All that follows is from a comment WJM posted that deserves its own post:
KF said: “RVB8 is free to believe whatever he wants to believe…”
To which RVB8 said: “True.”
As a materialist, RVB8 should have said: “No, I believe whatever happenstance chemical interactions cause me to believe.”
RVB8 then spends some time trying to purchase some separation between his belief and faith and the belief and faith of the religious, as if they are two different things and come from two entirely different foundations, when – as an atheistic materialist – RVB8 must assume that his views, faith, beliefs and knowledge, and that of a religious person, are exactly the same and come from exactly the same source: they are the effects of happenstance chemical interactions generating a sensory or thought effect.
RVB8’s sensation that his views are not faith-based from a “religious mould” is just a sensation produced by happenstance chemical interactions in his body – which is exactly what is going on, from an atheistic/materialist perspective, in the religious believer. Such sensations have nothing to do with what is rationally or categorically true or accurate; they are just the sensations and words produced by whatever chemicals happen to be interacting in whatever particular manner in the physical body we call RVB8.
So, his attempt to distinguish himself, thoughts and views as something categorically different from the motivations and mind of the religious occurs in contradiction to his own worldview. Categorically, RVB8 believes and says and thinks what he does for exactly the same reason as the religious: happenstance chemical interactions that may or may not reflect anything “true” or “factual” about the world and/or ourselves.
He then posts what he thinks is an argument against the scientific legitimacy of ID theory, but why? He has no way of actually knowing of ID is scientifically legitimate or not, because “he” is, and “he” thinks, whatever happenstance chemical interactions dictate. His “knowledge”, from the atheist/materialist perspective, comes from exactly the same source as the IDist’s knowledge that ID is science – happenstance chemical interactions put those thoughts and sensations in his head.
Why is RVB8 arguing with IDists and the religious? Does he consider the effect of what chemistry and physics has produced in those people to be an erroneous result? How can the natural result of physics and chemistry be “erroneous”? They say and believe what they say and believe because of chemistry and physics – nothing more, nothing less – the same reason RVB8 says and thinks what he does.
So, every time RVB8 and other atheistic materialists argue with an IDist or the religious, they are actually arguing with chemistry and physics. One might as well attempt to argue a river out of its course or attempt to argue rain out of a cloud as argue a physical body into changing its physical course/output.
Every time an atheistic materialist argues, they are putting on display the self-contradictory, reason-annihilating inanity of their worldview for all to see. It doesn’t even matter what they are arguing about – to argue at all (for such a person) is an exercise in existential futility.
It is only under the assumption that RVB8’s worldview is incorrect that any argument can have any value. It is only under the assumption that humans have access to a supernatural mediator of truth and a supernatural capacity to override physical processes and effects into accordance with that truth that such arguments can possibly have any meaningful effect.
Make no mistake, RVB8 will continue to argue as if truth can be discerned in spite of physical system resistance, and as if that truth can forced upon our physical states, even while denying that any such commodity or capacity exists. He will argue as if knowing true things makes some sort of difference even while insisting that physics and chemistry don’t care about such things.
RVB8 is Don Quixote, ranting and raving at storms and earthquakes that their effects are wrong, wrong, wrong, begging the volcano not to erupt and the wind to stop blowing as if such appeals and arguments matter one bit to the physics and chemistry generating such behaviors.