Atheism

From an op-ed at Nature: Scientists might have made a difference, had they protested against laws that now threaten what can be taught in our classrooms, argues Brandon Haught Haught is complaining about an academic freedom law in Florida that restricts the use of science courses for propaganda purposes: Advocates of the law were widely quoted as claiming that evolution is just a theory and that anthropogenic global warming is in doubt. It would have been invaluable if scientists at local universities had issued simple statements: yes, evolution is a fact; the word ‘theory’ is used differently in science from how it’s used in casual conversation; and the basics of human-caused global warming need to be taught. Perhaps authoritative voices Read More ›

Or don’t they? From Phys.org: A unusual social study has revealed that atheists are more easily suspected of vile deeds than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists—strikingly, even by fellow atheists, researchers said Monday. This suggests that in an increasingly secular world, many—including some atheists—still hold the view that people will do bad things unless they fear punishment from all-seeing gods. The results of the study “show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct,” an international team wrote in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. And it revealed that “atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous.” The study measured the attitudes of more than 3,000 people Read More ›

From Paul Braterman at The Conversation, we learn stuff like: Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences, “The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.” Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness. Actually, string theory and multiverse theories are elaborate theories too; there is just no evidence for them. It simply isn’t the case, as Braterman claims, that Read More ›

These clips are taken from a video that was recently pointed to by CY and which I (with help of UD) embedded here. We need to ponder what is happening with our civilisation under the impact of evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers up to and including cultural marxist agendas (also cf. here), so pardon some painful reading: How have we come to a pass such as this? Schaeffer (suitably modified) has a suggestion or two: Where also the seven mopuntains of influence perspective championed by Wallnau et al (again as adapted) may also help us see how the community is shaped by influences such as this branch of cultural marxism, aka “critical studies”: What should we then do? This Read More ›

Readers may recall that NASA wonders how world religions would react if alien life were found. But Kirk Durston wonders at ENV whether atheism would survive. The probability of life spontaneously self-assembling anywhere in this universe is mind-staggeringly unlikely; essentially zero. If you are so unquestioningly naïve as to believe we just got incredibly lucky, then bless your soul. If we were to discover extraterrestrial life, however, then we would have had to get mind-staggeringly lucky two times! Like the forensic detectives at the lotteries commission, a thinking person would have to start operating on the well-founded suspicion that “something is going on.” On the other hand, the existence of life and beauty elsewhere in the universe is not at Read More ›

H’mm, pretty devastating — if true. But, is it true? I doubt it. Let us start with this response to a certain objector who keeps providing lists of typical objector talking points (and who evidently wishes to be able to do so on UD’s nickel, without effective response). Not on our watch, gentilhombre: >>13 kairosfocus May 30, 2017 at 1:17 am F/N: DI’s opening remarks on the annotated list of ID professional literature updated to March 2017: BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND ANNOTATED LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENT DESIGN UPDATED MARCH, 2017 PART I: INTRODUCTION While intelligent design (ID) research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. In 2011, Read More ›

. . . with yet another list of talking points.  Namely: >>The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no experimentation? The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no predictive qualities? The irony of a scientific idea, Intelligent Design’, that refuses to identify, or even look for, the Designer? My scientific idea has no irony, it does what it sets out to do; prove origins, prove life is one system linked by evolution, and prove life can be understood without holding God’s hand.>> Accordingly, I have replied: >>More failed talking points: >>The irony of a scientific idea, ‘Intelligent Design’, with no experimentation?>> 1 –> False. Cf Axe et al, cf Scott Minnich et al, cf Durston et Read More ›

Science historian Michael Flannery offers a vid link below. He notes, Two things are important to bear in mind: first, nothing in Hoyle’s rejection bears upon a teleological universe (Hoyle’s steady state can–and did–coexist with a purposeful and intelligently guided universe); and second, Hoyle’s rejection of the big bang still allows him to have very skeptical view of “safe” science and government power. The frequently repeated claim that Fred Hoyle was an atheist has been greatly exaggerated. While Hoyle had been an atheist early in his career, he didn’t end that way. This is made clear in his book, The Intelligent Universe (1983) where he argued that “the information-rich” universe was guided and controlled by an “overriding intelligence,” and in Read More ›

In the ongoing AJ vs ID discussion thread, major tangential debates have developed. One of these is on the IS-OUGHT gap, and it is worth headlining due to its pivotal worldviews importance (and yes, this is a philosophy issue). Let us start with Seversky, highlighting his key contention — which is commonly asserted: Sev, 261: >>Origenes @ 258 The matter seems very simple to me: because fermions and bosons are completely indifferent about morality, it is not possible to ground morality for atheists/materialists. You cannot logically derive “ought” from “is”. No one can, not even God. So, if our morality is God-given, how did He – or, indeed, any other being – derive it? Did He toss a coin?>> Origines, Read More ›

From Jerry himself at Why Evolution Is True: Reader Mark called my attention to the fact that John Templeton Foundation (JTF) has bestowed its annual Templeton Prize on someone who’s not only a deeply misguided religious philosopher, but also has promoted intelligent design and criticized naturalism. Thanks to Jerry for spelling that out… Having made clear that he does not attend the same Bible Study as Plantinga, Coyne then says, All of this casts doubts on Templeton’s claim to be increasingly down with science, for, after all, Plantinga is pretty much an intelligent design creationist. Although he’s waffled on this a bit in the past, he seems to have settled on ID creationism. I’ll quote Michael Ruse from The Chronicle Read More ›

It’s always a pleasure to host Dr Selensky’s thoughtful contributions. Here, he tackles the subject of artificial life simulations and the implications of modelling environments, assumptions, algorithms etc: ____________________________ On Modelling Spontaneous Emergence of Programs and Their Evolutionary Self-Improvement Evgeny Selensky Some time ago, I left a comment on Jeffrey Shallit’s blog. We exchanged a couple of phrases. In particular, I referred Jeffrey to the requirement for computational halting in models of artificial life. I praised David Abel’s work, which put him off. In response, Jeffrey recommended that I should “read and understand” the following article. I have done my homework now. However I’d like to post here at UD rather than visit Jeffrey’s blog again. Jeffrey of course is Read More ›

. . . through a case in point: >>tjguyApril 12, 2017 at 2:28 am rvb8 @2 Thank god (heh:), the obvious has been consigned to the rubbish bin of understanding, and we now prefer evidence, experimentation, and the unobvious, to the vacuous, empty, ‘obvious’. What is the problem with this way of thinking? He just assumes this “obvious” thing too will be relegated to the dustbin of understanding. That is what he believes – which is great, but it is nothing more than opinion/belief/worldview deduction, etc. right now. It is just as possible that the Materialist view of OoL will be relegated to the dustbin of understanding. And get this! He thinks that since we were able to learn how Read More ›

In a current thread on SJW invasions in engineering education,  in which yet another anti-ID commenter crosses over into troll territory, Charles does a very important worldviews and cultural agendas dissection. One, that is well worth headlining as *food for thought (as opposed to a point by point across-the-board endorsement): Charles, 51>>The point of the original post was that Engineering was being contaminated with Social Justice Warrior values & viewpoints. As any engineer knows, what makes engineering “Engineering” is the rigorous adherence to physical reality, analysis, and testing to design something that is reliably fit for purpose. As the author’s article at American Conservative elaborates, Prof. Riley’s SJW viewpoint is the antithesis of sound Engineering. kairosfocus summarized this point with Read More ›

No, we hadn’t heard of it either. At Cerebral Faith, Christian apologist Evan Minton explains, Recently, William Lane Craig debated atheist Michael Nugent in Ireland on the existence of God. One of the arguments that Dr. Craig employed was The Fine Tuning Argument for design. I’m going to assume that readers of this article already have some familiarity with the fine tuning, so in case you’re new to the God debate, or this website, or apologetics in general, I discuss The Fine Tuning Argument in this blog post here. In response to the Fine Tuning Argument, Nugent said the following: “Theists believe that this God fine tuned the physical constants of the universe to allow life. But while these constants Read More ›