He was one of the greatest Culture Warriors of our time – a towering intellect who possessed that rare combination of professional credentials and an indefatigable combative spirit. Having grown up in communist Russia and being an outspoken critic of Marxism (he was actually punished in Soviet gulags for his political views), Perakh might have used his considerable writing skills to become the next Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, arguing forcefully and eloquently against the abuses of Stalinism which took the lives of tens of millions. But he knew that there was an even more insidious and treacherous enemy that must be defeated: Intelligent Design.

As Mark wrote in 2006:

"it is ID advocates whose behavior is reminiscent of the oppressive Soviet regime."

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Teleology means that in addition to physical law of the familiar kind, there are other laws of nature "biased toward the marvelous."

-Thomas Nagel

I find Nagel's primary appeal to be his patent honesty. For all his inability to see divine purpose he still recognizes the need for a purposeful view of nature.

Strangely, he seems oblivious to the fact that biology research has already headed down the teleological road.

Interview with George Church in Der Spiegel.

"Yes, biology is complicated, but it's actually simpler than most other technologies we are dealing with. The reason is that we have received a great gift that biology has given to us. We can just take a little bit of DNA and stick it into a human stem cell, and all the rest of it is self-assembled. It just happens. It's as if a master engineer parked a spacecraft in our back yard with not so many manuals, but lots of goodies in it that are kind of self-explanatory. You pick up something and you pretty much know what it does after a little study."

Complicated in design, yet simple to use. A hallmark of great design.

Just like a master engineer from outer space…lol!

Here's the news and the video link.

Plus 85 abstentions. This took place at Cambridge with the votes coming from Cambridge students, who I imagine don't exactly comprise a population of devoted Christian belief. What's really interesting is that the topic was whether religion had a place in the 21st century – and defending "religion" strikes me as dicier than defending, say, the reasonableness of believing in God's existence, at least from a popular standpoint. As the 'nones' in the US show, plenty of people believe in God while apparently having a damn low view of religion.

More than that… c'mon. Dawkins and company got rolled by a group led up by Rowan Williams of all people? This wasn't exactly a presentation of the heavy guns of Christian thought, philosophy or apologetics.

The New Atheist Credo

Here's the latest in cutting edge research from Harvard University's Origins Of Life Initiative.

This year's Nobel Prize for chemistry went to a pair of US scientists who worked on G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCRs. GPCRs are intracellular receptors used in sight, smell, brain regulation, immune system regulation, blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, homeostasis and many other functions. Here's a short video explaining the signaling mechanism.

Biologist and atheist activist Jerry Coyne's reaction to the awesome complexity of the signaling mechanism was to proclaim:

"The amazing complexity of the G-protein coupled cascade – which no designer would ever build – shows the truth of Jacob’s aphorism that evolution doesn’t design, it ‘tinkers’."

I agree that evolution has tinkered with GPCRs over the years, but I'd like to know why Coyne thinks that no designer would ever build a GPCR given it's incredible effectiveness, utility, modularity, ubiquity, and flexibility. I'd also like to know if Coyne is aware that GPCRs have existed since the very beginnings of multicellularity.

Seems to me to be an extremely ingenious design strategy to include GPCRs in the first unicellular organisms – that is, if a designer wanted to insure the appearance of multicellularity, plants, animals, bodies, noses, eyes, hearts, and minds.

And a whopping 73% of atheists do not believe in God.

How long have I been telling you these are not rational people we are dealing with?

http://religions.pewforum.org/

Please continue the conversation here, meatheads.

(From TT member Zgob.)

I have enjoyed the conversations in this site. One issue that is central in the conversation between theists (of all stripes) and atheists (of any stripe) is the question of warranted belief. W.K. Clifford stressed an argument that’s popularly practiced among non-theists when discussing with theists, "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." Sounds very sane. And atheists, naturalists and reductive materialists use this often to butcher poor theists who cannot “prove” their faith.

But as Os Guinness said, “For no human being lives outside the reality common to us all. Whatever people may say the world is or who they are, it is what it is and they are who they are. Again, no argument is unarguable, but there are thoughts that can be thought but not lived. When all is said and done, reality always has the last word. The truth will always out. Standing up to falsehood, lies and crazy ideas is never an easy task, but it is far easier than the hardest task of all, becoming people of truth ourselves.” (Time for Truth [2000])

In actual experiential reality Clifford’s thesis falls in the category of “thoughts that can be thought but not lived.”

With the author’s permission (and also of Telic Thoughts) I am posting this brief but critically relevant (recently edited) piece, “The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is It Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?” by philosopher Bill Vallicella from his blog.

Thoughts?
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89%: Percentage of cancer research "landmark papers" from "top journals" which could not be replicated (47 out of 53).¹

417: Number of citations for the 47 unreproducible papers.¹

36%: Percentage of scientists who admit engaging in questionable research practices or fraud.²

$216,884: Amount of an NSF grant to study "Why politicians make vague statements".³

75%: Percentage of retracted drug studies which were due to fraud.⁴

32%: Percentage of retracted papers that are never noted as being retracted.⁵

$500,000: Cost of investigating a single instance of scientific misconduct.⁶

>50% of claimed research findings are false.⁷

86%: Percentage of scientists who admit to witnessing their peers commit fraud or questionable research practices.²

$1,600,000,000: Taxpayer dollars spent on alternative medicine research such as the effect of magnets on arthritis and whether lavender and lemon scents promote healing.⁸

15%: Percentage of research trainees who said they'd be willing to omit or fabricate data to win a grant or publish a paper.⁹

47%: Percentage of addiction researchers who reported knowledge of research misconduct.¹⁰

$100,000,000: Direct cost of scientific misconduct in the U.S. per year.⁶

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/FADE UP

SCENE: Pizza shop at 10pm. Aiguy sits looking bored by the phone. It rings. Aiguy picks up, expending as little energy as possible.

AIGUY: "Ignostic Pizza – You'll never believe how good it is. Can I help you?"

CUSTOMER: "I'd like a large Hawaiian pizza for pickup."

AIGUY: "Can you explain exactly what you mean by "Hawaiian"?"

CUSTOMER: "Huh?"

AIGUY: Calling a pizza "Hawaiian" is meaningless because different people have different ideas about what "Hawaiian" means."

CUSTOMER: "It's got ham and…"

AIGUY: For instance someone might think a Hawaiian pizza simply means a pizza native to Hawaii, or that it was made in Hawaii, or made by an actual Hawaiian. Until you explain exactly what you mean I simply cannot even consider taking your order because your order is simply meaningless."

CUSTOMER: "It's ham and pineapple, idiot."

AIGUY: "Can you explain exactly what you mean by "ham"? It's really quite meaningless unless you can explain to me what you mean by "ham"? Not everybody means the same thing when they refer to….

*Click*

AIGUY: "Whew. Thought I was going to have to make a pizza for a second there."

aiguy, still looking bored, begins to masturbate.

/FADE TO BLACK

Harold Bernhardt outlines the failings of the RNA World Hypothesis, and makes his case for "proteins first".

Some memorable quotes:

"The RNA World scenario is bad as a scientific hypothesis"

-Eugene Koonin

“[The RNA world hypothesis] has been reduced by ritual abuse to something like a creationist mantra”

-Charles Kurland

"I view it as little more than a popular fantasy."

-Charles Carter

Previous thread long and off-topic – this seems as good a place as any to pick up the conversation on a new thread.

"Looks like chunkdz talks a big religious game, but when it comes to protecting his house, he puts his faith where it belongs – in science. After all, the Bible tells us that God directs lightning, but it never mentions that you can protect your house (or your church) from it with an iron rod. Guess God didn't want folks to know about that, so he could zap 'em and burn their house down. No wonder so many people learned over time to ditch the Bible and grab the textbook when it comes to important things like keeping your house from getting burned down. Doh

No wonder the percentage of people who call themselves Christian is dropping so quickly in the U.S. (it's already happened elsewhere of course)… The rest of 'em are getting killed by lightning."

-aiguy

Don't you love the way bigots portray believers as idiots? Of course, the bigot fails to realize that the lightning rod was independently discovered by a christian and a Jesuit priest.

It seems that ID critics do not agree with my definition of intelligence. Some opinions so far:

"laughably stupid", "utterly futile", "comical", "not even wrong", "goofy", "just silly", "arrogant", and "absolutely, positively, comically stupid"

Actually, all those comments all came from one commenter named "aiguy". (The fact that my definition has provoked a steady stream of insults rather than an informed substantive response tells me that I have struck a nerve and must be on to something!)

Well, aiguy (or anybody else who wants to try), this is your chance to substantively challenge The Intelligence Product™ in a formal internet debate!

Resolved: For any machine, intelligence may reasonably be defined as the product of problem solving, planning, and learning.

IP = (PS)(P)(L)

I will take the affirmative. The debate will take place in two stages:

1) Opening statements will be posted, 1000 words or less, and after a pre-determined period responses will be posted, 1000 words or less.
2) First round of judging.
3) Main argument: 3000 words or less, followed by rebuttals and a brief closing argument. 2000 words or less total.
4) Final round of judging.

We will need three mutually agreeable judges: preferably an ID'er, an ID critic, and an "I don't care". Volunteers?