Here’s Barry’s latest:
I’ve saved the web page in case he ‘disappears’ it, as he tends to do.
Barry is making the case that some irrational beliefs may cause outcomes that are still beneficial and so are not selected against (religion, anyone?).
He does this in reply to Piotr’s comment:
“As far as I can see, thought processes which allow us to understand the world and make correct predictions (and so are empirically “true”) are generally good for survival.”
Please note “GENERALLY good for survival”
gen·er·al·ly
ˈjen(ə)rəlē/
adverb
1.
in most cases; usually.
(from google search)
Barry, its time for you to learn about ‘distributions’. Do you think the correctness of belief is orthogonal to taking an action that is likely to improve survival chances?
I think given this and yesterdays comment:
“Your comment is classic.
ID Supporter: You can’t make a dog from a finch.
Darwinist: Yeah, but some finches are really really different from each other. I have now refuted your point.”
(Dogs don’t give birth to finches, Checkmate evolution!) – You should actually take some biology and logic classes. Spend less time on your apologetics and ‘rules of logic’ and actually learn something about biological origins.
I see Reciprocating Bill is already on the case.
I’m speechless.
I think the tigers story might be the dumbest thing I’ve seen at UD.
I’d like more posts like this from Barry. Heck, if he wrote a book on his version of evolution I’d buy it. The hilarity!
The man hasn’t played hide-and-seek?
Perhaps if he had he’d know that outrunning the other players is frequently a part of winning.
I doubt that trying to outrun a saber-tooth would often lead to winning.
A better example would be Fred and Barry. Fred wants to know how biology works, what causes similarities between organisms, or in other words, he wants an explanatory theory. Barry just wants to play to the crowd, believe some feel-good claims (whether we find them to be feel-good doesn’t affect the fact that they generally do), and to insist that the belief he had that all life was designed is definitely true.
Unfortunately, evolution explains both for social animals like humans. IOW, we do have the capacity for figuring out what evolutionary processes make sense of biology in order to understand biology as a whole, but people grandstanding and denying the science can do quite well, too.
We seem to have evolved the capacity for understanding the world reasonably well (even if it took a good deal of time to move from naive realism to scientific understanding), and also for denying the same for basically social reasons.
Glen Davidson
Or to put it another way, wouldn’t God be likely to have representatives who think a good deal better than UDites apparently do?
Glen Davidson
If valid inferences make survival more likely, why are there still creationists?
Plantinga’s EAAN doesn’t work, for reasons that have already been extensively discussed here previously, and Arrington’s severely watered-down version doesn’t work either. I’m always happy to beat up on this argument again, but as far as I can tell it’s a dead horse.
petrushka,
The fictional “two tigers” example is lifted straight from Plantinga. Don’t blame Arrington for Plantinga’s silliness.
If I paraphrased a creationist argument you woud rightly blame me for failing to see how silly it is.
But the source of the silliness is hidden in plain sight. Our raw perceptions and inferences are not reliable. That is why childhood is so full of bumps and bruises and risk. And why societies have to learn and adapt.
The hidden truth is that learning at the molecular level and brain level is never done. It’s always testing and refining. TRVTH is not available. Bible thumping Barry missed the glass darkly passage.
One point about Plantinga worth stressing is that his argument isn’t about the truth or falsity of particular beliefs, but about the reliability of our cognitive capacities. He wants to argue that we have no reasons to believe, if naturalism and evolution are true, that our cognitive capacities are reliable — hence no reason to accept any of the deliverances of those capacities, including naturalism and evolution themselves.
One interesting feature of the EAAN that started to annoy me the other day is this: in his epistemology, Plantinga allows for what he calls “properly basic beliefs”: beliefs that cannot be justified, but which would be irrational to deny. (Our belief in the external world and in the existence of other minds would be examples of such ‘properly basic beliefs’.) It seems to me that Plantinga would have to deny that, for it the belief in our own reliability were properly basic, then it wouldn’t be vulnerable to any sort of skeptical challenge or in need of any sort of theistic justification. But once the idea of properly basic beliefs is on the table, it seems to me that our belief in the reliability of our own cognitive capacities is just as properly basic (if not more so) than our beliefs in the external world or in other minds.
Regardless of how that plays out, the flaws in the EAAN have been exposed on numerous occasions — for example, the essays in Naturalism Defeated?, Churchland’s criticism and the related criticisms by Geoff Childers and Feng Ye. Yet none of this ever stops creationists and other Liars for Jesus from repeating the EAAN as if it were Gospel truth. They so desperately want to believe that the argument is sound, that they never take any time to inquire into whether or not it is sound. And yet they reject evolutionary (and climate change) if even the slightest detail is overturned. “Selective hyperskepticism”, perhaps?
In addition to some logical circuits, Barry needs a new gasket:
[ http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mf-runs-away-anyone-else-care-to-play/#comment-558825 ]
I think Joe has been giving Banny melt-down lessons.
Piotr Gasiorowski,
Heh. Worth a brief wade through the utter garbage for this nugget, evolutionary moral theory as defined by Joe:
“The scary/ threatening part is that if neo-darwinian evolution is right then morals are an illusion most likely designed by the weak (less fit) to suppress the strong (fittest). ”
How many fucking times Joe. Fitness is Differential Reproductive Success. The less fit don’t ‘design illusions’ to redress the balance in any evolutionary scenario.
RDFish is an IDiot? When did he convert over to the ID side?
Barry is still recovering from first degree butthurt brought about by his comical attempts at science and CSI. He likes KF’s 1985 vintage fishing reel FIASCO, though. He also may be worried about that bomb..
Poor Barry. UD was a vanity purchase for him. He appointed himself President, and he proudly announces his title at the bottom of every UD page.
He pays the bills, and yet gets nothing in return. No one respects him. His OPs get promptly dismantled by whichever critics aren’t banned at the moment. He gets caught with his pants down.
By buying UD, he has merely succeeded in advertising his defects to a wider audience.
The moral of the story? If you’re an ass, purchasing a website won’t change that. You can’t buy your way out of douchebaggery.
I’m enjoying his descent into bitterness. Science nor culture have anything to fear from UD but the whining and regression to Jebonics is delightful. Tardenfreude.
🙂
54
ppolish April 12, 2015 at 1:53 pm
Seversky, I would not know right from wrong if God did not tell me. Or more precisely, if God did not create. Right was created first along with free will. Then wrong came along.
Knowing right and wrong is knowing God. God told you too btw. How else would you know:)
—————————————————-
Fucking lunatics, the lot of them.
Barry’s meltdown continues. He is now editing comments without the authors’ permission, and with no indication that he’s done so.
Tim:
Here’s the post-hack doggerel. I didn’t see it before Barry got to it:
I’m guessing that the original scanned better. Add verse to the list of things Barry sucks at.
Barry Arrington has lost it completely.
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=3060#entry243526
I also suggested at AtBC:
Offer up a thread here without the bullying or censorship.
My “sniveling and whining” was more or less the following (reconstructed from memory, just for the record):
Meaning — you throw a fit and feel free to hand out insults, delete comments and edit them without the author’s consent? No discussion is possible in these circumstances. If you took your own moderatorial rules seriously, you’d have to ban yourself after that public show.
Barry has been here, and he wasn’t banned or moderated. He simply doesn’t have the courage to debate where he can’t ban or censor.
It’s really funny to watch the playground bully Barry Arrington snivel and run away from a fair fight.
It was a little more complicated than that. The first and only time Barry commented here, the poster of the thread in which he was commenting got angry and, overreacting, used his moderation powers to delete Barry’s comment. After Barry complained at UD, everyone else here was unhappy with the deletion, Barry’s comment was restored and the overreactor’s powers of moderation were removed by mutual agreement of the TSZ regulars. An apology was issued to Barry and he was invited to comment further.
Barry, of course, took this mistreatment as an excuse never to return and to take permanent offense.
Here is Barry drawing dramatic conclusions afterwards.
Further discussion of the incident here.
Taking Offense is a major tactic in the ID/creationist arsenal. They do much more banning and censoring in their own forums and do not see any contradiction in doing that. I wish we would leave them to do the banning and censoring, but that time we did not, and of course it handed them ammunitiion.
Good Summary Joe. IIRC Barry was also offered authorship privileges if he wanted. I think Barry was looking for “death by cop” and someone less cynical than him gave it to him. And another martyr is born..
also discussed here:
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7304;st=540#entry228900
I vaguely recall that. All of us sin.;}
It was not a policy. It is against policy We have deleted pornography, but, not opinions. even when the opinions are silly.
Barry Arrington is the only site owner I know of who deletes opinions because he disagrees with them (and then calls his adversary a coward for not responding).
Piotr:
Good memory, Piotr. I still have your original comment in a browser tab:
Mark Frank captured Barry’s MO:
Mark’s comment has now been replaced with this:
Their pleas for critical analysis of evolution would be far more compelling if they were even the slightest bit capable of it themselves.
“Life has to have been designed, now shut up,” about as far as “critical analysis” would get.
Glen Davidson
and then this:
“87
Barry Arrington
April 13, 2015 at 2:49 pm
Hagonasec @ 86.
For the reasons stated in the OP. If you disagree with the reasoning of the OP, you need to tell us why.”
So he can delete or change it, presumably.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Barry smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Barry said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Barry, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Dang right. Whoa! Genius.
LOL, I’ve finally got banned by Big Bazza the Hutt (after a lot of ritual shouting through the loudspeaker in the ceiling).
Barry brands his own forehead with the scarlet ‘H’:
What a complete hypocrite Barry is.
And a coward, too, hiding behind the ‘UDEditors’ tag.
You tried. He’s going to talk over anyone who doesn’t agree with him. Imagine if he’d become a judge!
He does sort of remind me of Judge Judy — but less rational.
He’s an “experienced bankruptcy lawyer“. Little wonder the ID movement needs him.
Piotr,
Whose “personal statement” includes this gem:
Meltdown Continues
lack of Focus
“UDEditors: And it is probably too much to hope that you will put up a cogent argument in defense of your position instead of snits, snears and distractions. But we do keep hoping.”
Barry, I have explained the conditions under which I would participate in a discussion with you. They were simple. Stop acting like a spoiled child. Obviously you are having difficulty honouring this request. Cheers.
UD Editors: Lack of Focus has continued to insult me. He will no longer be with us.
keiths,
We know, at last, where morality comes from. Big Bazza makes it.
Absolute morality seems to have a problem with freely discussing its absolute truth. For, the moment you start questioning it, already it no longer is absolute.
Glen Davidson
Here FTR is the snapped gist of one comment that subsequently got Bazzified (ie: replaced with “Sniveling and whining deleted from this comment. Nothing is left over.”)
That’s a good one.
Well, I’ll be. A walto sighting.
keiths,
Another flameout from keiths?
When are you going to make an honest effort to post?
Oh shush, Phoodoo. Unlike you he reads all the material. Go fondle your watch, know-nothing.
Richardthughes,
You can babysit Keiths all you want, his posts are still here for all to see. He runs away when challenged. He never read anything.
Maybe you can get together with DNA Jock to invest in some of keiths scams.