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Barry, it seems like the smart atheists are MOSTLY dumping Darwin now …

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In “Irony” (July 15, 2012), Barry Arrington observes,

Even among materialists Neo-Darwinian Evolution is beginning to crumble under the cumulative weight of the many absurdities it requires its adherents to accept. Yet just as the theory is beginning to fall apart among honest materialists, we have the theists at Biologos feverishly trying to prop up a theory that has been aptly described as the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.

Over the weekend, I was editing a chapter of a forthcoming book that – among other things – identifies the smart atheists who are not picking up their tickets to the Breakfast at Delmonacos.

It’s got to the point now where an atheist or agnostic doubting Darwin isn’t even news exactly. It’s more like jottings:

Professor Plott

Says Darwin’s rot

And God is nonsense too …

Hmmm. Darwinism is “aptly described as the greatest engine of atheism ever invented” but that nowadays mainly turns out to be true for people who don’t care much about the quality of the ideas that promote that view. People who arrived at Darwinism/atheism when they were fifteen and never departed thence, and never really felt they needed to think about the evidence. 78% of evolutionary biologists are pure naturalist atheists, and many have tenure (a license to stop thinking). A surprising number of the rest are Internet trolls, and some are male fishwives.

So we end up with, on Darwin’s side, people who can listen to claims that apes reason like humans” without ever once wondering why they are still screeching in the trees then?

People who can listen to fairytale claims about complex reasoning among horses – and no switch is tripped.

They do not wonder why origin of life studies or consciousness studies not only go nowhere, but there is nowhere for them to go, given their premises?

Why one “missing link” after another seems to end up joining one side or the other? Neanderthal man, for one, has persistently refused in recent years to be as stupid as is needed. The latest is, he has complained to the shop steward about harassment.

This stuff is surely why the smart atheists are checking out. So, re Biologos, why are some Christian notables fronting Darwin to Christians when the people most likely to be attracted to him realize he is a bad investment?

Here are some thoughts:

– They may be people who make bad investments generally. In, for example, “anything goes” theologies. And it turns out congregation-wise, everybody goes. Elsewhere. The thing is, people who are prone to bad investments tend to encourage others to do the same.

– Malcolm Muggeridge noted many years ago that some people jockey strenuously for positions in systems that are actually collapsing. He cited interoffice wars for position in the dying British regime in India in the late 1940s. There is a rough good sense in their approach. The higher the position you attained in the now-dead system, the more seriously people may have to take you later (anyway). Those could well be the people waiting for the next bad investment.

– They may just not understand their position. For example, we are informed that the BioLogians say they are “not Darwinists.” And then behave exactly as if they are, refusing to explicitly condemn by name any Darwinist nonsense whatever. Content to claim that they are against “scientism.”

Even a child can see that if they were really not Darwinists, they would start doing as many observant atheists are doing: Condemn the nonsense claims specifically, by name.

I think that of the three suggestions listed above, the first is most likely. They make bad investments and sign others on too. And they don’t notice anything unusual because, for them, a situation like this is not unusual.

Comments
The validity of evolution is not in dispute. But then, what else would be expect from a biased source that cites itself (which site no sources) as a source?DVDBach
July 16, 2012
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More psychoanalysis from Denyse. Psychoanalysis, like creationism, is very 19th century. So "Many observant atheists" are now condemning Darwinism? Oh, nonsense. Completely invented. Denyse couldn't name three atheist biologists who dismiss universal common descent. A few biologists might want to add naturalistic non-Darwinian processes, like horizontal gene transfer or epigenetics, all of which are observed. Big deal.Diogenes
July 16, 2012
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