Atheists, anti Intelligent design folks...?

Question

I have nothing against evolution but I have been disgruntled by the way in which anti God sentiments have led to the bashing of intelligent design. It is only frequent when one hears a lay person without even a high school knowledge of biology talk about how anyone who questions evolution is a nutter. Then there are biologists such as Dawkins who use this ignorance to persuade the the majority of his view point.


see http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

Its a list of 600 scientists from all around world from cambridge, Harvard, Mit,etc who feel darwinism should be re examined on account of the fundamental thesis of Intelligent design -the complexity of life.


My question is what do you think of this list,does it change your viewpoint on this issue.

Answer 1

80% of the world has a distorted world view. Of the scientists, the majority who are non-believers are the astronomers.

I am an atheist because I don't believe in deities and the word atheist describes this state of disbelief. I don't believe in deities because no argument or evidence presented to me in support of their existence has been convincing.

1. Biology adequately describes life and emotions without appealing to mystical invisible dieties

2. Astronomy adequately describes the formation of stars/planets/universe/etc without appealing to mystical invisible dieties

3. Geology adequately describes the evolution of the Earth, land formations, etc without appealing to mystical invisible dieties

4. Psychology describes the human psyche better than appealing to mystical invisible dieties

5. Appealing to mystical invisible dieties is an appeal to ignorance

6. There's no physical evidence for the existence of mystical invisible dieties

7. A myriad of mystical invisible dieties have been posited by emphatically superstitious societies and have been proven to be products of overly active imaginations (today's religion is tomorrow's myth) and ignorance.

8. Believing in mystical invisible dieties seems to become quite absurd when those who posit the mystical invisible dieties begin explaining why and how they exist in the face of contradictory physical evidence.

9. As scientific knowledge increases, the role of the mystical invisible dieties oddly gets pushed further and further back.

10. Mystical invisible dieties are mystical invisible dieties (ie can never be found by empirical methods)

It's interested to read the latest in neuroscience and cognitive science which has explored the nature of religion itself: why do people become religious, what do religious beliefs do for people, and what is the origin of religion itself. The quick answer is the wiring in the limbic system of our brains, that primitive remnant of our reptilian past. The cerebral cortex is a more recent additions, say the last 100,000....where our logical and rational thinking resides..the place where we atheists have found our basis in reality.

Answer 2

1. bashing intelligence design has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of god it has nothing to do with atheism. Scientists are well aware that the existance of god is a question which can not be anwered by science.
Bashing of intelligent design is based on the fact that it claims to be a scientific theory when it is provably not. Intelligent design has to my knowledge failed to advance any testable hypothesis. Look at the link for a discussion of the publication "record" of the discovery institute.

2. the list calls for a reexamination of dawinian evolutions and is not a refutation
b) evolutionary theory has advanced past the strictly darwinian theories
c) current evolutionary theories are anyway under constant reexamination, that is science and the list is superfluous. While details/mechanism are under discussion the basic fact of evolution has despite of constant attempts not yet been disproven.
d) the truth in science is not by majority vote. If you get 1000 scientists stating that the earth is flat, that doesn't make the earth flat. In addition there are probably tens of thousends of scientists who will support current evolutionary theory (see second link).

Answer 3

Well, here's the thing.
The most important thing.
Intelligent Design simply isn't science.
And thats regardless of whether or not I.D. is true.
Now, you might be able to use some of the I.D. 'philosophy' in science, as a critique of evolution, but even if, somehow that proved evolution was wrong, it still wouldn't make I.D. science.

The gist is that every question you ask about I.D. ends up being answers with 'because'.
In evolution, I might say "Why do zebra's have stripes?"
To which evolution might answer:"Because stripes make it harder for predators to judge the distance of their prey. So, over time, the zebra developed stripes because those with stripe-like colorings lived longer"

In I.D., the end of any question is "because the designer made it that way". That really tells you nothing. It is, in a way, useless information from a scientific perspective because, well, you can't make predictions based on it, or get any greater understanding of the world based on it.

To make matters worse, the vast majority of I.D. supporters are just covering up their creationist views in a cloak that looks like science.

Worse still, while I.D. claims to not require God (which would be Creationism) since the 'designer' could just be some very advanced alien species, it HAS to come back down to God.
Why?
Because if we were built by aliens, then who were they built by? Other aliens? And, if so, we go back and back and back, but this line can only take you one place:the supernatural/God.
And if they weren't created by other aliens, then there's no real reason that we couldn't have occurred similarly.

And, finally, once you realize that I.D. isn't science, and that it really does have to call upon God, you get people very angry because, by bringing it into, say, schoolrooms, you are forcing religion upon children.

so, thats why.

Answer 4

The list claims that the people signed a statement that says, "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural
selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful l examination of the
evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged," not necessarily as your question puts it, "re examined on account of the fundamental thesis of Intelligent design." It doesn't seem clear to me that being skeptical implies this. Skepticism is generally a good thing for a scientist.

I think a list of scientist with PHDs is more of an appeal to authority than an argument. Many of the scientist do not hold PHDs in biology.

Answer 5

Since your question is about the list here is what I observe:
The list contains people from all over the world. Some are professors but many just have a PhD. Many of them come from fields completely unrelated to the question of natural selection. So the base from where these people are selected is: anyone who has a PhD in science. This makes for quite a lot of people and the fact that only 600 of them are skeptical about evolution does not tell me much.

Answer 6

Why should it change anyone's mind? Do remember scientists & great scholars Knew the world 2 b flat b4 Capernicus.The 1st ammendment gives citizens of the USA the right to worship GOD as one see's fit, even if its not @ all.
Then again does it really matter? If we actually were some
fantastic mistake would you be less greatfull 4 your exsistance or more? Would you b less likely to live a productive life if no one was watching? No , we don't if
we were an intended product or not,but that doesn't change
our determination 2 continue the spiecies.

Answer 7

To believe in god or to embrace ID; they are alternatives to the very simple and honest statement " I do not know the answer".
Human knowledge is both social and historical. It takes a lot of time and human effort to challenge the unknown. That's how science develops. That's the way new answers are put forward.
Religion or ID explain nothing. Religious dogmas and ID-theories are of zero scientific value.

Darwinism must be revised because of scientific achievements in genetics and molecular biology not because of some ID-community individuals who replace the very natural inadequacy of human knowledge with some metaphysical conceptions.

Answer 8

well i just can't wrap my head around the bibles timeline. we have geological evidence that the world is much older than that. and now with that creationist museum that just opened i'm afraid you'll hear alot more of it.. and no this does not change my viewpoint. i don't care how it all came to be. i set my priorities on the future, not in the past. also these complexities are only proof of the fact that earth has been around a long time. not just a few thousand years.

Answer 9

Shouldn't we be more concerned with what we are doing while we are here instead of how we got here? Is not the journey much more important than the origin or the destination? Why do the evoloutionists and the creationists battle? -- WHO CARES!!!-- No one knows and no one will ever know for sure. Believe what you want to believe and it is so. This need for everyone to be "right" is exactly what we need to be avoiding in this life, the need to be "right" causes wars, hatred and strife. Give it up and spend your energy on something that really matters, helping others in need, cleaning up our messes, making the world, no matter how it got here, a better place for all of us in it!!!!

Answer 10

Oh, that checklist? permit's think of approximately it, for a 2nd. that's slightly deceptive. 600 scientists, as against something of the medical community, numbering properly into the loads around the globe. as properly, most of the human beings on that checklist are not experts on the region of evolution. A nuclear engineer? What might he understand with regards to the origins of life? and additionally, the precise of that paper says that those scientists purely prefer evolution to be examined heavily, and that they are skeptical of the countless claims it makes. It would not say they think of this because of the fact they prefer I.D. extra helpful. this is not a "dissent" plenty as that's a healthful medical skepticism, and it actually would not say they think of I.D. is a extra helpful concept. I have not got any subject with human beings questioning God created the universe, as long as they don't call it technological information. as properly, why could not God have used evolution as a organic gadget, in basic terms a element of his plan for the universe? i've got not got lots of a topic with that the two - a minimum of this is closer to technological information.