Come to think of it, there is no necessary relationship between atheism and Darwinism

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 12, 2019

Atheism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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Further to the godlessness that failed:

Thinking about books recently, I recalled that philosophers Jerry Fodor (What Darwin Got Wrong (2010)) and Thomas Nagel Mind and Cosmos: : Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False are examples of intellectually serious atheist philosophers who are no way Darwin groupies.

One wonders how many of the Altenberg 16 were non-Darwinian or doubtfully Darwinian atheists.

Maybe the new atheists’ Darwin-is-my-Jesus stance has made them look a bit ridiculous among atheists?

See also: How did new atheism become the godlessness that failed? Ever since the new atheists declined (or whatever), discussions of Darwinism and evolution have become much more open-minded. For example, researchers seem to talk more openly about work that points in a direction other than Darwinism. Perhaps they don’t worry so much about 20,000 semi-literate trolls writing their Dean of Science to get them fired just for saying that their research points in another direction.

Comments

From the description of PavelU's linked video:
Dr. Nunnari explains that mitochondria are derived from prokaryotes and played a pivotal role in the evolution of eukaryotes.,,, Mitochondria are also fascinating because they have retained their own genome and are dynamic organelles that communicate with other compartments in the eukaryotic cell.
Here are a couple of inconvenient facts for PavelU:
Endosymbiosis: A Theory in Crisis by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - Oct. 30, 2015 Excerpt: However, now that genome sequencing is inexpensive and widespread, the evolutionary story of endosymbiosis has become increasingly clouded and controversial. As new bacterial and eukaryotic genomes are sequenced and the proteins they encode are deduced, the whole evolutionary idea of endosymbiosis has been thrown into utter confusion. One of the most unexpected discoveries has been the utter lack of identified genes that would support the evolutionary tale. As stated in a recent paper, "What was not anticipated was how relatively few mitochondrial proteins with bacterial homologs [sequence similarity] would group specifically with ?-Proteobacteria in phylogenetic [evolutionary tree] reconstructions: At most, only 10–20% of any of the mitochondrial proteomes examined so far display a robust ?-proteobacterial signal.4" This lack of evidence for mitochondrial genes derived from bacterial origin in both the mitochondrial DNA and the genome contained in the cell’s nucleus, where most mitochondrial genes are located, is a serious problem for the evolutionary story.,,, http://www.icr.org/article/endosymbiosis-theory-crisis
Moreover, Mitochondria DNA reveals : "1) the variance within clusters is low, and 2) the sequence gap among clusters is empty, i.e., intermediates are not found.,,," and also "species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.",, “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”
Why should mitochondria define species? - 2018 Excerpt: The particular mitochondrial sequence that has become the most widely used, the 648 base pair (bp) segment of the gene encoding mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI),,,, The pattern of life seen in barcodes is a commensurable whole made from thousands of individual studies that together yield a generalization. The clustering of barcodes has two equally important features: 1) the variance within clusters is low, and 2) the sequence gap among clusters is empty, i.e., intermediates are not found.,,, Excerpt conclusion: , ,The simple hypothesis is that the same explanation offered for the sequence variation found among modern humans applies equally to the modern populations of essentially all other animal species. Namely that the extant population, no matter what its current size or similarity to fossils of any age, has expanded from mitochondrial uniformity within the past 200,000 years.,,, https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution – May 28, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin perplexed,,, And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between. “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.” The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html
bornagain77_{December 15, 2019
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RotFLMAO @ Silver AsiaticET_{December 14, 2019
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Here’s an interesting scientific presentation that clearly shows how biological life arose and evolved
She gave a very evolutionary presentation. Blind and mindless.Silver Asiatic_{December 14, 2019
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Here’s an interesting scientific presentation that clearly shows how biological life arose and evolved: https://youtu.be/WEECyKKgNo0PavelU_{December 14, 2019
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I there there is an *important* relationship between atheism and Darwinism, even if it is not a necessary one. Atheists tend to want the view of theism to be automatically diminished. That is, theism is woo, and therefore automatically starts at a disadvantage in an intellectual discussion. What these non-Darwinian theories of the universe and evolution do is reintroduce woo to evolution. So, while it doesn't *disprove* atheism, it means that atheism and theism are playing on the same level. Both require woo to work, it's just the location and nature of the woo that is in question. With Darwinism, atheists could say, "we don't need your woo - it is just an added distraction to people doing hard science. Occam's Razor removes theistic ideas." Without Darwinism, that is gone.johnnyb_{December 13, 2019
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'Thus, I suppose the atheist can still pretend that he is ‘intellectually fulfilled’ by Darwin’s theory, but that intellectually fulfillment is, in reality, an act of self delusion.' I'm inclined to think that a cat derives a certain intellectual fulfilment chasing a ball of wool across the floor ; and a dog chasing after a stick. Although the word does normally have erudite connotations ; like 'cerebral', I suppose.Axel_{December 13, 2019
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Richard Dawkins disagrees with you. Will Provine wrote the following:

In other words, religion is compatible with modern evolutionary biology (and indeed all of modern science) if the religion is effectively indistinguishable from atheism.1
…
The frequently made assertion that modern biology and the assumptions of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are fully compatible is false.2
…
Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.3

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As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.4

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‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.’ 5

1- Academe January 1987 pp.51-52 † 2-Evolutionary Progress (1988) p. 65 † 3- “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address 1 2 † 4- No Free Will (1999) p.123 5- Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.ET_{December 13, 2019
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as to:
There Is No Necessary Relationship Between Atheism And Darwinism
Indeed there is not. Atheism existed well before Darwin. So clearly atheism is not dependent on Darwinism. Darwin, as Richard Dawkins himself pointed out, merely made it possible for atheists to be "intellectually fulfilled".
"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (Dawkins 1986,)..
But as William Dembski pointed out in his book, "How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not)", the supposed 'intellectual fulfillment' that atheists might have found in Darwin's theory is, (like everything else in Darwin's theory), illusory.
How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) by William A. Dembski Description: “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell. It is no longer possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist because life's origin requires an intelligent cause—this book shows why. https://www.amazon.com/How-Intellectually-Fulfilled-Atheist-Not/dp/1933859849
Moreover, the most trenchant intellectual dissatisfaction with Darwin's theory, as David Berlinski, Casey Luskin and Stephen Meyer point out, (and as News pointed out in the OP), is not coming from creationists and/or Design advocates, but is now coming from biologists themselves.
The Deniable Darwin - David Berlinski Excerpt: BIOLOGISTS OFTEN affirm that as members of the scientific community they positively welcome criticism. Nonsense. Like everyone else, biologists loathe criticism and arrange their lives so as to avoid it. Criticism has nonetheless seeped into their souls, the process of doubt a curiously Darwinian one in which individual biologists entertain minor reservations about their theory without ever recognizing the degree to which these doubts mount up to a substantial deficit. Creationism, so often the target of their indignation, is the least of their worries.,,, Like Orr, many biologists see an acknowledgment of their doubts as a cagey, a calculated, concession; but cagey or not, it is a concession devastating to the larger project of Darwinian biology. Unable to say what evolution has accomplished, biologists now find themselves unable to say whether evolution has accomplished it. This leaves evolutionary theory in the doubly damned position of having compromised the concepts needed to make sense of life — complexity, adaptation, design – while simultaneously conceding that the theory does little to explain them. https://www.rae.org/essay-links/dendar/ Nature Admits Scientists Suppress Criticisms of Neo-Darwinism to Avoid Lending Support to Intelligent Design - Casey Luskin October 8, 2014 Excerpt: "The number of biologists calling for change in how evolution is conceptualized is growing rapidly. Strong support comes from allied disciplines, particularly developmental biology, but also genomics, epigenetics, ecology and social science. We contend that evolutionary biology needs revision if it is to benefit fully from these other disciplines. The data supporting our position gets stronger every day. Yet the mere mention of the EES often evokes an emotional, even hostile, reaction among evolutionary biologists. Too often, vital discussions descend into acrimony, with accusations of muddle or misrepresentation. Perhaps haunted by the spectre of intelligent design, evolutionary biologists wish to show a united front to those hostile to science. Some might fear that they will receive less funding and recognition if outsiders -- such as physiologists or developmental biologists -- flood into their field." (Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller, Marc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, and John Odling-Smee, "Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Yes, urgently," Nature, Vol. 514:161-164 (October 9, 2014) ) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/nature_admits_s090321.html Scientists stunned by the public’s doubt of Darwin - April 22, 2014 Excerpt: (Stephen) Meyer said that view under-represents the real facts being discovered in evolutionary biology. “Very few leading evolutionary biologists today think that natural selection and random mutation are sufficient to produce the new forms of life we see arising in the history of life,” Meyer said. “And then when the public is catching wind of the scientific doubts of Darwinian evolution and expresses them in a poll like this, these self-appointed spokesmen for science say that the public is ignorant. But actually, the public is more in line with what’s going on in science than these spokesmen for science.” https://world.wng.org/2014/04/scientists_stunned_by_the_publics_doubt_of_darwin Lynn Margulis: Evolutionist and Critic of Neo-Darwinism - Stephen C. Meyer - April 25, 2014 Excerpt: in Chapters 15 and 16 of Darwin's Doubt, I addressed six new (that is, post neo-Darwinian) theories of evolution -- theories that proposed new mechanisms to either supplement or replace the reliance upon mutation and natural selection in neo-Darwinian theory.,, I show that, although several of these new evolutionary theories offer some intriguing advantages over the orthodox neo-Darwinian model, they too fail to offer adequate explanations for the origin of the genetic and epigenetic information necessary to account for new forms of animal life -- such as those that arise in the Cambrian period. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04/lynn_margulis_e084871.html
Thus, I suppose the atheist can still pretend that he is 'intellectually fulfilled' by Darwin's theory, but that intellectually fulfillment is, in reality, an act of self delusion. The fact of the matter is that, in reality, given the utterly vacuous nature of Darwinian explanations, the atheist is just as intellectually unfulfilled as he was before Darwin's theory ever came along. Indeed, more so. At least before Darwin's theory was shown to be utterly devoid of explanatory power, the atheist could at least appeal to the overall ignorance as to what life really was. But alas, with the advance of molecular biology, the Darwinists can no longer appeal to the ignorance of the intricacies of life. In fact, in order to maintain their atheism, atheists have to now maintain a level of 'intellectual blindness' as to the almost unbelievable levels of integrated complexity being found in life. For prime example, the human brain:
The Human Brain Is 'Beyond Belief' by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Perfect Optimization The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,, Vast Computational Power Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,, Phenomenal Processing Speed the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,, The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,, Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, Multidimensional Processing It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13 He also said: We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,, Biophoton Brain Communication Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186
And to drive the point home of just how vacuous Darwinian explanations actually are, Darwinists can't even explain the origin of a single neuron of the 'beyond belief' human brain:
"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html
Thus, clearly atheists find themselves to be quite 'intellectually unfulfilled' as far as Darwin's theory is concerned. Indeed, they find themselves not only 'intellectually unfulfilled' bust in a state of 'intellectual denial'. i.e. They must deny what their intellect is telling them must be so. Specifically, studies now establish that the design inference is ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, (including atheists), and that atheists have to mentally work suppressing their “knee jerk” design inference!
Is Atheism a Delusion? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ii-bsrHB0o Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html
i.e. It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature and biology, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, live in denial of the purpose and/or Design that they themselves see in nature. Basically atheists, (if they are ever inclined to be honest with themselves), must admit that they are back to their pre-Darwin days in which they disbelieved in God, not because of any compelling intellectual reason, but simply because, " I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” (”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”
In other words, atheism is, and always has been, at root, a problem of emotion, i.e. a problem of the heart, not a problem of the head.
Jeremiah 5:23 But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts; they have turned aside and gone away.
If it was simply a matter of reason and thought, then everyone should believe in God, since the science itself is clear. But alas, science does not deal with troubled hearts very well at all. On the bright side though, God specializes in healing broken hearts (and lives) if only people will turn to Him:
Matthew 13:15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'
bornagain77_{December 13, 2019
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