Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

An excellent new paper by Robin Collins on fine-tuning

I’m delighted to announce that Dr. Robin Collins has written a thought-provoking paper titled, The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability, which develops a new fine-tuning argument for the existence of God, to the effect that some of the laws, initial conditions, and the fundamental parameters of physics were set in order to make the existence of an Intelligent Designer of the cosmos more easily discoverable by the embodied conscious agents (such as human beings) living in the cosmos. I should point out that Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards first drew attention to a striking correlation between habitability and measurability in their book, The Privileged Planet, back in 2004. As Richards put it in a conversation with lawyer and apologist Lee Strobel: “What’s Read More ›

Haldane’s dilemma – what does science really say?

Recently, while reading a post by Professor Larry Moran over at his Sandwalk blog, I stumbled across a lively discussion of Haldane’s dilemma in the comments section. Not being a geneticist, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the dilemma, until now. For those who are interested in following up the matter, I’m going to post a few links to relevant articles arguing that Haldane’s dilemma remains unsolved (with asterisks placed in front of what I think are the best ones), plus some of the best responses to the dilemma that I’ve seen by evolutionists, before throwing the discussion open to readers. Articles arguing that Haldane’s dilemma is a real problem for evolution A Dilemma for Haldane by PaV at Read More ›

The “D” of ID is science — lessons from our dealings with Nick Matzke

I have debated Darwinists for many years, and I don’t debate them in order to persuade them, but rather to humiliate their claims as best I can, and this is done by arguing from the most unassailable positions possible. A few months ago, in a discussion on The Fundamental Law of Intelligent Design, I pleaded with Barry to pose a question to Nick Matzke, and this was the result: A Statistics Question for Nick Matzke. We didn’t ask Nick, “are 500 coins heads designed” or “are 500 coins heads intelligently designed” or “are 500 coins heads intelligently designed, and therefore isn’t ID science” we asked: If you came across a table on which was set 500 coins (no tossing involved) Read More ›

Somewhere a Village is Missing its Atheist

Victor Stenger has his How to Debate a Christian Apologist in the Huffington Post. An atheist PhD physicist is reduced to using arguments many of which go beyond fallacious and border on the risible. I find the article very encouraging. If that’s all they’ve got, they ain’t got much.

Is origin of the universe an “arcane matter”?

Atheist philosopher asks, it’s one thing to argue that the universe must be the product of some kind of intelligent agent; it’s quite something else to argue that this designer was all-knowing and omnipotent. Why is that a better hypothesis than that the designer was pretty smart but made a few mistakes? Read More ›

Science news release admits evidence for speciation “implicit in Charles Darwin’s work” is scarce

In short, it is unclear, even in this fairly straightforward case, that Darwinian speciation has actually occurred. Circumstances have been spotted under which it might be occurring. Of course, some perturbation in the landscape might blow it all away. Read More ›

Co-Founder of Greenpeace Debunks Global Warming Hysteria

Statement of Patrick Moore, Ph.D. Before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight February 25, 2014 “Natural Resource Adaptation: Protecting ecosystems and economies” Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Inhofe, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing. In 1971, as a PhD student in ecology I joined an activist group in a church basement in Vancouver Canada and sailed on a small boat across the Pacific to protest US Hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska. We became Greenpeace. After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific Read More ›