Reddit reviews Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design
We found 4 Reddit comments about Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
NewMint ConditionDispatch same day for order received before 12 noonGuaranteed packagingNo quibbles returns
> ID theory makes several predictions, for example that "junk DNA" will turn out to be mostly "functional", that certain evolutionary explanations will fail, etc.
Also Philosopher of science [and atheist] Bradley Monton, has come to the conclusion that intelligent design deserves serious consideration as a scientific theory
When reading the profiles of ID'ers creation scientists, I frequently find conversions from atheism, deism, and theistic evolution, often only after years of research in their fields. Conversely, the deconversions I read occur at the beginning years of university, after young students reject the sham Hovind-style creationism being taught by people who know nothing about science. Senior NASA climatologist Roy Spencer described the trend:
> Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as 'fact,' I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism. ... In the scientific community, I am not alone. There are many fine books out there on the subject. Curiously, most of the books are written by scientists who lost faith in evolution as adults, after they learned how to apply the analytical tools they were taught in college.
Conversely, TalkOrigin's list of creationist deconversions is all high school and college kids. Seemingly because they encountered the tree of life, junk dna, and haeckel's embryology diagrams in the texbooks and were convinced by such "overwhelming evidence".
> I'm not dismissing eyewitness testimony completely, but to make an extraordinary claim, you should have extraordinary evidence,
This is both special pleading, AND self refuting. This is basically saying "well if I want to prove something I only have to get this much, but you have to do this much." It is also completely arbitrary on what crosses the line into "extraordinary claim". This claim is of itself a extraordinary claim, it holds to all claims ever held, which means you need extraordinary evidence. This is regurgitated to the point that I just want to vomit every time I hear it. Its a copout that people hear used by the popular neo atheists, and its high time its thrown out the window.
>There are many people throughout history who have claimed or have been claimed to do miracles. If you're going to tell me that they're all fake miracles but that Jesus' miracles were true, you need to provide extraordinary evidence of that.
Again, that assumes all the claims are equally backed, which they are not. There is no case such as the case of Christianity in the entire history of world in regards to historical reliability and support.
>But to start, if you want to list some supporting documents of Jesus' miracles, I'd love to see them. I was under the impression that he wasn't written about until a few decades after his death.
You have the 22 documents which have been complied into the new testaent, along with various others by people such as Tacitus, Pliny the younger, and other non christian sources.
>I was under the impression that he wasn't written about until a few decades after his death.
The earliest document we have is written 15-25 years after jesus's death, and that is a grand slam in ancient history. To have something that close to when it occured is absolutly remarkable. The earliest we have written on alexande the great is 400 or so years after his death. Plato, socrates, aristotle and many other historical figures have hundreds to thousands of years to the NT 15. Not to mention that due to the overwhelming amount of manuscripts the bible is LITERALLY the most accurate ancient historical document we have. It ranks at 99.5% accuracy with around 5000-6000 texts, the second best is the Iliad with 95% accuracy and 600 or so texts.
>Here's why "intelligent" design is bad: if someone designed us, he obviously didn't use his intelligence!
This is a ridiculous argument, EVEN IF the designer was just not capable of making us any better than we are, that doesn't refute intelligent design. Thats like saying " my car breaks down sometimes, therefor its not designed" But to throw out things such as sickness and disease as a argument on God not being able to make us better is to be ignorant of or just ignore basic christian theology.Basic christian theology is that in the beginning there where no problems, there was no pain or suffering, but because adam sinned pain and death entered the world. This is such a silly and flawed argument it takes every ounce of my being to not slam my head against the wall.
>ID is so obviously wrong that until you prove that God exists by some other method, it's not even worth considering.
Provide a argument.
>Whether you call it evolution or "things change over time", it's OBVIOUS that things change and adapt to their surroundings. The only things in question are those such as HOW, WHY, or HOW QUICKLY.
Nobody debates change over time, we debate if that change over time is capable of producing what we have today.
>The alternative, that God just zapped things into existence (which we seem to know from a book which is demonstratively NOT a reliable source for information)
Getting really tired of the bald assertions, stop just throwing out things and make a argument.
>If evolution is also part of certain types of intelligent design, then you've merely added a layer of complexity which is completely unnecessary. I see no need to fit God into the gaps of knowledge. Oh look, god of the gaps argument. Lovely, that showed up again.
People think that God used evolution to create us. I have already addressed the issue with this "God of the gaps nonsense"
>The problem with the whole ID thing is that it's NOT science. So, what makes you think it belongs in the realm of scientific discussion?
sigh Bald assertion, even atheists disagree with you.While not a subscriber to ID, atheist Bradley Monton wrote a book defending ID as valid science. source
Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel recently released a book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False[36] , writing in ch1: "In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair."
Its very irritating to try and have a discussion with somebody who is just copy pasting from the likes of Dawkins and Matt Dilahunty. Please try to do something more than bald assertions and snide remarks.
>Christianity has "felt a blow" by the fact that it's simply not a scientific theory/fact...well,
NOTHING IN HISTORY IS CONSIDERED A SCIENTIFIC FACT. Christianity is a historical claim. "The Persian war has felt a blow because its not a scientific fact" <---- Thats how ridicuouls you sound. History is outside the realm odf science, we can not test and observe the writing of declaration of independence or the wars fought be Alexander the great.Scientisism is a failed position, but apparently you didn't get the memo.
>Of course I think one of the more immediately vital things would be the question of whether you can define existence or necessary existence into an object.
God by definition is a necessarily existing being.
> If it's possible that God does exist, then by definition, it's possible that God doesn't exist, and by that logic, he would not exist in all possible worlds
But you already admitted that he is possible, and therefor exists. If he exists then its not possible for him to not exist. So you can either backslide in your position of him being possible (which would be very intellectually dishonest) or you can just own up and accept it.
>which we define as "necessarily existing",
Parody's of the argument have been address and drove into the ground. trying to say a necessarily existing tiger for example can't work, because by definition a tiger is reliant and composed of matter.
>nothing useful about that being
It would show us that he exists, which is what I am contending.
>If anything, it would actually disprove the possibility of the Christian God, but as to HOW it does that would depend greatly on the beliefs of the individual.
Bald assertion.
>By the way, when I said "logic", I didn't mean "any logic you choose". If you're curious, I was thinking of the cosmological argument. I don't know if a necessary being exists, or if one is indeed possible, or indeed if we can define that a being exists before we KNOW if one exists.
I am using logic, specifically I was using modal logic, which is a branch of logic that is used to deal with possibilities.
>I don't see how I'm being hypocritical. I agree that we cannot prove those things with 100% certainty but at least for the sake of discussion there are some things that we just have to assume are true.
But yet you want the Christians to provide certainty, thus the hypocrisy.
>I don't recall asking for 100% proof anywhere.
You asked for certainty
> But no, haha, special pleading for Christianity? No, I would hold any religious beliefs to the same standards.
The issue is that you hold Christianity to a different standard then your other worldviews. Its funny actually, you won't apply Christianity to the same level of scrutiny as you do other historical claims, because that would mean you would have no excuse for rejecting it.
> Evolution does not necessarily predict useless organs (although some do exist that are nearly so)
Yes it did. It seems you aren't well versed in the history of your theory. Like I said earlier, the evidence of this mistake is found in all the missing appendixes from surgeries not dealing with the appendix at all. If you really want me to I can find biology books that define vestigial as useless. That's neither here nor there. Why neo-darwin evolution is harmful because it first assumes things are left over evolutionary artifacts when it first appears so. It takes convincing to think otherwise. This train of thought has not only been consistently wrong, but also very harmful.
> If this is the case, then this is a rather poor example of falsifiability.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you don't have a phd in the philosophy of science. Therefore I'm going to point you to an authority on the matter.
Dr. Bradley Monton wrote a book on this subject Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design
> Can you elaborate on the first bit about distinguishing living from non-living?
ID infers design by detecting CSI. From the FAQ: Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [ L.E. Orgel, 1973. The Origins of Life. New York: John Wiley, p. 189. Emphases added.]
> Can you point out any single adjustment ID has undergone based on observations?
Why does an adjustment need to be made? There is room for adjustments, for example we may need to refine the algorithm we use to calculate CSI. Just because one may or may not have happened is inconsequential.
> As far as I can tell, front loading is an absolutely unproven hypothesis that in no way refines previous theory.
It's progressive.I thought that's what you asked for?
> If ID were open to experimental checking, then it would have admitted to being incorrect a long time ago. Whether by the fossil record that clearly shows numerous transitional species
First of all, ID is not incompatible with common descent. You mis-understand these very simple things because you, like most are unfamiliar with ID. Good news is it's in the FAQ which you and everyone else pretty much refuses to read. ID is a theory about the cause of complex biological information. Common descent (CD) is a theory about the modalities of implementation of that information. They are two separate theories about two different aspects of the problem, totally independent and totally compatible. In other words, one can affirm CD and ID, CD and Darwinian Evolution, or ID and not CD. However, if one believes in Darwinian Evolution, CD is a necessary implication.
Aside from that, if we went from bacteria, plankton, and algae to trilobite and brachiopods then new body plans and organs would have had to been created. These transitions should be evident in the fossil record. The darwinian model of evolution requires small and gradual changes thus demands an abundance of transitional forms between species. Yet the fossil record remains silent on this, rather than an abundance we have a dearth. The fossil record shows what happened -- an abrupt appearance of distinct and novel body plans. This supports the notion that quantum level programming was behind it all. Also classifying the so called transitional fossils may say more about our classification system than it does about any apparent lineage.
> or by vestigial traits such as the detached, minuscule, and useless leg bones found in many species of whales
Again, an evolution of the gaps type argument. Just like cave dwelling fish, there is most likely DNA in whales that's waiting to be turned back on when selection demands it. Vestigial? Maybe so, but probably only temporarily.
> This is a pretty weak assertion. By contrast, it is easy to point to internal leaked documents that show the outright religious objective of groups like the Discovery Institute, as well as the simple cut/paste manner in which certain ID documents were lifted from creationist texts.
ID and Creationism share some things in common, no doubt. They both start with the premise of a designer. However, where they branch off is ID doesn't base it's science off the bible but empirical evidence. It doesn't try to fit the bible into what it observes. This is evident by concepts such as front loading.