Why do people always assume atheists have not thought out their beliefs? Thinking them out is the *reason *most become atheists. There is no atheist church converting members, no atheists on street corners yelling to crowds, no atheists statements on Money, no atheist buildings on just about every street, no people thanking atheism on TV after a some event, etc. Atheism does not come from accepting things, it comes from deciding your beliefs for yourself.
People assume that atheists have not thought out their beliefs because doing so offers them a quick and easy blow-off of atheism.
My experience is consistent with yours. Although originally Catholic, my current beliefs (which fall into no regular category) came out of arguing Catholic dogma with intelligent thoughtful atheists— physicists, engineers, astronomers and such. Since my beliefs are outside of any current agreement system I get many opportunities to argue them, and have found that members of religious sects are less likely to have thought through their belief system and compared it to alternatives than are atheists.
I have had many an occasion to admire the willingness of an atheist to reconsider his beliefs. Years ago the atheistic editor of a book I’d gotten published contacted his former college roommate and repurchased his soul, which he’d sold for a quarter amid a religious argument.
However, I have never been able to affect the thinking of any Catholic, Christian, or Jehovah’s witness I know of, with the exception of one Catholic priest who lost his job as abbot for passing copies of my novel around to other priests.
Nonetheless, your disclaimers about the lack of political power of atheism suggest to me that you never watch news or documentary channels, read very little, and have never heard of the ACLU or any of its successful lawsuits against Christianity. Since I don’t believe that about you, I’m required to treat your statement as defensively disingenuous.
If you are on this forum to further your understanding as well as to share, I’m not your adversary. My comments about the basis for your beliefs came only because after my query, you gave me nothing.
But this is offtopic anyway, perhaps we should get back to the discussion of Intelligent Design. For this, I will pose a question that has still not been answered: What proof is there of a designer? Saying something is possible is not acceptable, it’s just a hypothesis.
Your last sentence would be correct if you eliminated an illogical phrase and reduced it to, “
Saying something is possible is just an hypothesis.”
Your preceding question is legitimate enough, but misses a critical point. Since no designer-hypothesis has been officially defined by the I.D. movement, no amount of evidence for “design” can be construed as evidence for a designer.
I’ve tried unsuccessfully to introduce the really simple notion on this post that the entire I.D. argument is irrelevant unless it stands behind a definable concept of The Designer.
So far, the I.D. movement has a few excellent proponents (e.g. Michael Behe, my clear favorite) who have presented first rate and highly scientific arguments for design. (I believe that you would appreciate his book, “Darwin’s Black Box.”) I particularly like Behe because he does not argue for a version of the designer, and has the integrity to acknowledge that his arguments for design do not speak to that issue.
I’d not be making these arguments unless my personal ideas included a clear and definable concept of the Designer. The evidence for I.D. is consistent with this concept, at least in my personal opinion.
In this thread so far, I’ve given links to studies where we have observed evolution and what appears to be random mutation. I was told by one other poster that some evolution is random if it is without purpose, but the designer helps along evolution when a purpose is involved… so what evidence is there for that?
I could supply links to contrary evidence. I could dissect the contents of the links you provided to show their flaws, but so what? Who on this site would care? Who anywhere would care? At the moment, Darwinism and I.D.are belief systems with no definable fundamental principles or hypotheses behind them. What is the point of comparing tweedle-dum to tweedle-dee?
Evidence is only useful as an aid to philosophical thought when it supports a particular hypothesis or theory. I.D. is a repository and gathering home for evidence in favor of a designer, but it offers no theory as to the nature (or purpose) of that designer.
I.D. represents the best that the intellectual branch of Christianity has been able to do to justify its beliefs indirectly, by pointing to scientific evidence in favor of design. It does not need to explicitly define the designer because its followers implicitly accept that the Designer in the God of Christianity.
My perspective on the issue is that with respect to the fundamental questions of the origin of the universe (and of course ourselves, which is what really concerns us) both science and religion are totally wrong.
Since neither side of the issue is willing to concede such a radical (but obvious) perspective, I’m simply trying to introduce into the I.D. conversation the ridiculous notion that maybe the guys who defined the Designer a few millennia back might have gotten it wrong, and that it would therefore be worthwhile to revisit the subject of exactly Who brought this universe into existence, and why.
. Then again some ID scientists, it seems, like William D, really do want to put across the view that evolution including abiogenesis is genuinely at odds with the observable evidence. The problem is there has been so many panic attacks in the past, fueled by a religious paranoia that a growing circular elite is infiltrating and perverting the scientific method, that it really does look like, in the end, that some religious people will attack just about any theory that has a hint of random or chance involved (I’m just saying thats what it looks like
). This is where ID science loses its respectability, because it looks like a group of desperate fundamentalists having a panic attack. This is bad for both science, religion and genuine metaphysics.