Atheism

Michael Dowd, of Thank God for Evolution! fame, has had a vision, brethren. Of how to revive liberal churches, by holding emotionally charged “evolution” revivals. But let him tell it:

It all began when a friend alerted us to an interview with Harvard’s esteemed biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author: Edward O. Wilson. Wilson’s book, The Creation, had just been released. Here is an excerpt from an interview that appeared in The Washington Post:

It’s hard to picture, if you know him only by his scientific reputation, but E.O. Wilson confesses it freely: He loves watching preachers on television. Read More ›

… chimes in with them as they were portrayed in the recent article in Christianity Today (June 2011).

Maybe they aren’t really like that, to judge from Falk’s recent sponge over.

But Ruse is. At Huffpo, he says: Read More ›

Does ” Oxbridge-on-Thames” provide a test of the social power of new atheism?

Here, we noted that AC Graying was beginning to take heat, alongside Richard Dawkins, for refusing to debate American Christian apologist William Lane Craig, as other new atheists have done. He’s in the news again, as the organizer of a private, very expensive private New College of the Humanities (18,000 quid a year), where Richard Dawkins will have a key role: Read More ›

Here (06/09/2011), Wintery Knight pursues the question of why AC Grayling, as well as Richard Dawkins won’t debate William Lane Craig, complete with clips. Grayling gives as his reasons:

Having been invited to debate Craig, Professor Grayling replied: 

I am not interested in debating Professor Craig, though if he would like to co-opt me for the publicity for his tour – I would be happy to debate him on the question of the existence of fairies and water-nymphs. But as for the very uninteresting matter of whether there is just one god or goddess and that it can be debated despite the claim that it is transcendently ineffable and unknowable – that is an empty prospect, hence my declining the invitation. –

Which prompted this response from a popular British TV presenter: Read More ›

Here’s my Salvo “Deprogram” column, on atheists who are not Darwinists:

To hear it from the New Atheists, Darwinism is the atheist’s creation story, the Genesis from which no Exodus follows. As Richard Dawkins is often quoted as saying, Darwinism enables an atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. If so, there are a number of atheist and agnostic thinkers out there who are intellectually deprived. Or are they?[ … ]

Other atheists get off the train to nowhere at the origin of life or the origin of the human mind. In his famous essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel provides a sensitive account of the limits of human understanding of animals’ minds.5 Less well known is the fact that he named Steven Meyer’s ID-friendly Signature in the Cell (Harper One) a Book of the Year for 20096 and that he questions whether human intellect is explicable on Darwinian principles.7 Yet this is a man who also says, “I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”8

– “Neither God Nor Darwin? Atheists & Agnostics Who Dare to Doubt,” (Salvo 17, Summer 2011)

I offer a suggestion about what an atheist or agnostic needs to make it work.

Also: Non-profit Salvo has just received a matching grant of $50,000, so if you donate a bit, thanks to the magic of a wealthy donor, your dollar becomes two – but only until June 30. Be magical this summer.

Read More ›

An individual who shall most certainly remain nameless insists on foisting on my notice the claim that 60% of up-and-coming new atheist leaders hail from Girth Central and thus demonstrate what happens when you diss the Bread of Life and grab the bread on the side. … Read More ›

“Seriously, aren’t atheists ashamed of P.Z. Myers, asks Reb Moshe Averick (the “maverick”rabbi and author of The Confused, Illusory World of the Atheist), for The Allgemeiner (May 29, 2011):

One of my mentors, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, (of blessed memory), made the following, rather sobering, observation about human nature: “Nobody ever allowed something as trivial as facts and logic to interfere with their agenda. If the facts and logic don’t fit, then the facts and logic will just have to fend for themselves.” Nowhere do we find more glaring examples of the human predilection for intellectual corruption than when we examine the writings and lectures of an ideologue who is driven, not by a burning desire for truth, but by a burning desire to further his or her own agenda.

Having said that, we are now ready to introduce one of the more zealous and outspoken (read: tiresome and obnoxious) advocates of the Darwinian/atheist worldview, P.Z. Myers. Read More ›

… death ends all – my current MercatorNet article (26 May 2011):

… most people have not assumed that we survive death because they are “afraid of the dark,” as Hawking supposes. On the contrary, the oldest beliefs usually include ancestor worship, which includes propitiating the continuing spirits of unpleasant ancestors for fear they will otherwise harm us. Or, as Beauregard and I put it [in The The Spiritual Brain] , in such a society the problem isn’t that everyone dies, but that no one does. (p. 48)  Read More ›

One of the major difficulties I have as someone with one foot planted in the theistic evolution camp is discussing the general concept of evolution or Darwinism.

A large part of the problem is with the simple definition of the words – where one person takes Darwinism to mean “a process totally unguided and unforeseen by God in anyway”, another means “a process of variation and selection, where both variation and selected may be or (with some TEs) in fact were ultimately or proximately guided and foreseen by God”, still another means “a process of variation and selection, where the ultimate causes of variation and selection are not considered because that’s outside of science” to otherwise, etc. Navigating this is a headache, and one that constantly reappears.

But another conceptual problem is this: The claim that atheism and evolution are utterly intertwined. Now, this comes in a few forms. Sometimes the claim is that if evolution is true – let’s say, if it’s true that the first man had biological precursors – then theism must be false. More popular is the claim that theism and evolution can both be true, but theism can also withstand the falsity of evolution. Atheism, on the other hand, has a dire link to evolution: If atheism is true, then evolution must be true.

This latter view seems popular, both in and out of the ID tent. And it’s a view I deeply disagree with. My reasons follow below the cut.

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Here vjtorley cites the unspeakable Johansson case (Sweden), asking “Are secular humanism and freedom of thought ultimately incompatible?” The short answer is: Of course.

Secular humanism, as normally argued, denies the reality of the mind. On that, note this item at New Scientist on illusions, real and imagined*, which dramatically dismisses free will and just about everything else,

This might come as a shock, but everything you think is wrong. Much of what you take for granted about day-to-day existence is largely a figment of your imagination. From your senses to your memory, your opinions and beliefs, how you see yourself and others and even your sense of free will, things are not as they seem. The power these delusions hold over you is staggering, yet, as Graham Lawton discovers, they are vital to help you function in the world.

– Graham Lawton, “The grand delusion: Why nothing is as it seems” (16 May 2011)

The only freedom possible, if this folly were true – and the secular humanist believes it is – Read More ›

“Thank God for Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow!”

—Francisco J. Ayala

2010 Templeton Prize-winner; Past President of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

He and other luminaries recommend you get saved by evolutionizing your life here.

The science of how to decode human behavior, eliminate self-judgment, and create a big-hearted life of purpose and joyful integrity.

Benefits include

You’ll no longer feel empty or flat from the service you provide others. It will be as if the Universe has put its stamp of approval on your life, and you will know the thrill of living in right relationship to reality and in alignment with your highest values.

In other news: Believing that “the Universe has put its stamp of approval on your life” is the surest route to being a world class shothead. Read More ›

but by Oxford “philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist” Daniel Came:

… for refusing to debate William Lane Craig, who has debated many “new atheists”.

Prof Dawkins maintains that Prof Craig is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own.

[ … ]

Prof Craig is a research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in California, and the author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles on Christianity.

He has debated with leading thinkers including Daniel Dennett, A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Wolpert and Sam Harris.

[]

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights ….”

– Tim Ross, “Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God,” The Telegraph (14 May 2011)

Toldjah. When Dawkins was riding high, he could get away with this. Not any more: Read More ›

Discussion continues apace at “Agnostic & Non-Theistic ID Proponents/Sympathizers– Speak Up. One person wanted to know why “nullasalus” does not solicit the views of non-theist critics of ID: Because that’s not what the thread is about. This is “non-theist sympathizers week” here at UD. Next week will be too, if you want to talk more. Also, one non-theist who came to doubt Darwin – who might have been missed in the discussion at – Speak Up – is British science broadcaster David Rattray Taylor (d. 1981), author of posthumously published The Great Evolution Mystery. Here’s the kind of thing that he noted. Book much recommended.

Forgotten, that is, in this current discussion of atheist/agnostic sympathizers with ID?

Scruton seems to be of no fixed religious views, has a great aversion to the “new atheists” (based on the sharp contrast between their street thug culture and the civilized atheism of his youth), and has written thus about their “artistic Darwinism”:

Over the last two decades, however, Darwinism has invaded the field of the humanities, in a way that Darwin himself would scarcely have predicted. Doubt and hesitation have given way to certainty, interpretation has been subsumed into explanation, and the whole realm of aesthetic experience and literary judgement has been brought to heel as an “adaptation,” a part of human biology which exists because of the benefit that it confers on our genes. No need now to puzzle over the meaning of music or the nature of beauty in art. The meaning of art and music reside in what they do for our genes. Once we see that these features of the human condition are “adaptations,” acquired perhaps many thousands of years ago, during the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we will be able to explain them. We will know what art and music essentially are by discovering what they do.- “Only Adapt: Can science explain art, music and literature?” (Big Questions Online, December 9, 2010)

Problem is, Read More ›

You might have a hard time explaining your interest to “new atheist” Sam Harris. Having just received a courtesy hard cover copy of his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press, 2010), I looked at the index and noted that the reader seeking information about intelligent design theory is referred to: Creationist “science.” Harris may well have written the index himself (?).

Well, following the page references, on p. 34, in the midst of a discussion of why it is wrong to think there is moral equivalence between typical human views of murder and Jeffrey Dahmer’s*, we read, Read More ›