Observations from my visit to Uncommon Descent

Executive Summary:

Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID. KF talks about math and design detection but never does it. ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument. It is the North Korea of the internet

Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID.
in now epic thread Barry told us what would convince him ID was wrong:

The science bomb that will destroy my belief in ID: A single example of natural forces observed to have create Orgel’s CSI.

Now as IDists can’t actually measure CSI (they don’t appear to understand it at UD) this was troublesome, but a close examination of Dembski’s CSI contains the term P(T|H), which is described by him as

Moreover, H, here, is the relevant chance hypothesis that takes into account Darwinian and other material mechanisms.

So Barry wanted a demonstration of CSI being made by natural forces, whilst Dembski defines CSI as only to be ‘counted’ in the absence of them. Barry doesn’t understand CSI. I asked him if he thought that “CSI=FSC=FSCO/I”. He never responded.

KF talks about math and design detection but never does it

KF’s behavior is perhaps the most odious of the moderators there. Rather than have an actual discussion, he creates multiple one-off posts with closed comments, which means that associated critique is never attached to the post itself. This effectively allows him to perpetually reboot once destroyed arguments as if they are new and unassailable. This just shows us the strong connection between creationism and ID – creationists are still rolling out “2LoT” and “If we came from Monkeys” today.

All of KF’s posts are basically reformations of Hoyle’s tornado in a junkyard arguments: Complex things cannot spontaneously generate. Of course this has *nothing* to do with life and does not consider P(T|H). KF has yet to do any credible math pertaining to an evolutionary narrative. Sadly telling.

ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument

The general trend at UD is for the IDists to tell us what they think evolution can’t do rather than what ID can do. It is gapism in its purest form. The target moves from PCD to abiogenesis to the first cell and they want a complete history of the evolution of life with pictures and an index of all the mutations as they happened. Given the ‘Jesus this’ and ‘God that’ that happens at UD, I wonder if they have the same high bar for other ‘historical’ events.

It is the North Korea of the internet

They silently ban, delete accounts, place in moderation, mark up others posts and post themselves with comments disabled. This degree of message control is a symptom of their arguments being completely noncompetitive when there is a free and fair exchange of ideas.

211 thoughts on “Observations from my visit to Uncommon Descent

  1. The paper refers to SPECIFICATION, not CSI. It looks like Richie doesn’t understand ID.
    Nice own goal, cupcake

  2. CSI = complex SPECIFIED information. What specification might that be, the one above where he talks about the UPB, etc? You don’t even know the basics.

  3. Careful Richardthughes, Nanny Patrick will complain to Queen Mommy Elizabeth and have this thread shut down.

  4. …. when there is a free and fair exchange of ideas.

    Like here at TSZ? Don’t make me laugh.

  5. Buy some bracelets Mung. Please keep my lulz coming for a little longer…

    Maybe Barry has some in his purse?

  6. Oh good, another War Against Barry thread! I do so love these. It’s like a recruiting drive on PBS without the freebies. [You’re not giving away freebies without tell me are you Richardthughes]?

  7. This is an old one Mung. Brought back to life because Joe, like Barry, doesn’t understand ID. You don’t understand basic statistics so we don’t have to worry about your ID understanding just yet. But I bet it’s turbo encabulator! 😉

  8. Mung:
    Careful Richardthughes, Nanny Patrick will complain to Queen Mommy Elizabeth and have this thread shut down.

    Oh, the humanity!!

  9. Richardthughes:
    This is an old one Mung. Brought back to life because Joe, like Barry, doesn’t understand ID. You don’t understand basic statistics so we don’t have to worry about your ID understanding just yet. But I bet it’s turbo encabulator!

    Pretty funny that the guy who claims he’s the smartest one in the room couldn’t figure out the six month old dates on the posts. 😀

Leave a Reply