Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Justifying Moral Interventions via Subjectivism (and an apology to RDFish)

First, I’d like apologize to RDFish for mistakenly attributing to him an argument others had made earlier in the “Moral Viewpoints Matter” thread, which I had argued against prior to RDFish entering the thread.  He never changed his position as I later asserted. Sorry, RDFish.  I also think my mistake led me to take RDfish’s argument less seriously as it led me to believe he was flip-flopping around, especially after he moved from color perception to beauty perception as comparable to morality perception – when, from RDFish’s perspective, he was attempting to use a less problematic comparable given his perspective that I held an erroneous understanding of what color actually is (which I may or may not). I took some Read More ›

On the reasonableness and importance of the inherently good Creator-God, a necessary and maximally great being

I keep getting pulled away from an intended post [– U/D, Feb 18 2015: cf here — ]  on FSCO/I  and that famous little round reel as an undeniably concrete case in point: I have to get around to it . . . Anyway, a couple of days ago, given some recent exchanges in and around UD, I took time to post a William Lane Craig animation on morality, which has excited quite a debate. It’s probably worth re-posting the animation: [youtube OxiAikEk2vU] Along the way, the significance of the IS-OUGHT gap and of the inherently good God, a necessary and maximally great being as the only serious candidate IS who can ground OUGHT has come up (e.g. cf here). Read More ›

H. L. Mencken: The nail in the coffin

I’ve written about H. L. Mencken’s mendacity at the Scopes trial in two previous posts (here and here). In today’s post, I’m going to drop one more bombshell, which will, I hope, drive the final nail in the coffin of Mencken’s credibility as an accurate reporter on the trial. My bombshell is actually a letter written by a reporter named Nunnally Johnson, who covered the Scopes trial for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and later became a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Thirty years after the trial, he passed on his recollections in a letter to theater publicist Arthur Cantor, dated March 8, 1955 (courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection): Dear Mr. Cantor, I covered a lot of different stories, from murders Read More ›

Simple Pocket Calculator Model Outperforms Complex Climate Models

I don’t know if someone has seen this item on Phys.Org, or not. One of my most strident objections to global warming is the failure of climate models to actually ‘model’ what temperature has done over the last twenty years. Here’s this simple program that gets it right. As one of the authors put it: Dr Matt Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “A high-school student with a pocket scientific calculator can now use this remarkable model and obtain credible estimates of global warming simply and quickly, as well as acquiring a better understanding of how climate sensitivity is determined. As a statistician, I know the value of keeping things simple and the dangers in thinking that more complex models Read More ›

Framing the Debate – How Design Books are Categorized

I rarely set foot in a bookstore, having long ago succumbed to the Amazon.com convenience. But Saturday my son had an urge to buy some comic books — and he had to have them now. He waited semi-patiently, with regular reminders throughout the day of his desire — nay, his urgent need — to go to Barnes & Noble. “Do you have any money?” “Yes. I have some money saved up, and a gift card from Christmas that I haven’t used yet.” So off we went. While he was browsing the comic book section, I wandered about. I love the atmosphere of bookstores and could spend hours walking through the stacks, occasionally picking up a tome to read the inside Read More ›