Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Ethics

Allowing Rufo and Lindsay to speak in their own voices,

again, as a certain objector here has accused: Right-wing grifters like Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, and Christopher Rufo make a lot of money selling these lies to the gullible fools who get their worldview injected into their brains by downloading Fox News propaganda I have not previously heard of these two, but — courtesy YouTube — it is only fair to let them speak for themselves. Rufo: Lindsay: (He was here giving a workshop, and onward sessions here and here may be helpful.) I trust that in future, commenters will refrain from such intemperate language. END F/N: William S Lind interviews Roger Kimball in the 1990’s on culture form marxism and political correctness: Similarly, this discussion of the labour theory Read More ›

Origenes on the self-defeating incoherence of the [hyper-]skeptic

Origenes is on fire these days, so let’s headline: [Origenes, emergence play thread, 57:] The skeptic wants to criticize, but he doesn’t want to be criticized himself. We all make statements of belief, skeptics included. But the skeptic posits a closed circle in which no beliefs are justified. Yet at the same time, he arrogates to himself a position outside of this circle by which he can judge the beliefs of others, a move he denies to his opponents. Since the raison d’être of his thesis is that there is no outside of the circle, he does not have the epistemic right to assume a position independent of it, and so his belief about the unjustifiability of beliefs or reasoning Read More ›

At City Journal: Review of book attempting to scuff out the lab leak theory re COVID-19

Wade: "The lab at Wuhan, where researchers were manipulating Covid-type viruses, received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Could Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, the NIH’s senior officials, have had any possible motive for suppressing their experts’ initial conclusion that the Covid virus was probably artificial?" Read More ›

L&FP, 58a: Dallas Willard, on knowledge and its significance: “knowledge authorizes one to act, to direct action, to develop and supervise policy, and to teach”

In his posthumous book (completed by colleagues), Willard makes a key observation on knowledge, one that challenges a power-obsessed, agenda driven era that is dismissive of objectivity rooted in good warrant: To have knowledge . . . is to be able to represent something as it is on an adequate basis of thought or experience, not to exclude communications from qualified sources (“authority”) . . . . knowledge authorizes one to act, to direct action, to develop and supervise policy, and to teach. It does so because, as everyone assumes, it enables us to deal more successfully with reality: with what we can count on, have to deal with, or are apt to have bruising encounters with. Knowledge involves assured Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: Can squirrels really be socially unjust? Check their privilege?

Takehome: Researchers long assumed that people think like animals. But the equation reads the same in reverse: Animals think like people. Folklore soon trumps reality. Read More ›

An op-ed finally makes pro-abortion values clear: Yes, abortion is “killing” and that’s okay!

Abortion advocate: When “pro-life” forces agitate against feticide on the basis that it is killing, pro-abortion feminists should be able to acknowledge, without shame, that yes, of course it is. Read More ›

DEVELOPING, the US Supreme Court reverses Roe v Wade (is it cry havoc?)

Having returned from a shopping trip to Junction, Jamaica [here for 4x bereavement reasons], I noticed news as captioned. I clip: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/06/24/supreme-court-overrules-roe-v-wade-in-dobbs/ Supreme Court Overrules Roe v. Wade in Dobbs Decision – Returns Abortion to State Lawmakers WASHINGTON, DC – The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding in the Dobbs case that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion laws and regulations to state legislatures. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Supreme Court in Friday’s 5-4 [–> 6-3] decision: >>Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule Read More ›

BREAKING: Leaked US Supreme Court Draft that would overturn the rulings that have led to 63+ million abortion deaths in the US since 1973

This, seems worth pondering on the state of the US’s ongoing 4th generation civil war as a civilisation level issue: A draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has been leaked to the press in one of the greatest scandals to ever hit the nation’s highest court and a possible attempt to intimidate one or more justices to reverse their vote or to ignite a liberal brushfire to pack the Supreme Court before Democrats lose Congress in November. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the possible draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito reads, making the case that where the Constitution is silent, the American people govern themselves Read More ›

Dr John Campbell on the illusion of evidence-based medicine

For the past two years, we have been concerned that medical practice and pandemic management have been skewed by selective hyperskepticism and bias. Dr Campbell speaks out, based on the recent paper: We can look at a screen shot, where he targets domination of medical drug approvals by big pharma: Earlier, he expressed concern about how integrity of the science could be compromised, as is now exposed due to Freedom of Information requests: The obvious issue of special interest agendas leads to the issue of regulatory capture. Wikipedia (an example itself of ideological agenda capture) outlines: In politics, regulatory capture (also agency capture and client politics) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, Read More ›