What concerns me is that it is the
people who hold beliefs that are contrary to "good sense" who are personally denigrated, (called retard, moron, etc). In any debate, the better argument is generally held by those who do not descend to a) dishonesty and b) abuse and
ad hominem attacks. Creationists and other religious authoritarian believers tend to exhibit the former attribute, but if those arguing against that and in favour of scientific truth nontheless use the latter attribute, how is any impartial viewer supposed to decide?
Zappa said:
The man, Antony Flew, who was for decades considered "The most influential atheist philosopher in the world" thinks ID should be respected...perhaps you might to well to get a better understanding of ID theories.
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/index.cfm
There seems to be an invalid link between someone who
used to be an atheist (whether he was "the most influential atheist philosopher in the world" is rather a matter for debate) and we atheists taking his theory seriously.
As time goes on I find myself more and more amazed, as an ordinary, middle aged computer bod, at my ability to find the fallacious arguments and logic of people professing to be professional philosophers, whether theist or atheist. Flew says, "Well, I don’t believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to
that. But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence, is now much stronger than it ever was before." It's astonishing to me that any learned and intelligent person could derive "increased evidence for God" from
anything that has formed part of human progress over the past two hundred years or so.
FLEW: Absolutely. It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.
And there you have it. He has translated a complete misunderstanding of Evolutionary theory, attributed it to Dawkins (of all people) and then drawn the erroneous conclusion. If he'd actually
read Dawkins, perhaps he would not be making these erroneous arguments. Dawkins, first of all, is more aware than most people of the doubts in Evolutionary theory
expressed by Darwin himself - doubts that were subsequently removed (not necessarily for Darwin, who was dead by that time) by further research. The discovery of DNA itself - 52 years ago, Professor Flew! - is the "prototype organism" he believes that we have "overlooked", but so far from overlooking it, it is certainly the subject of the greatest study. Maybe we will never know the exact explanation for the existence of the first replicating DNA molecule, but just because we won't know it, doesn't make God's having created it any more likely.
Flew's "evidence" consists of inserting God into the interstices of human ignorance. The fallacy is plain - there are always an infinitude of things we don't know, but every time we learn something new, the fingerprints of God simply fade and disappear. There is no reason to suppose that will ever be other than the case. Consequently, it is folly and wilful blindness to attribute to the increase of our knowledge of the natural world , and consequently the reduction of the need for God, some putative and fallacious "increase" in the evidence for God. He actually has it all precisely reversed.
) could be considered subject material.