Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Barry Concedes a Point to TSZ, Well, Sorta

My thanks go to KF for pointing out the dustup over at TSZ over my last post.  I found this little gem at TSZ particularly amusing.  Allan Miller quotes me and responds: Barry:  “Materialists are obliged to believe …” Miller:   … absolutely nothing. There is no obligation.   Well Allan, I suppose it depends on what one means by “obliged.”    My dictionary defines it in two ways:  “to require or constrain as by law or command”  or  “to require or constrain as by conscience”  Perhaps our difference lies in the different ways we have used the word.  You are certainly correct that no one is going to require or constrain materialists by law or command to accept the conclusions that are Read More ›

TSZ explodes in anger and mischaracterisations over BA’s recent post at UD: “If My Eyes Are a Window, Is There Anyone Looking Out?”

(In case you think this is about a strawman, cf. here) A few days ago UD President, BA, posted on the topic, “If My Eyes Are a Window, Is There Anyone Looking Out?” Reaction at objecting blog TSZ has been explosive. For just one instance — a slice of the cake reveals its ingredients, we can see ME asserting in a newly set up sandbox: Your clear implication, William, is that no one here knows anything about “centuries of philosophical debate.” We are not ignoramuses here. What you and Arrington attribute to “materialists” is simply false; you have no clue what “materialism” is. Here again you stumble because of your choice to remain profoundly ignorant of science while attempting to Read More ›

Cicadas remain a mystery of evolution

As those who live among them will know, the 17-year insect, the cicada, emerges en masse this year after five larval stages, mates and dies. They are an ongoing puzzle: In 1665, the first volume of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society included a report from New England concerning “swarms of strange insects, and the mischiefs done by them”. Charles Darwin also puzzled over them. Even now, entomologists are trying to understand how the insects’ peculiar life cycles evolved, how they count the years underground and how they synchronize their schedules. “They are one of the big ecological mysteries out there,” says Walt Koenig, a behavioural ecologist at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. Interesting: … Read More ›

NCSE affirms evolutionism is no longer the core of science education

I think the NCSE got tired of defending Darwinism. I guess the Discovery Institute promoting ID and the creationists promoting creationism was bad enough, but when mainstream scientists began to join the anti-Darwin fray, it was too much. So what did the NCSE do? They found something to replace Darwinism as the central core of science education. See for yourself what this new core of science education is here. 🙂 NOTES This post was filed under humor. Don’t take it too seriously, but I think there is a grain of truth to what I said. UPDATE since this is a humor post, I’ve decided to make this UD’s first official OPEN THREAD. Have at it guys, but keep it civil Read More ›

VIDEO: Guillermo Gonzalez lectures at UC Davis on the Privileged Planet thesis

WK has pointed out a vid sequence at YouTube, in which Dr Gonzalez lays out a good summary of the privileged planet thesis. Here is the start: [youtube inUlX0oWHbw] WK (what, you haven’t bookmarked and speed-dialled this blog yet? tut, tut!  . . . ) summarises on points of significance for reflection: What is the Copernican Principle? Is the Earth’s suitability for hosting life rare in the universe? Does the Earth have to be the center of the universe to be special? How similar to the Earth does a planet have to be to support life? What is the definition of life? What are the three minimal requirements for life of any kind? Requirement 1: A molecule that can store Read More ›

How ID helps scientists: providing a framework for complexity

COMPLEXITY =/=> EVOLUTION Many Darwinists equate complexity with evolution. They see the fossil record of increasing complexity with time as precisely what defines Evolution. But is increasing complexity always a good thing? The history of computers is instructive. Your iPhone and laptop computer are constructed using base-2, principally because flip-flops and early binary circuits were easy to make, even the earliest electronic memory based on circular ferrites was two-state. This base-2 necessity led to an explosion in the study of Boolean Algebra and binary logic in the 1950’s, which demonstrated that everything you could do in base-10 could be done in base-2. By the late 50’s, the Russians were falling further and futher behind the US in computer technology, and Read More ›

The fine work of Joe Felsenstein and M. Wilson Sayres

Joe Felsenstein is an evolutionist that has a unique distinction of having his work favorably cited by creationists and bible scholars (except where he disagrees). For example, religious scholars are using Joe’s work to find descendants of the line of priests from the time of the Bible’s King David. See: Y-Chromosomal Aaron. Joe is also widely credited with coining the phrase “Muller’s ratchet”, a concept articulated in a paper 40 years ago! He must have written that when he was really young, 1973 was a while back. The wiki entry on Muller’s ratchet: In evolutionary genetics, Muller’s ratchet (named after Hermann Joseph Muller, by analogy with a ratchet mechanism) is the process by which the genomes of an asexual population Read More ›