Comment on Why I Am an American Conservative
Posted on April 30, 2009

crdorr A full description of human nature and how America as a free society fulfills it far better than the others may be one way to underpin the argument. That has the makings of another essay. Hmmmmm

Comment on Does God Exist
Posted on April 7, 2009

Thanks, Meebsy.

Comment on Why I Am an American Conservative
Posted on March 13, 2009

Thanks for your kind comments, b6en

Comment on Intelligent Design the New Creationism
Posted on February 18, 2009

My first and third paragraphs aren't diametrically opposed. Evolutionary processes did indeed speed up during the Cambrian "Explosion," (starting about 540 million years ago) but only relative to the preceding slow pace. Multi-celled animals lived in the seas at least a billion years ago. So, if you're thinking ID happened in Cambrian times, well your Designer's work would have been pre-empted. On my second paragraph, I read Behe's book. It's entirely based on the argument from incredulity. Simply a modernized version of Paley. You didn't address my fourth paragraph at all, although perhaps you thought you did. ID advocates are extremely leery of posting dates on when they think the Designer intervened. Partially, because some aren't very familiar with the story of life on Earth as posited by biologists. Some really don't know and admit it. But others are secretly young-Earth creationists and don't want to own up to it in scientific circles. BTW, Behe is not one of those. At worst, he's an Old Earth Creationist. The problem with believing in the inherent truth of the Bible is that the creation stories don't jibe with each other, and they certainly don't j...

Comment on Intelligent Design the New Creationism
Posted on February 16, 2009

Cambrian Explosion was an explosion of evolutionary creativity in response to the fact that life had "found" an entirely new home loaded with new niches to develop--land. Irreducible Complexity is Behe's argument from incredulity. He simply cannot understand how many undoubtedly complex biomolecular systems could have evolved unguided. They evolved the same way entire species evolved, by beating out the competition to food and as a result to reproductive success. Macro evolution is micro evolution taking place over long periods of time. The small changes become very large changes after species speciate enough times. ID explains nothing, especially when you consider how confused ID proponents are about the question of when the designer intervened--at the stage of iterating, reproducing chemical reactions? At the stage of the development of protocells? Primitive RNA? The first DNA molecule? Later? Earlier? None of them can figure it out. Most of them don't understand the question.

Comment on The Problem With Alien Invasions
Posted on February 12, 2009

Thanks, Rania, for your very kind comments. Please feel free to read any of my other essays here.

Comment on Why I Am an American Conservative
Posted on December 16, 2008

Thanks Oren2012. Here's some more grist for the conservative mill: Read Hayek, von Mises, Jane Jacobs (great on economic self organization of cities), Adam Smith and Milton Friedman on economics, Russell Kirk on this history of conservative philosophy, William Buckley--anything he had written, Charles Krauthammer and Victor Davis Hanson (on foreign affairs), Burke and Madison on governance, Tocqueville on America, etc. Run searches on such phrases as "American conservatism" or "conservative philosophy" on-line and see how many thousands of interesting results you get. The Liberty Fund also has a great on-line conservative library. It's free!

Comment on Simple Things
Posted on September 26, 2008

Hi, thanks for posting this lovely poem on my group, The Grassroots Creation.

Comment on Check Out This Toilet!
Posted on August 21, 2008

Even though logically I'd know it is mirrored on the outside, the windows on the inside make it look like I'd be giving everyone on the street a free show. Thanks for posting this really weird one. :O

Comment on Intelligent Design the New Creationism
Posted on July 30, 2008

Hi psycholex, Modern science has indeed pre-empted all religions' stories about Life, the Universe, and Everything. I believe that almost everything that exists in the universe is the result of self-organizing processes. The small number of exceptions are the result of planning and making by individual human minds and hands.

Comment on Defending Evolution
Posted on July 21, 2008

True, true, oh so very true, Medway. Thanks.