Atheism

A week ago I described here at UD my debate with atheist Lewis Wolpert. A blogger who goes by “Manic Street Preacher” sent me three unsolicited emails about his reaction to the debate, which was not positive. Denyse O’Leary briefly adverted to this blogger here. I finally had a look at what this blogger wrote. I can’t say I was impressed with the argumentation or erudition, but I do have to credit him for chutzpah. He writes (go here): //////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Dembski repeated the common straw man that scientists in Darwin’s day knew nothing about the inner workings of the cell, and thought that they were mere “blobs of protoplasm”. Well, Dembski should take a look this drawing out, which was Read More ›

Recently, a group of friends was mulling over coffee whether one should reject Darwinism in principle because it is the creation story of atheism. One friend argued that we should not reject it just because its staunchest proponents are mostly atheists.

I am not so sure. Consider this: Approximately 80 percent of evolutionary biologists (= Darwinists) are pure naturalists (no God and no free will, according to William Provine’s recent study). Welcome to the world of Minority Report, where social engineering seems completely reasonable, even “humane.” As in the “Humane Society.”

Now let me put a case to you: Read More ›

William Lane Craig is not only one of the world’s leading Christian apologists but he has actually made outstanding original contributions to philosophy. Yes, Craig publishes popular-level books. Unlike Dawkins, however, who in 20-years plus has been purely a popularizer (of Darwinian evolution, materialist science, and atheism), Craig continues to publish at the highest levels of the academy addressing scholars of the highest caliber (and gaining their respect). Dawkins, by contrast, increasingly appeals to the lowest common denominator. It’s in this light that Dawkins glib dismissal of Craig should be viewed:

[This just in an email from the skeptics:]

The Center for Inquiry is launching a Secular Celebrant Program!

CFI Secular Celebrant Training
December 5, 2009
Center for Inquiry Indiana
350 Canal Walk, Suite A, Indianapolis
Click here to register online.

Why a CFI Secular Celebrant Program?

As we move through life, we celebrate many occasions filled with joy and love, accomplishment and striving, loss and grief. Unfortunately, the choice of persons to conduct ceremonies for these occasions is usually between religious clergy and impersonal civil officials.

For the 16% of the U.S. population not affiliated with any religion,
this can be a traumatic experience.

They may be required to go through religious counseling and/or have religious references in their ceremony. They may be prevented from having their choice of music or readings as part of the ceremony. The local minister called on to conduct a funeral/memorial may preach a “come to Jesus” sermon or otherwise use religious references that are not in keeping with the worldview of the person being memorialized. Many of us have seen this done.

Wedding ceremonies, memorials, and other life passages are extremely important events—they are life’s milestones—and people should be able to have these ceremonies conducted in a manner and by a person of their choosing.

While some people of the secular worldview do not see a need for rituals and ceremonies of any kind, many feel that having a way of marking life passages is important. CFI feels that this is a personal choice and that secular ceremonies—and persons to conduct these ceremonies—should be available to those who want them.

Who can become a Secular Celebrant?

CFI Secular Celebrant Training is open to all, but additional steps are required of those wishing to receive CFI Secular Celebrant Certification and listing in the CFI Celebrant Directory.

Cost for all-day training workshop: $75.00 Read More ›

Time Magazine addresses the problem that neuroscientists who think the mind is real often discuss (John Cloud, October 13, 2009):

How people react to a medication depends in large part on how they think about it.

Exactly why the placebo and nocebo responses arise is a puzzle, but a fascinating article in Wired magazine noted earlier this year that the positive placebo response to drugs has increased during clinical trials over the past few years. The article speculated that drug advertising – which exploded after 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration began allowing direct-to-consumer ads – has led us to expect more from drugs. Those expectations, in turn, have made us feel better just for popping a pill. (Placebo responses can also occur simply when you book appointments with doctors[*] or psychotherapists[**].)

No surprise, really. If your problem is,

– *Why should I pay $159.95 plus tax for a medication? Dunno. Maybe some consumer research would pay off.

But if the question is Read More ›

In “God vs. Science Isn’t the Issue”, William McGurn (Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2009) notes,

In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today’s advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists view “outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia.”

The reporter was Gardiner Harris, and the object of his snark was Francis Collins—the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins is perhaps best noted for his leadership on the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the genetic makeup of man. But he is also well known for his unapologetic talk about his Christian faith and how he came to it.

Mr. Harris’s aside about dementia, of course, is less a proposition open to debate than the kind of putdown you tell at a private cocktail party where you know everyone in the room shares your orthodoxies. In this room, there are those who hold that God cannot be reconciled with what science has discovered about the human body, the origin of the species, and the beginnings of the universe. The more honest ones do not flinch before the implications of their materialist principles on our understanding of human dignity and human rights and human freedom—as well as on religion.

A couple of thoughts:

– Whoever said God vs. science was an issue? The whole idea was invented and is kept alive by materialist atheists, whose comments about “dementia” tell you something worth knowing.

– I have noticed that working scientists tend to be humble in the face of the facts, which is a good place to begin any type of true knowledge. The practitioners of scientism, by contrast, behave like cult members.* Recently, I was listening to one of them hold forth as an after-dinner speaker, proclaiming that on many science stories there is only one side. Well, that’s all right then; we can all just mindlessly shout in unison. Oh wait. Cue the pop science press on any subject to do with neuroscience. It is genuinely hard to imagine a neuroscience story so stupid they wouldn’t run with it. Read More ›

Leading Darwinist Richard Dawkins Dodges Debates, Refuses to Defend Evolution as The Greatest Show On Earth Seattle – Richard Dawkins, the world’s leading public spokesman for Darwinian evolution and an advocate of the “new atheism,” has refused to debate Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, a prominent advocate of intelligent design and the author of the acclaimed Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. “Richard Dawkins claims that the appearance of design in biology is an illusion and claims to have refuted the case for intelligent design,” says Dr. Meyer who received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge in England. “But Dawkins assiduously avoids addressing the Read More ›

THE END OF CHRISTIANITY: FINDING A GOOD GOD IN AN EVIL WORLD is now at the publisher’s warehouse. The official release date is November 1. I’ve received the US, UK, and international editions. They all look fantastic. I just learned from the publisher that 2,500 wholesale pre-orders are in the system (the biggest being from Costco and Wal-Mart). Of the twenty or so titles I have at Amazon.com, this one is selling the best (go here for the Amazon.com listing). So the launch is looking very very good. Stay tuned for a fun promotional website coming down the pike.

You’ve got to wonder what an organization that touts itself for critical thinking is thinking when it sponsors a BLASPHEMY CONTEST: Since Darwin is their god, it would be interesting to submit to this contest true statements about Darwin’s less than divine attributes.

Have a look at this story, going the rounds, and act with reasonable caution on its claims:

This grief about atheists being disliked or feared is the first stage in a program, very active just now in the United States, from which we, here in Canada, are now emerging into the light.

But some nations may still be descending further into the abyss. I name no names. You know who you are.

You an American? Why does this matter to you? Please listen: The US government has just put in “hate crime” legislation, explicitly enabling people who kvetch about hate.

That is why atheists need to portray themselves as victims of wrongdoing, even if no wrongdoing ever really occurred. Or else, it didn’t really matter. Studies like this help the atheists build a “victim” case. It would certainly help them protect Darwinism.

Can’t think of anything else that would protect Darwinism right now, actually.

Why do I say Canada is emerging from this? Traditional free Canadians of all stripes finally won a round when we got a government pooh-bah to acknowledge that outrages against citizens actually contravene our Constitution.

Wow! An outrage perpetrated by the government against a citizen contravenes our Constitution? So … we have a Constitution? Well yes, we do, … and it actually turns out to be higher class paper than the stuff we relegate to the john.

I had almost forgotten. I helped draft our Constitution in 1981. But no one minds that kind of thing any more. Unless … could there now be hope? Read More ›

In the Darwinism debates, ‘peer review’ is often invoked as a panacea – quite mistakenly, since these debates presuppose a much more free-ranging intellectual universe than the one in which peer review is effective. By ‘peer review’ I mean the process by which colleagues in the field to which one aspires to contribute vet articles before they are published. To be sure, peer review has its uses. It catches obvious errors of fact, curbs overstretched inferences and enables an author to phrase things so that the intended message is received properly.

In other words, peer review is a kind of specialist editing – full stop. It is not the mechanism by which disputes concerning overarching explanatory frameworks are usefully settled, since these typically involve judgements about the relative weighting given to various bodies of evidence that one would explain in a common fashion. Substantial disagreements over such judgements typically have less to do with factual issues than deeper, philosophical ones about what a field is ultimately about.

Read More ›

With my new book THE END OF CHRISTIANITY coming out shortly and with the publisher positioning it as a counterblast to the neo-atheist literature, I’m boning up on that literature as well as on the responses to it. Dinesh D’Souza’s response has much to commend it, but he drops the ball on evolution. Not only is his scholarship sloppy on this point (for instance, he fails to distinguish the younger C. S. Lewis, who largely had no problem with evolution, from the later C. S. Lewis, who did), but he justifies taking the side of evolution on the basis of an argumentum ad populum: I am not a biologist, but what impresses me is that virtually every biologist in the Read More ›

A new day is dawning when philosophers of William Lycan‘s stature start questioning materialism and making conceptual room for dualism: I mean to have shown here that although Cartesian dualism faces some serious objections, that does not distinguish it from other philosophical theories, and the objections are not an order of magnitude worse than those confronting materialism in particular. There remain the implausibilities required by the Cartesian view; but bare claim of implausibility is not argument. Nor have we seen any good argument for materialism. The dialectical upshot is that, on points, and going just by actual arguments as opposed to appeals to decency and what good guys believe, materialism is not significantly better supported than dualism…. Yet, I am Read More ›