If Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent him

Quote from your post #2, BA77 : 'Children are born believers in God, academic claims – 24 Nov 2008 Excerpt: “Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.”' Another utterly fundamental insight, worthy of this board's William J Murray, that sounds like a platitude, though it is anyting but. On its own, it makes a mockery of ID scepticism, unless you have a congenital aversion to 'joining dots'. Axel

Gotta love Jerry. "If God had wanted us to fly he would have given us wings." But if He did create a sense organ for God, what Calvin referred to as "sensus divinitatus", then when Jerry refuses to use it, He had to create hell too. So Jerry there you have it, your argument doesn't prove too little but too much. Robert Sheldon

BA77, Excellent point. Just one clarification for this you wrote: “for whatever severely misguided reason” It’s a simple reason: in our natural condition we simply don’t want it God’s way, but ours. PaoloV

As to this comment from Dr. Egnor,

And, contra Coyne and Attenborough, God did endow us with an organ by which we may know Him. He endowed us with reason.

Not to knock our ability to reason in the least, but I hold that our ability to 'know God' is even more fundamental than our ability to reason. I hold our ability to 'know God' is on an 'instinctual' level rather than on a reasoning level (as important as reasoning is in our ability to 'know God'). The following research found that very young Children have a "predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose."

Children are born believers in God, academic claims - 24 Nov 2008 Excerpt: "Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3512686/Children-are-born-believers-in-God-academic-claims.html Out of the mouths of babes - Do children believe (in God) because they're told to by adults? The evidence suggests otherwise - Justin Barrett - 2008 Excerpt: • Children tend to see natural objects as designed or purposeful in ways that go beyond what their parents teach, as Deborah Kelemen has demonstrated. Rivers exist so that we can go fishing on them, and birds are here to look pretty. • Children doubt that impersonal processes can create order or purpose. Studies with children show that they expect that someone not something is behind natural order. No wonder that Margaret Evans found that children younger than 10 favoured creationist accounts of the origins of animals over evolutionary accounts even when their parents and teachers endorsed evolution. Authorities' testimony didn't carry enough weight to over-ride a natural tendency. • Children know humans are not behind the order so the idea of a creating god (or gods) makes sense to them. Children just need adults to specify which one. • Experimental evidence, including cross-cultural studies, suggests that three-year-olds attribute super, god-like qualities to lots of different beings. Super-power, super-knowledge and super-perception seem to be default assumptions. Children then have to learn that mother is fallible, and dad is not all powerful, and that people will die. So children may be particularly receptive to the idea of a super creator-god. It fits their predilections. • Recent research by Paul Bloom, Jesse Bering, and Emma Cohen suggests that children may also be predisposed to believe in a soul that persists beyond death. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/nov/25/religion-children-god-belief Justin Barrett - Why Would Anyone Believe in God? - Veritas at UC Davis - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I3GAaswAkc People Are Born with Religious Belief Argues New Book - By Jesse Singal Excerpt: "A controversial new book contends that we are all born predisposed to religious belief. Justin L. Barrett discusses his research, his feud with Richard Dawkins—and why he’s a believer himself." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/people-are-born-with-religious-belief-argues-new-book.html

In fact studies have now even established that the design inference is ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, especially including atheists, and that atheists have to mentally work suppressing their “knee jerk” design inference!

Is Atheism a Delusion? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ii-bsrHB0o Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html Richard Dawkins take heed: Even atheists instinctively believe in a creator says study - Mary Papenfuss - June 12, 2015 Excerpt: Three studies at Boston University found that even among atheists, the "knee jerk" reaction to natural phenomenon is the belief that they're purposefully designed by some intelligence, according to a report on the research in Cognition entitled the "Divided Mind of a disbeliever." The findings "suggest that there is a deeply rooted natural tendency to view nature as designed," writes a research team led by Elisa Järnefelt of Newman University. They also provide evidence that, in the researchers' words, "religious non-belief is cognitively effortful.",, "Design-based intuitions run deep," the researchers conclude, "persisting even in those with no explicit religious commitment and, indeed, even among those with an active aversion to them." http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/richard-dawkins-take-heed-even-atheists-instinctively-believe-creator-says-study-1505712

i.e. It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature and biology, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, live in denial of the purpose and/or Design that they themselves instinctively see in nature. i.e. The atheist's instinct to 'know God' is intact from their childhood but their ability to reason to 'know God' has apparently been corrupted by the falsehoods inherent in atheistic materialism and/or atheistic naturalism.

Romans 1:19-20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Matthew 18 2 Jesus invited a little child to stand among them. 3 “Truly I tell you,” He said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me.,,, 10 See that you do not look down on any of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Supplemental note:

Atheists’ Reasons For Not Believing In God Are Not Scientific, And More… https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/philosophy/film-night-with-philip-cunningham-atheists-reasons-for-not-believing-in-god-are-not-scientific-and-more/

bornagain77

Does this mean that some humans have such sense organs to detect divinity but others don’t? Actually, it gets even more complicated than that, because it would mean that some humans at some point somehow got those sense organs activated? Interesting concept. PaoloV