath had posed the following dilemma to Intelligent Design proponents: Either God can create a Read More ›

Over at The Skeptical Zone, Dr. Elizabeth Liddle has written an interesting essay, titled, Proof: Why naturalist science can be no threat to faith in God, in which she argues that even if scientists were to discover that the appearance of complex life was inevitable, with or without an interventionist God, that discovery should not dent people’s religious faith in the slightest degree: “finding out that life is perfectly possible in the absence of an interventionist God tells absolutely nothing at all about whether God exists.” Dr. Liddle’s essay is cleverly argued and thought-provoking; however, I believe it is marred by several serious flaws. Framing the question properly In the opening paragraph of her essay, Dr. Liddle frames the question Read More ›

A slide presentation by Professor Robert Greg Cavin and Dr. Carlos A. Colombetti on the subject of miracles, which was used by Professor Cavin in a debate with Christian apologist Mike Licona on the Resurrection earlier this year, raises points of vital importance for Intelligent Design proponents. As readers will be well aware, Intelligent Design theory says nothing about the identity or modus operandi of the Designer of life and/or the cosmos. Nevertheless, Cavin and Colombetti’s presentation is philosophically interesting, chiefly because the authors put forward three arguments to support their claim that Divine intervention in the history of the cosmos is astronomically unlikely: (i) a religious argument that supernatural intervention is antecedently unlikely, which appeals to the Via Negativa Read More ›

Editors:  This was originally posted under a different title in May 2012.  We were inspired to repost it by Dr. Sewell’s post here.  Bishop Ussher famously calculated that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC.  I do not hold this or any other young earth creationist (YEC) position.  The evidence that the universe is several billion years old seems fairly compelling to me.  In particular, certain celestial objects (stars, galaxies, supernovas, etc.) are billions of light years away.  From this fact I deduce that the light we see from these objects has been traveling billions of years to get to us, which leads to the conclusion that the objects emitted the light billions of years ago, which in turn Read More ›

In a recent post over at Panda’s Thumb, entitled, Does CSI enable us to detect Design? A reply to William Dembski (7 April 2013), Professor Joe Felsenstein, an internationally acclaimed population geneticist who is one of the more thoughtful critics of Intelligent Design, takes issue with the claim made by Professor William Dembski and Dr. Bob Marks II that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, far from solving the problem of where the complex information found in the cells of living organisms originally came from, merely pushes it further back. The thrust of Dembski and Marks’ argument is that even if we grant (for argument’s sake) that Darwinian evolution is fully capable of generating the life-forms we find on Read More ›

Reading through a recent article by KeithS over at The Skeptical Zone, I was reminded of the following lyrics from the musical Annie Get Your Gun: Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything Better than you. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can, Yes, I can! The article, which is entitled, Things That IDers Don’t Understand, Part 1 — Intelligent Design is not compatible with the evidence for common descent, argues that evolution guided by an Intelligent Designer fares much worse – in fact, trillions of times worse – than unguided Darwinian evolution as an explanation of how living things arose in all their Read More ›

In the ongoing thread on Dr Tour’s declaration of concern regarding macroevolution, Mr Matzke (late of NCSE) has popped up, declaring at 118 (in reply to Groovamos at 109): Here’s the issue. Picture, in your head, all 5000 mammal species currently living on the planet. Now think of how many individuals are in each species — some are almost extinct, some have populations of billions. Now think about how each of these individuals lives and reproduces and dies over the years. Now add in how all of these individuals compete with each other, each each other, etc. Continue this process for millions of years, with species splitting and going extinct, sometimes randomly, sometimes due to climate change, sometimes due to Read More ›

In a recent post, entitled, Was Paley a mechanist?, I argued that Paley’s argument from design in no way presupposes a mechanistic philosophy of life, and that Paley’s philosophy of Nature was much closer to that of Aristotle than is commonly supposed. In today’s post, which is a follow-up of my latest essay, Building a bridge between Scholastic philosophy and Intelligent Design, I shall attempt to lay to rest a long-standing myth: the myth that the Intelligent Design movement is tied to a mechanistic view of life. I propose to lay the evidence before my readers, and let them draw their own conclusions. 1. What is a mechanist, and why does Professor Feser think that Professor Dembski is one? Left: Read More ›

Memo to Eugenie Scott and the National Center for Science Education: the claim that scientists must explain the natural world in terms of natural processes alone, eschewing all supernatural explanations, is now being openly denied by three leading scientists who are also outspoken atheists. I’m referring to physicist Sean Carroll, and biologists Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers, who hold that there are circumstances under which scientists can legitimately infer the existence of supernatural causes. That’s a pretty formidable trio. The NCSE is perfectly free to disown these scientists if it wishes, but I think it would be severely undermining its own credibility if it did so. Let me state at the outset that Intelligent Design, while open to the Read More ›