Saturday, March 10, 2012

Someone from the "Discovery" Institute reviews a book by an "atheist"

http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/2012/03/aping-mankind-an-atheist-professor-of-medicine-exposes-weaknesses-in-darwinian-tales-about-the-human-mind-10/

uhhhh there's something very very wrong with this article, and with the book if it's being quoted accurately:

Darwinism, therefore, leaves something unaccounted for: the emergence of people like you and me who are indubitably sighted watchmakers. If there are no sighted watchmakers in nature and yet humans are sighted watchmakers, in the narrower sense of making artefacts whose purpose they envisage in advance, and in the wider sense of consciously aiming at stated goals, then humans are not part of nature: or not entirely so.

So, apparently you can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural?  uh sure.  As long as you remain willfully ignorant of actual sciences, the God of the Gaps makes sense.


9 comments:

Unknown said...

I get the Answers In Genesis newletter because I wanna learn their thinking, or something. But sometimes (always) it doesn't make sense.

KRiss

Mike D said...

It's funny how they tack "atheist" on there like it gives that kind of stupidity more credibility.

L.Long said...

Sorry but that quote paragraph made no sense. All I got was because humans have eyes and can think we are not part of nature.
Which is a real load of BS.

LadyAtheist said...

painful isn't it?

B.R. said...

This excerpt just seems like more ridiculous question-begging. "We're the most advanced species on earth, so our origins must be magical". Plus, the whole "Watchmaker" analogy is really stupid and outdated. A watch is a purely mechanical, inorganic device that performs one function, and only one, until it runs down. But a biological organism? A million times more complex than the most complex watch. Throw it into a new environment, and it can actually change it's biology to adapt. A watch just sits there. It can't mate, or breed, or mutate. It can't eat, hunt, look for food, or produce it's own. It can't even move.

There's religious "logic" for you. Evolution-deniers are stupid indeed if they can't even update their arguments every few generations or so.

B.R. said...

I forgot DNA. That actually makes organisms billions of times more complex than the most complex watch.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lady Atheist,

I hold to fine-tuning and complexity but I don't think that proves God did it. As William Dembski has stated: I.D. doesn't force one in the direction of God. I take it that there is an immanent principle or law within the universe that fine-tunes it. I do this for a couple of reasons. If there is an invisible God that created everything then He would have to be half insane because of the kinds and large quantities of suffering of animal and human life. He would be an abusive Deity. Second, the fine-tuning argument depends or assumes the cosmological argument. If the cosmological argument doesn't go through then neither does the fine-tuning argument. I think I have a pretty good argument that shows that the universe couldn't have had a transcendent personal cause. Reguardless, all cosmological arguments for God to date have failed. I get my critiques of the arguments from such Christian philosophers as Michael J. Murray. He has dismantled the cosmological argument. As for human and animal conciousness. That's a very complex subject. The "mind-body" problem. I'm not sure what the think of that for I haven't studuied it in depth. I'm very ignorant of that subject. Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post. Thanks for sharing. Take care.

LadyAtheist said...

Hi Cole

The problem with the fine-tuning argument is the Earth-centric focus. If some force fine-tuned Earth to be the special home to special creatures, why bother with all those inhospitable planets and solar systems? Why not say that Jupiter was fine-tuned to create an environment suitable for a large storm to travel around unimpeded? Who's to say that the storm on Jupiter isn't a sentient being with a special relationship to a deity?

It's hubris to think everything in the universe was fine-tuned just for us.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lady Atheist,

I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree then. Although I think we can both agree that God didn't do it. As strange as it may seem I'm an atheist who believes in the fine-tuning of the universe. I also hold that evolutionary changes take place but not by natural selection alone. I also believe that the origins and development of life are being guided or directed by natural law(s). Michael Denton is suppose to be working on a new book showing evidence for some of this. I have a paper he wrote on my blog about protein folds. Anyway, good talking to you!