Recently Bill Dembski posted on the Origin of Life debate that took place at ASU not too long ago. At issue was the exchange that took place between Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter over the Tree of Life. Venter expressed a contrarian view, saying that he saw a “bush” instead of a “tree”. The article below from New Scientist I believe let’s us know just what Venter was thinking. So, for those involved in that original post here’s the article.
In The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies–How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, Michael Shermer explains it all for you. And Publishers Weekly’s reviewer offers As the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, author of Why People Believe Weird Things, and a columnist for Scientific American, Shermer is perhaps the country’s best-known skeptic. His position is as clear as it is simple: “When I call myself a skeptic I simply mean that I take a scientific approach to the evaluation of claims.” But now Shermer is interested not only in why people have irrational beliefs, but “why people believe at all.” Our brains, he says, have evolved to find meaningful patterns around us. But Read More ›
Anthony Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts. Professor Grayling has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects. In addition, he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society. One would therefore hope that if a man with such a distinguished background were to pen an attack on belief in God, it would be an intelligent critique. But one would be wrong.
In a recent email exchange with Professor Jerry Coyne (an atheist who, to his credit, is at least prepared to entertain the possibility of theism) over at Why Evolution Is True, Anthony Grayling contends that the notion of God is a logical absurdity:
[O]n the standard definition of an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent etc being – on inspection such a concept collapses into contradiction and absurdity…
and again:
But ‘god’ is not like ‘yeti’ (which might – so to say: yet? – be found romping about the Himalayas), it is like ‘square circle’.
Now, if Grayling is right, then the implications for Intelligent Design are obvious: the notion of an infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent Designer can be automatically ruled out.
But has Grayling established his case? Not by a long shot. Read More ›
A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one;
Charles Darwin
Consider that Darwin loved shooting birds. Shooting birds is an act that induces suffering for the bird and the bird’s family.
In the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting, and I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands.
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“How I did enjoy shooting”
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If there is bliss on earth, that is it”
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So Darwin thinks that an intelligent being would not inflict suffering on other creatures, yet he himself inflicts suffering for his own blissful pleasure.
Darwin implicitly assumes he himself is an intelligent being since he presumes to know what God ought to do in managing the affairs of creatures on Earth. Yet Darwin argues intelligent beings won’t cause suffering, yet Darwin himself, an intelligent being, does the very thing he claims an intelligent being wouldn’t do. Would Darwin therefore argue Darwin doesn’t exist because Darwin causes suffering in the world? His line of reasoning is most ironic.
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Nick Matzke unwittingly gives more evidence for the claims of ID proponent John Sanford. Sanford argues that species and genomes are slowly dying, and this cannot be arrested by natural selection, even in principle. Nick got his co-authored paper published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. Here is Nick’s commentary at Pandas Thumb Depending on the scenario, we reach a 75% “mass extinction” (for certain well-studied groups) within a few hundred to a few thousand years, if, as people say, “current rates continue.” This is a geological eyeblink. But this implies our best field observations do not suggest natural selection is originating more species! In fact they are dying faster than they are being replaced. One might argue humans are Read More ›
In response to Dr. Torley’s post here, commenter Graham asks: “Can we now drop the pretense and just declare UD/ID to be religious”? Well Graham, let’s think about that. ID theory posits that some observations are best explained as the result of the acts of an intelligent agent. The theory does not posit any particular agent and the agent need not be a deity. It could, for example, be the aliens Dawkins speculated about in his interview with Ben Stein. To be sure, many ID proponents believe the intelligent agent is God. But that is a possible implication of the theory, not part of the theory itself. Neo-Darwinian evolution (NDE) posits that unguided material forces are sufficient to produce all Read More ›
Let us set aside all of the other problems with the much touted Miller–Urey experiment (e.g., the “atmosphere” assumed in the experiment bears absolutely no resemblance to the early earth’s atmosphere). Indeed, let us go a step further and assume that scientists can develop a mix of chemicals that in fact accurately reproduces early earth conditions in every particular. And finally let us assume they can zap that mix of chemicals with electricity and produce organic compounds. So what? The paradigm under which Miller-Urey (and similar experiments) was performed is hopelessly stuck in a quaint nineteenth century view of the cell. Our ancestors believed the cell was, in the words of Ernst Haeckel, a “simple globule of protoplasm.” Today we Read More ›
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UPDATE: Since posting this article online, I have received an email from Professor Feser, in which he writes:
I have never accused any ID defender of heresy, and would never do so. To say to a theological opponent “Your views have implications you may not like, including ones that I believe are hard to reconcile with what we both agree to be definitive of orthodoxy” is simply not the same thing as saying “You are a heretic!” Rather, it’s what theologians do all the time in debate with their fellow orthodox believers.
I appreciate this clarification from Professor Feser, and I have therefore changed the title of this post, to make it less inflammatory. (I’ve removed one of the pictures, too.) I apologize for any pain I have caused Professor Feser; however, I should point out that in his latest article, Thomism versus the design argument, Professor Feser wrote: “ID is, from a Thomistic point of view, bad philosophy and bad theology.” Moreover, he approvingly cites Christopher Martin as writing that “The Being whose existence is revealed to us by the argument from design is not God but the Great Architect of the Deists and Freemasons, an impostor disguised as God,” and he later writes that “Paley’s ‘designer’ is really just the god of Deists and Freemasons and not the true God.” I hope the reader will pardon me for drawing the inference that Feser regards Intelligent Design as heretical. If that was not his intention, he really should have said so, very clearly, in his post. I have posted Professor Feser’s clarifying remarks in the interests of journalistic accuracy, and I welcome his statement that he regards the Intelligent Design movement as theologically orthodox.
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It’s been a long time since my last post at Uncommon Descent. The reason, for readers who may have been wondering, is that I’ve been working on a very long but interesting post aimed at showing, on scientific grounds alone, that a human embryo is just as important, morally speaking, as you or I. Uncommon Descent readers will find it especially interesting, because it employs a line of argument which will be familiar to people who accept Intelligent Design. I’ve nearly finished that post and it will be coming out soon. Several other posts are in the pipeline, so you’ll be hearing a lot from me in the next couple of weeks.
The topic of today’s post is Professor Edward Feser’s latest article, Thomism versus the design argument, over on his Website. The article makes a number of claims about Intelligent Design argument which are either irrelevant or demonstrably false.
Let’s start with Feser’s main beef with design arguments of any kind whatsoever: “The problem with these arguments is rather that they don’t get you even one millimeter toward the God of classical theism, and indeed they get you positively away from the God of classical theism.”
Here’s a simple question for Professor Feser. Which of the following is closest to the God of classical theism?
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Johnnyb has already posted on this here at UD, but I thought it might be good to have the full disclaimer at the new Map of Life website up for your consideration here: The message? First, that evolution is true. Forms of life change over time, or evolve, as successive generations inherit genetic, epigenetic or cultural information that is modified relative to their ancestors. Features of the changing environment in which organisms live favour differential survival of individuals with the most suitable (or ‘adapted’) modifications for living there. This leads to change in species over time, or their extinction if the environment changes too fast for ecologically well-adapted variants to become established. Of note, the science of evolutionary biology is Read More ›
Our good friend and fellow UD commentator Denyse O’Leary recently wrote about John Farrel’s recent musings on Forbes on what evidence for God might look like…or least what sort of evidence might make him sit up and take notice. Here I want to go a step further than Denyse did, and look at this question of evidence a bit more in depth.
Of course, the question of what might constitute evidence for the existence of God is nothing new in the never ending atheism/theism debate. The more outspoken atheists such as those of the so-called “new” atheist variety (i.e. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett et.al.) make quite a fuss about saying that there is no evidence for any sort of God or gods at all. Indeed, Dawkins now well-known diatribe against theism, The God Delusion, is a tour de force of proclaiming the lack of any sort of scientific evidence for the existence of God. Hence anyone still clinging to such a belief is doing so sans evidence and is thus suffering a ‘delusion’. But is that really the case? Read More ›
The Templeton Foundation has sponsored a new site called Map of Life. This site is coordinated by Simon Conway Morris, author of the book Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.
While Conway Morris is not a professed ID’er, his views are very closely aligned with that of Intelligent Design. Morris believes that by looking at evolutionary convergences, we can see the design of life. Morris thinks that there is a lot of life that is contingent, but that the massive convergences show that the contingencies are not the ruling factor, but rather that life’s plan (which Morris believes to have been designed by God) simply cannot be beat by any contingency.
Read More ›
Before the hard ID guys get here …
John Farrell, at Forbes (Mar. 15 2011), wonders, “What Would “Evidence” for God Look Like?”, observing that Jerry (thank heaven he exists, so I don’t have to invent him*) Coyne has got himself inspired. Yup.
University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne was inspired by a recent discussion between Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling to defend the notion that there could be scientific evidence that might persuade him to believe in God. Coyne has tangled in the past with other atheists among the science bloggers who on a-priori grounds dismiss any such possible evidence.
Maybe I’m foolish or credulous, but I continue to claim that there is some evidence that would provisionally—and I emphasize that last word—make me believe in a god. (One can always retract one’s belief if the god evidence proves to be the work of aliens, or of Penn and Teller). I agree, of course, that alternative explanations have to be ruled out in a case like this, but remember that many scientists have accepted hypotheses as provisionally true without having absolutely dismissed every single alternative hypothesis. If a violation of the laws of physics is observed, that would be telling, for neither aliens nor human magicians can circumvent those laws.
While I agree with Coyne, there are good philosophical reasons traditional theists would offer for not expecting to be able to find scientific evidence either. But that’s opening up a can of worms.
The big problem, here as elsewhere, is: What would people accept as evidence? Read More ›
Some guy here not convinced: In “Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?”(March 24, 2011), Colin McGinn notices materialist neuroscientist V.S. Ramachadran’s A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, Tell-Tale Brain: Neurology is gripping in proportion as it is foreign. It has all the fascination of a horror story—the Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain. All those exotic Latin names for the brain’s parts echo the strangeness of our predicament as brain-based conscious beings: the language of the brain is not the language of the mind, and only a shaky translation manual links the two. There is something uncanny and creepy about the way the brain intrudes on the mind, as if the Read More ›
I just couldn’t resist including these two quotes from a new posting on PhysOrg. It has to do with lateral gene transfer, and the study as to what kind of information is swapped between microbes. The bottom line, apparently, is that “lone” genes—rather than metabolic apparatus or interacting genes—are what is swapped most commonly between bacteria. But as the scientists describe their work, it’s really a wonder to listen to the imagery they invoke. Sit back and enjoy! Genes whose protein products rely on many partners to do their job are less likely to work properly in a new host, Gophna said. Transferring a highly connected gene into a new host is like importing a fax machine into a remote Read More ›
Just recently Dr. Dembski posted a conference on the origins of life. Craig Venter was asked how old he thought life was. He responded: “3.5 billion years old.” This was based on what was previously considered to be organic fossils dating from formations of that age. But now comes research showing that all the scientists were looking at were minerals. It would have been nice for the Darwinists to have the 1.5 billion years between what may have been extremely primitive “life” and the full-fledged appearance of bacteria 2 billion years ago—a whole 1.5 billion years for the complexity of bacterial life to have emerged (evolved). Poor Darwinists. Another day; another bad day for Darwinists! Here’s the link to the Read More ›