Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 428

September 22, 2019

The Pastafarians, started to mock ID, are becoming a fast-growing religion

Or something. Anyone remember the Pastafarians, who got their start ridiculing ID and then went on to try to become a religion? Well, that’s as near as we can make out. In truth, we never really figured them out.

But apparently, they are still around, not least in Alaska:

[Homer, Alaska] A Pastafarian high priest just opened an Alaska city council meeting in prayer. Wearing a colander on his head, the pasta priest offered the opening prayer on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to a municipal meeting in Alaska, the latest blessing from a nontraditional church since a court ruling opened up the religious practice to those who desire to profane and blaspheme religion.
News Division, “Man Who Worships Pasta Provides City Invocation in Alaska” at Pulpit & Pen

In fairness, they do have a theology and (in Russia) have even been persecuted for it. It just doesn’t make any sense. But maybe in these times, that’s less of an issue than it used to be:

Anyway, they are working hard at gaining recognition:

Some time next year, the European court of human rights will decide on the case of a Dutch woman who feels unfairly treated because her country’s highest court has told her she cannot wear a plastic colander on her head for her ID photo.
It may combine Mienke de Wilde’s plea with that of an Austrian former MP, Niko Alm, who proudly wears the offending kitchen utensil on his official documents but now insists his country recognise Pastafarianism – the faith both follow – as a religion.
Watching the pair closely is Mike Arthur, an independent American film-maker whose smart, funny but above all thought-provoking documentary, I, Pastafari, about the world’s fastest-growing faith premieres in the US in October.
Jon Henley, “Documentary follows Pastafarians as they strain for recognition” at The Guardian

Here’s the trailer:

See also: Pastafarian Lodges Complaint With ACLU Legal workplace accommodation of pastafarianism as a religion

and

Wow: Court rules for common sense… updated No, not a religion; an overelaborate prank.

Pastafarians not giving up their claim to be a religion

Pastafarians admit to being a religion

Pastafarians Can Now Claim Religious Persecution

Flying Spaghetti Monster Chronicles: Pastafarianism, Born To Ridicule ID, Now Taken Seriously As Religion In Europe?

and

Flying spaghetti monster vs. ID

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Copyright © 2019 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 22, 2019 14:45

Richard Weikart: Darwinian philosopher embraces Darwinism as a religion

Perhaps more explicitly now?:

On a new episode of ID the Future, historian Richard Weikart, author From Darwin to Hitler, talks with host Michael Keas about a recent book by philosopher Michael Ruse on Darwinism, Christianity, and war. Weikart records a curious fact: in the course of the book Ruse appears to shift from warning others about treating Darwinism as a secular religion to embracing it himself as such.
Richard Weikart, “Richard Weikart: Michael Ruse Embraces the Darwinian Religion” at Evolution News and Science Today

If the facts are failing Darwinism and smart people are now safe to just plain doubt the claims of people like Dawkins and Ruse, what is left but blind faith?

See also: New Scientist: Richard Dawkins shows us how to outgrow God. Meanwhile, William Lane Craig replies, God Is the Best Explanation for the Applicability of #Mathematics to the Physical World.

and

Does Darwinism not matter the way it used to? David Gelernter was NOT flung out on his ear for doubting Darwin. And, how many people much care now what P.Z. Myers thinks? Is ultra-Darwinism past its sell-by date?

Follow UD News at Twitter!

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 22, 2019 05:59

New Scientist: Richard Dawkins shows us how to outgrow God

In connection with Dawkins’s new book, Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide,

We met with the renowned evolutionary biologist and controversial atheist to hear about science and beauty, Twitter, vegetarianism, pernicious religions, and his cautious sense of optimism…

He chose his subjects well: during his writing career, evolution and religion have emerged as fronts in an increasingly vicious culture war between what he would characterise as the forces of darkness and superstition and those of enlightenment and reason…

I want to encourage people to think for themselves. I’ve always felt rather passionate about breaking the cycle as each generation passes on its superstitions to the next. If you ask people why they believe in the particular religion that they do, it’s almost always because that’s how they were brought up
Graham Lawton, “Richard Dawkins: How we can outgrow God and religion” at New Scientist

Would “think for themselves” include dumping Darwinism, the way David Gelernter or the Science Uprising folk have done?

Meanwhile, William Lane Craig replies, God Is the Best Explanation for the Applicability of #Mathematics to the Physical World.

Ken Francis writes to say, “It’s time for the great Dr Berlinski to write a counter book entitled, Outgrowing Dawkins.”

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

1 like · Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 22, 2019 05:21

Why the “computer” model of the human brain fails

Experts explain, in case you know anyone who bought that line:

Yuri Danilov: Again, it is a separate discussion, extremely painful for many but it is something that is happening right now. Remember, I talked today about our technological development morphing how our understanding of the brain works. And the attempt to make a parallel between the brain and a computer is a result of our evolution, if you wish. Because… in the Seventies … it was a transistor and everybody thought it was very simple. They thought that each neuron is a transistor.
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Then it was, “Each neuron is a microchip.”
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Then each neuron is a microprocessor.
Robert J. Marks: Yes.
Yuri Danilov: Right now people are saying, each synoptical connection is a microprocessor. So if it’s a microprocessor, you have 1012 neurons, each neuron has 105 synapses, so you have … you can compute how many parallel processing units you have in the brain if each synapse is a microprocessor.
But as soon as you assume that each neuron is a microprocessor, you assume that there is a programmer. There is no programmer in the brain; there are no algorithms in the brain.
“Why the brain is not at all like a computer” at Mind Matters News

Way more to come.

Seeing the brain as a computer is an easy misconception rather than an informative image.

Here are excerpts and links from the two earlier podcasts featuring Robert J. Marks and Yuri Danilov:

Do we actually remember everything? Neuroscience evidence suggests that our real problem isn’t with remembering things but finding our memories when we need them. One of a pioneer neurosurgeon’s cases featured a patient who could, unaccountably, speak ancient Greek. The explanation was not occult but it was surely remarkable for what it shows about memory.

and

Aging brains need exercise, not sofas for neurons. Biomedical engineer Yuri Danilov reassures seniors, we do not lose neurons as we age. (This is Part 1 of Yuri Danilo’s discussion with Robert J. Marks.)

Further reading on neuroplasticity and the realistic hope for the healing of brain injuries:

How the Injured Brain Heals Itself: Our Amazing Neuroplasticity Jonathan Sackier is a pioneer in non-invasive techniques for speeding the healing of traumatic brain injuries

If Thinking Can Heal, Why Do We Need Antidepressants? J.P. Moreland, who struggles with anxiety disorders, likens medications to engine oil for the brain

Mind-controlled robot brain needs no brain implant

and

The placebo effect is real, not a trick. But the fact that the mind acts on the body troubles materialists. Such facts, they say, require revision

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 22, 2019 04:52

September 21, 2019

Melanie Phillips muses on the extinction of reason

In connection with climate change hysteria:

Listening to BBC Radio’s Today programme this morning on the Extinction Rebellion protests was a frightening experience in itself. The BBC has decided there can be no challenge to “climate change” theory, other wise known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In its notorious “crib sheet” to staff, it advised: “As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate”.
Thus the BBC is engaged in the extinction of journalism…
Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told the Talouselämä magazine in Finland of his concerns about doomsday climate extremists calling for radical action to prevent a purported apocalypse.
“It is not going to be the end of the world. The world is just becoming more challenging. In parts of the globe living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.” …
“The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”
What are witnessing is not the imminent extinction of the planet. It is the extinction of reason.
Melanie Phillips, “The Extinction of Reason” at MelaniePhillips.com

It’s one thing to enthrone Reason, as the French Revolution did. It is quite another to believe that it does not exist. Can reason survive a disbelief in its existence?

The war on reason has extended to the very concept. And the craziness is beginning to claim science, bit by bit.

See also: Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself

and

Panpsychism: You are conscious but so is your coffee mug

Follow UD News at Twitter!

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 16:11

Physics envy is a terrible thing, especially in economists

A Cambridge political economist explains:

A funny thing happened on its way to becoming a science: economics seldom tested its premises empirically. Only in recent years has there been serious investigation of its core assumptions and, all too often, they’ve been found wanting.
Unlike in physics, there are no universal and immutable laws of economics. You can’t will gravity out of existence. But as the recurrence of speculative bubbles shows, you can unleash ‘animal spirits’ so that human behaviour and prices themselves defy economic gravity. Change the social context – in economic parlance, change the incentive structure – and people will alter their behaviour to adapt to the new framework.
That’s something that ‘physics envy’ can’t capture – that the social nature of human beings makes any laws of behaviour tentative and contextual. In fact, the very term ‘social science’ is probably best seen as an oxymoron.

John Rapley, “Few things are as dangerous as economists with physics envy” at Aeon

“Social science” is not just an “oxymoron”; it is a form of corruption. The Sokal hoax, which has brought so much ridicule on social science disciplines, would be impossible without the pretense that these pursuits are sciences.

If these pursuits are art, not science, the art is only crazy when the artist is. And one can choose which artist to follow.

Putting a respectable face on persecuting the social justice science hoaxers

Embattled “Social Sciences Hoax” Prof Is Not A Hero, He’s A Canary

Social Science Hoaxer’s Job At Risk For Revealing “Bias”

Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Exposing gender studies as a Sokal hoax

Social Science Hoax Papers Is One Of RealClearScience’s Top Junk Science Stories Of 2018

and

Alan Sokal, Buy Yourself A Latte: “Star Wars” Biology Paper Accepted

Follow UD News at Twitter!

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 15:36

David Gelernter in a more accustomed role… asking rude questions about Facebook’s $billions

David Gelernter, by Doc Searls (Flickr: 2010_08_05_techonomy_154) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

We’ve all heard lots about David Gelernter resigning from the academic elite Darwin Club (and giving up hundreds of thousands of social brownie points… oh my) In his regular work life as a tech genius, he says some other things we might want to listen to:

David Gelernter: People should not be in the position of having their data taken — it’s not exactly a theft, but — in an underhanded way or by subterfuge, people log onto Facebook and feel that any transaction with Facebook is between them and the software and friends, the software being an anonymous source that doesn’t do anything, make money, or do anything nasty. But, needless to say, and as everybody knows who thinks about it, Facebook is in a position to make huge amounts of money by taking these enormous caches of data and selling them.

And every company that advertises, every company that sells a product, every company that provides a service, wants to know—you know, who lives in this country, who lives where I live, what is their income and what are they buying, and stuff like that. Facebook knows an awful lot of that. Their knowledge is often current, it’s often extensive, it’s often deep and wide, so of course, they’re in a position to clean up. And it seems to us that the huge sums that Facebook is in a position to control and the power that comes with that position, being a font of users’ contributions. … But why is it so valuable? Because we have all given it our information. It just seems to us that if this information makes Facebook such a huge amount of money, why don’t we make some of the money… we, meaning the users?
“Facebook gets rich off what we tell our friends” at Mind Matters News

Well, think about it, anyway.

See also: Brit Commentator Melanie Phillips Weighs In On David Gelernter Dumping Darwin

and

You think you have nothing to hide? Then why are Big Tech moguls making billions from what you and others tell them? (Russ White) Your phone knows everything now. And it is selling your secrets

Follow UD News at Twitter!

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 15:09

Egnor on the evidence against materialism:

News just tagged this on to a news post but this is worth headlining:

Blurb:

Discovery Science
In this bonus interview footage from Science Uprising, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses the evidence against materialism and explains how materialism undercuts rather than supports genuine science. Be sure to visit https://scienceuprising.com/ to find more videos and explore related articles and books. Michael Egnor, MD (from Columbia University), neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery at Stony Brook University. Dr. Egnor is renowned for his work in pediatric neurosurgery. See https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2516312….

Food for thought. END

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 09:09

Logic & First Principles: What about “appeal to consequences” (vs. reductio ad absurdum)?

In a current thread, frequent objector, Seversky, posed a one liner objection intended to dismiss an OP: “Argumentum ad consequentiam.“

This raises an obvious issue on logic and linked epistemology, as argument by reduction to absurdity (which is broader than simple logical contradiction) is a well recognised argument type. Where, also, the issue is not emotive reaction to logical or operational consequences, but that that which is false or evil often leads to chaos, logical or existential or both. Thus, for example, we learn from history that certain things are manifestly false or evil.

In short, we need a way to responsibly decide on when an argument succeeds as a reductio. For example, dismissing any arguments we do not like the conclusions of or which overturn favoured views with, oh that appeals to bad consequences which is a fallacy, is itself patently absurd.

So, in comment 7, I addressed this: >>It seems the core of the problem (insofar as there is a real issue) is whether there is a FAILED reductio ad absurdum, where all that has been shown is unpalatability or undesirability not actual absurdity. However, when evolutionary materialistic scientism is injected into the picture, what we have is a large number of ways in which self-referential incoherence, amorality and the nihilist’s credo, might and/or manipulation make ‘right’ ‘rights’ ‘truth’ ‘knowledge’ ‘justice’ etc. lead to broad incoherence and needless chaos. That is indeed a general reduction to the absurd.

Let me clip logically fallacious dot com:

Reductio ad Absurdum

reductio ad absurdum

(also known as: reduce to absurdity)

Description: A mode of argumentation or a form of argument in which a
proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an
absurd conclusion. Arguments that use universals such as, “always”,
“never”, “everyone”, “nobody”, etc., are prone to being reduced to
absurd conclusions. The fallacy is in the argument that could be
reduced to absurdity — so in essence, reductio ad absurdum is a
technique to expose the fallacy.

Logical Form:

Assume P is true.

From this assumption, deduce that Q is true.

Also, deduce that Q is false.

Thus, P implies both Q and not Q (a contradiction, which is necessarily false).

Therefore, P itself must be false.

This is the obvious case, and the one widely used in modern Mathematics.

Reduction to absurdity, however, is not just a matter of the necessary impossibility of any candidate possible world in which x and ~x “must” both obtain. There are legitimate broader senses of absurdity, especially those connected to the self-referential incoherence of undermining undeniable moral government of our minds. For, absent such moral government of our intellects through known duties to truth, right reason, sound conscience, fairness and justice etc, the credibility of human reasoning and communication collapses into chaos. We can take it as a corollary that no worldview [i.e. perspective on our world, i.e. a candidate possible world model of our in-common, actual world] that undermines the credibility of having a worldview, could pass the triple test of factual adequacy, broad coherence and balanced explanatory power. In particular, as intellect has to be used to frame such a view, one that radically undermines credibility of mind is broadly incoherent. Thus, absurd.

However, unfortunately, as scientism dresses up absurdity in the lab coat many are tempted to a very different fallacy: clinging to manifest absurdity, through having made a crooked yardstick their standard for straight, upright and accurate. Which is of course one of the issues explored in Plato’s famous parable of the cave.

In this case, News is well within her rights to point out the
inherent amorality of evolutionary materialism, which ever since Plato
has been known to open the door to nihilism. It is the worldview level
absurdity of our evolutionary materialism dominated culture in its
present form that is opening the door to raw nihilism. Which, we are
going to have to face.

In former days, resulting misanthropy such as that of a Robespierre was relatively rare; now it is becoming a mass problem.

That is something we have to face.

And no, dismissing a genuine worldview level reductio as though it were mere fallacious appeal to disliked consequences without strong substantiation simply will not do. Ask yourself, are you clinging to a crooked yardstick? How are you responding to a naturally straight and upright plumb line?>>

I then added: >>For reference, Plato’s warning:

Ath [in The Laws, Bk X 2,350+ ya]. . . .[The avant
garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and
earth and air [i.e the classical “material” elements of the cosmos], all
exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such
that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and
all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as
they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and
chance only [ –> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and
would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . .

[Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence
at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and
altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by
law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at
the time at which they are made.-

[ –> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its
radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that
can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only
for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs
and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by “winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . ” cf a video on Plato’s parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]

These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,

[ –> Evolutionary materialism — having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT
— leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for
“OUGHT” is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in “spin”) . . . ]

and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions
[ –> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality “naturally” leads
to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that
amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas],
these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to
nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ –> such amoral
and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, “naturally” tend
towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the
habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness
and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive,
manipulate and crush — as the consistent history of radical revolutions
over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in
legal subjection to them [–> nihilistic will to power not the spirit
of justice and lawfulness].>>

Also: >>Wikipedia raises a viewpoint worth pondering:

Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad
consequentiam (Latin for “argument to the consequence”), is an argument
that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or
false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable
consequences.[1] This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a
type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise’s
consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing
consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments
inherently contain subjective points of view.

In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments that assert
a conclusion’s truth value (true or false) without regard to the formal
preservation of the truth from the premises; appeal to consequences
does not refer to arguments that address a premise’s consequential
desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth
value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid
in long-term decision making (which discusses possibilities that do not
exist yet in the present) and abstract ethics, and in fact such
arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories, particularly
related to consequentialism. Appeal to consequences also should not
be confused with argumentum ad baculum, which is the bringing up of
artificial consequences (i.e. punishments) to argue that an action is
wrong.

Notice, the fact vs value dichotomy here. I note, once there are
moral truths (such as that we are governed by duties of reason) this
falls apart.>>

So, we must beware lest dismissal on presumed fallacious appeal to consequences becomes in fact an excuse to cling to a crooked yardstick even in the face of a corrective, naturally straight and upright plumb line:

A plumbline

This calls for prudence. END

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 04:39

Live Event: On Life in the Universe

At Youtube, here:

Note, the assumption that the cosmos is a closed system, which is philosophically loaded. Let us monitor — note, several hours from the beginning. END

View more on Michael J. Behe's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 21, 2019 04:05

← Previous 1 2 … 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 … 592 593 Next →

Michael J. Behe's Blog

Michael J. Behe's profile
219 followers

Michael J. Behe isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.