Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

One day, a longtime agnostic suddenly realized that Darwinism couldn’t be true

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As Jonathan Witt tells it:

“I realized I had been conned,” he said. “I felt there was something dishonest about the huge claims made by Darwinism compared with the negligible evidence to support the thesis.”

He was so alarmed by this conclusion that he felt impelled to write a book as a sort of warning call to humanity: “Beware! You have been fooled!” …

Jonathan Witt, “In a New Book, Longtime Agnostic Dumps Darwin” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 2, 2021)

The author is U Durham humanities prof Neil Thomas and the book is Taking Leave of Darwin (Discovery Institute, 2021)

Critics of intelligent design will have a hard time maligning Thomas as a “creationist in a cheap tuxedo.” He isn’t religious and is a longtime member of the British Rationalist Association, a group known for religious skepticism.

The book traces the evolution debate across millennia, with Darwin and Darwinism emphasized as a crucial pivot point in the story. The author details key objections raised early on against Darwin’s theory and shows that those objections have been explained away, but never really rebutted.

Jonathan Witt, “In a New Book, Longtime Agnostic Dumps Darwin” at Evolution News and Science Today (August 2, 2021)

It’s not clear to me, (yer news hack,) why an atheist or agnostic must be a Darwinist anyway. Design in nature can be understood in a variety of ways, theistic or non-theistic. It is there but it doesn’t come with a label.

Darwinism has certainly been used to promote atheism (cf Richard Dawkins) but that does not force everyone who doubts or disbelieves in conventional religions to be a Darwinist. Design in nature is easy for many traditions other than Darwinism to account for but that in itself is not a recommendation of one tradition over another.

Anyway, the book has some interesting and thoughtful endorsements.

Comments
Sev
No, there is no reason why a person cannot believe both in God and evolution
Darwin attempted to remove God from the theory of evolution. He wanted it to be totally materialistic, where God was entirely unnecessary. But Darwin doesn't have the final say on what "evolution" is. Even some Biblical Creationists accept modification by natural processes. Theistic evolutionists, however, are (usually) 100% Darwinist, and therefore materialist in evolution and vague about what role God has in the process. Some, like Ken Miller, will say that God had virtually no role and did not even know what would happen in the course of life on earth (thus evolution was totally random & materialistic) and that human beings were not planned, but just an accidental output of evolution. That's just accepting the atheistic model and then tossing God in there at the end without rhyme or reason.Silver Asiatic
August 3, 2021
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CD
I think, that if God does in fact exist, he or she will have a great sense of humor, much more so than the dour and humorless human creatures that claim he or she created….
Of course, God has the best sense of humor of all. Every good characteristic found in human beings is found to the ultimate perfect degree in God. Joy, laughter, mirth (which actually is a necessary virtue) are aspects of human life - created by God. So ... He created the ability to laugh. And to have fun. Take a look at baby kittens frolicking. They're laughing - and doing a good job of being comical. But God gave the ability to weep also - as Jesus Himself did.Silver Asiatic
August 3, 2021
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AaronS1978 @6,
I’m really starting to wonder if it’s just a bot.
Good point! If so, Turing would be proud. The way we can sometimes tell the difference is that bots will come up with tired and irrelevant stereotypes rather than staying on subject. Bots also quickly resort to ad hominem attacks. So far, the evidence seems to be in favor of your bot hypothesis. -QQuerius
August 3, 2021
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AaronS1978 #6 I think, that if God does in fact exist, he or she will have a great sense of humor, much more so than the dour and humorless human creatures that claim he or she created....chuckdarwin
August 3, 2021
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Yeah, bingo. Many say they follow the science, but if science isn't going the direction they want, they just make stuff up and tell everyone to follow the science. This could be called ideological poisoning. It's why, for example Marxists jumped on punctuated equilibrium. As a Christian filled with joy and amazement that God loves us all so much that He'd die for us, I have to be careful not to do the same in science. This means that scientific discoveries and conclusions must always be considered tentative and that the models we create are always used pragmatically and never confused with "the truth." Intelligent Design is simply a more reliable model that enables science to advance more rapidly than the doctrinaire, ossified, and racist Darwinian model. Take "junk" DNA and "vestigial" organs as two examples where Darwinist assumptions were flat out wrong and Darwinism resisted research into non-coding DNA and ductless glands for many decades as a result. Could Intelligent Design accept a degree of biological "fine tuning" through natural selection? Of course. Does such fine tuning account for all life on earth from the beginning? Reliable evidence is simply not there. -QQuerius
August 3, 2021
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chuckdarwin doesn't know the definition of religion and it shows. Why do ID's detractors always "argue" from ignorance?ET
August 3, 2021
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Chuckdarwin https://evolutionnews.org/2021/07/jordan-peterson-springs-the-trap-of-scientism/ Again I don’t like quoting evolution news but it’s interesting to see that even Lawrence Krauss (super atheist) says about the same As lieutenant commander data Chuckdarwin’s responses to seem programmed and sometimes a little bit too in line with what’s being posted on the other sites It often doesn’t make any points at all and it just shows up to mock people and their views I’m really starting to wonder if it’s just a botAaronS1978
August 3, 2021
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Chuckdarwin But of course ID is not religion, it just appears to be religion….
Everything is religion and Atheism Church is served by the most obedient parishioners . Religious sentiment doesn't disappear when someone become atheist it's only replaced God with Golden calf in atheist's values hierarchy.Lieutenant Commander Data
August 3, 2021
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News Flash: Humanities Professor Dumps Darwin After Nightmare!!!! Epiphany Rocks Biologists Worldwide... With the publication of Meyer's latest tome (Return of the God Hypothesis), the gloves are finally off and the ID crowd reveals that the Christian God is the intelligent designer. But of course ID is not religion, it just appears to be religion....chuckdarwin
August 3, 2021
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seversky:
No, there is no reason why a person cannot believe both in God and evolution, although I find it ironic that the venom expressed by some here towards theistic evolutionists is almost greater than that directed towards atheist/materialists.
Clueless. Totally clueless. The bulk of the debate is whether or not evolution proceeds via intelligent design vs blind and mindless processes. Dr Behe says God guided evolution. Theistic evolutionists deny that we can detect actual intelligent design. That makes them worse than atheists because they deny what they know to be true.ET
August 3, 2021
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Clash of ideals really, it reminds of Catholics vs Protestants I think the main area of contention is that theistic evolution dances with the Darwinian evolution a little too close for comfort Often they don’t question some of the science and immediately except what ever. Almost out of fear that they will be labeled as creationists. I am on biologos quite often and they rarely criticize or act skeptically of the science they put up I feel if they were a little bit more critical of every science article a lot of that venom would disappear But Bio logos has a tendency to bend the knee to evolution any time something new comes up without questioning it And then there was the whole incident involving with Swamidass and Adam and Eve Of which I side with the fellows of UD over those at biologistsAaronS1978
August 2, 2021
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No, there is no reason why a person cannot believe both in God and evolution, although I find it ironic that the venom expressed by some here towards theistic evolutionists is almost greater than that directed towards atheist/materialists.Seversky
August 2, 2021
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