Posted on 04/29/2009 7:56:11 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Listening to the Today programme this morning, I was irritated once again by yet another misrepresentation of Intelligent Design as a form of Creationism. In an item on the growing popularity of Intelligent Design, John Humphrys interviewed Professor Ken Miller of Brown University in the US who spoke on the subject last evening at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge. Humphrys suggested that Intelligent Design might be considered a kind of middle ground between Darwinism and Creationism. Miller agreed but went further, saying that Intelligent Design was nothing more than an attempt to repackage good old-fashioned Creationism and make it more palatable.
But this is totally untrue. Miller referred to a landmark US court case in 2005, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, which did indeed uphold the argument that Intelligent Design was a form of Creationism in its ruling that teaching Intelligent Design violated the constitutional ban against teaching religion in public schools. But the court was simply wrong, doubtless because it had heard muddled testimony from the likes of Prof Miller.
Whatever the ramifications of the specific school textbooks under scrutiny in the Kitzmiller/Dover case, the fact is that Intelligent Design not only does not come out of Creationism but stands against it. This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science. Creationism, whose proponents are Bible literalists, is a specific doctrine which holds that the earth was literally created in six days. Intelligent Design, whose proponents are mainly scientists, holds that the complexity of science suggests that there must have been a governing intelligence behind the origin of matter, which could not have developed spontaneously from nothing.
The confusion arises partly out of ignorance, with people lazily confusing belief in a Creator with Creationism. But belief in a Creator is common to all people of monotheistic faith – with many scientists amongst them -- the vast majority of whom would regard Creationism as totally ludicrous. In coming to the conclusion that a governing intelligence must have been responsible for the ultimate origin of matter, Intelligent Design proponents are essentially saying there must have been a creator. The difference between them and people of religious faith is that ID proponents do not necessarily believe in a personalised Creator, or God.
As a result, both Creationists and many others of religious faith disdain Intelligent Design, just as ID proponents think Creationism is totally off the wall. Yet the two continue to be conflated. And ignorance is only partly responsible for the confusion, since militant evangelical atheists deliberately conflate Intelligent Design with Creationism in order to smear and discredit ID and its adherents.
On Today, Humphrys perfectly reasonably pressed Miller further. If ID was merely a disguised form of Creationism, he asked, why were so many intelligent people prepared to accept ID but not Creationism? Miller replied:
Intelligent people can sometimes be wrong.
Indeed; and it is Prof Miller who is wrong. Creationism and Intelligent Design are two completely different ways of looking at the world; and you don’t have to subscribe to either to realise the untruth that is being propagated -- and the wrong that is being done to people’s reputations -- by the pretence that they are connected.
The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.
I previously wrote about the remarkable debate (which can be seen at this website) between Dawkins and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford. Lennox is the author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? which demolishes Dawkins by showing not only that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith but that the argument for faith is now being bolstered enormously by the remarkable developments in science. Dawkins was on the back foot because Lennox was attacking him from his own platform of science. He was on safer ground only when, in a further debate between the two at Oxford’s Natural History Museum last October, he attacked Lennox for his Christian faith which he could more easily ridicule. But to Lennox’s core arguments, he seemed to me to have no convincing response.
In a lecture earlier this month to the American Atheists’ Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Dawkins chose to attack Lennox (about 15 minutes into this video) from the safety of an unchallenged speaking spot in front of a sycophantic audience – but in a manner which inadvertently revealed rather more about himself than he bargained for. Describing Lennox belittlingly as a ‘Christian apologist’ and an ‘Irish mathematician’, he took a comment Lennox had made at a meeting two days after the Oxford debate and tried to debunk it by claiming that Lennox had misrepresented him.
Lennox had observed that, in the Oxford debate, Dawkins appeared to have made a stunning admission by saying that ‘a good case could be made for a deistic god’(a generalised kind of deity as opposed to the personalised God of the Bible). Lennox observed that acknowledgement of a deistic god was the position arrived at recently by the celebrated former atheist philosopher Anthony Flew; and that saying a good case could be made for such a god ‘knocked the heart out’ of Dawkins’s core contention that complex life forms had derived from simple ones.
In response, Dawkins tried to maintain that Lennox had grossly misrepresented him. Pointing out that he had gone on to say that he didn’t accept the deistic argument – which indeed he had said – he claimed that Lennox had selectively quoted him to give an entirely false impression. To make his point, he drew an analogy with the conceit, once employed by a particular astronomer, of ironically disdaining authoritative sources purely as a rhetorical device to underscore the truth of an argument. Just as it would be dishonest to treat such ironic disdain as if it was seriously meant, he said, so by analogy Lennox was being dishonest by treating Dawkins’s remark about deism as if it was seriously meant when in fact he had merely been
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his [Lennox’s] belief.
But it was Dawkins’ argument which was surely disingenuous. For he had said without any hint of irony, nor with any indication that this was not sincerely meant, that
...you can make a respectable case for deism – not a case that I would accept but I think it is a serious discussion that you could have.
It was certainly true that he used this ‘respectable case for deism’ to draw a sharp comparison with belief in Jesus, upon which he duly poured scorn. But to say as he did that he was only
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his belief
was very sharp verbal practice indeed. There was no suggestion at all that he did not mean what he said -- that a respectable scientific case could be made for deism. And so Lennox was entirely justified in expressing astonishment. For even though Dawkins went on to say he did not agree with this case, given his previous absolutism in stating that anything unsupported by evidence is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes that matter must have had an original creator is a cretin, it should therefore follow that no respectable case could possibly be made for deism.
The fact that he said he thought it could was surely a startling development. And it was very interesting that he should feel so defensive about having said it that this was the one aspect of Lennox’s comprehensive attack on him that he singled out for refutation; and that he tried to do so moreover through disreputable means, by imputing dishonesty to Lennox when it was Dawkins who was employing dubious debating tactics.
Wait – worse was to come.
Dawkins had made much of the fact that Lennox didn’t acknowledge Dawkins’s disagreement with the argument for deism. Dawkins then went on to claim that Lennox – who had not made anything of this whole deism issue during the Oxford debate itself – had been subsequently put up to raising it by me. Yup, your humble blogger.
This was because I had attended that debate – and afterwards had written here of my amazement at hearing Dawkins say a case could be made for deism. This is what I actually wrote about the deism point:
This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said: ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic God’. This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could. Anthony Flew, the celebrated philosopher and former high priest of atheism, spectacularly changed his mind and concluded -- as set out in his book There Is A God -- that life had indeed been created by a governing and purposeful intelligence, a change of mind that occurred because he followed where the scientific evidence led him. The conversion of Flew, whose book contains a cutting critique of Dawkins’s thinking, has been dismissed with unbridled scorn by Dawkins – who now says there is a serious case for the position that Flew now adopts! ...Afterwards, I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position and become more open to ideas which lay outside the scientific paradigm. He vehemently denied this and expressed horror that he might have given this impression.
You will see from this that I acknowledged loud and clear that Dawkins had said he did not agree with the case for deism – the very thing Dawkins was accusing Lennox, and therefore by extension myself, of not doing.
But now look at the text that Dawkins proceeded to put up on the screen (about 25 minutes in), saying that this was what I had written in the Spectator and in which I had grossly misrepresented what he had said:
Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins is an evolutionist. But many are now asking whether the dyed-in-the-wool critic of religion may be, well, evolving in his views about God. You see, in a recent debate with theist and Christian John Lennox, he let slip what many would regard as a major blooper: he actually admitted that there might be a case for theism of sorts. This was a worldview change of seismic proportions. It was a most remarkable turnaround. For someone who had spent over five decades championing the atheist cause to all of a sudden renounce it was an incredible achievement.
I read this with astonishment. For these were not my words at all. I had not written them in the Spectator or anywhere else.
They were written in fact by a blogger called Bill Muehlenberg at his Culture Watch site. Muehlenberg, who had read what I had written about the Oxford debate, was himself passing comment upon it. Those were the words Dawkins falsely ascribed to me, reading them out to smirks and guffaws at my expense – and accusing me thereby of distorting what he had said! He thus held me up to ridicule and accused me of lying -- at a public meeting recorded on video which, as you can see, incited hateful comments on the thread below it – on the basis of someone else’s words altogether.
Dawkins then went on to quote some of what I had actually written in my own blog entry, as follows:
Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?
This passage had been quoted on the Muehlenberg blog – suggesting that what Dawkins had done was carelessly to run together Muehlenberg’s remarks with my own quoted comments. What remarkable sloppiness. And what arrogance. Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL, the former Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, whose website advertises ‘clear thinking’ and who poses as the indefatiguable champion of intellectual integrity, can’t even be bothered to check that he is actually quoting the person he thinks he is quoting -- even while attacking her for dishonesty. It's easy enough to muddle up similar sounding quotes on a page -- we all make mistakes -- but falsely to impute malice as a result of such a muddle, and to do so with such public fanfare, suggests a hubristic disregard for scrupulousness.*
Wait – there was worse still. For the next slide he put up, immediately after -- this time -- correctly quoting my words, read:
Lying for Jesus.
Lying for Jesus! Oh dear oh dear. Not only did Dawkins falsely accuse me of distorting his position, but he accused me of doing so because he assumed I was a Christian. Five minutes’ research maximum would have told him that I am a Jew. Either he thought that all the stuff written on Culture Watch by Bill Muehlenberg, who appears to be a devout Christian, was written by me; or he assumed that, since John Lennox is a Christian, anyone who supports John Lennox must also be a Christian. Either way, the man who has made a global reputation out of scorning anyone who makes an assumption not grounded in empirical evidence has assumed to be true something that can easily be ascertained to be totally false – thus suggesting that the mind that is so addled by prejudice it cannot deal with demonstrable reality is none other than his own.
Finally, he rounded off this jeering display of intellectual sloppiness, error, ignorance and prejudice with a piece of spite. Telling his American audience that they wouldn’t have heard of Melanie Phillips, he informed them that she was
infamous as one of the most bigoted and unpleasant journalists in the whole of Britain.
When someone resorts to such gratuitous insults you know they know they have lost the argument. Indeed, Dawkins’s whole presentation in Atlanta surely betrayed unconsciously a note of desperation. For the effort he expended on attempting to rubbish both the deism point and my mockery of him for appearing to believe that ‘little green men’ were a more plausible explanation for the origin of matter than God suggested that this had really got under his skin.
The way he chose to defend himself, through insults and sneers which tried to cover his tracks as he attempted to retreat from what he had said, furthermore merely emphasised his notable reluctance to address the many arguments of substance against his pseudo-scientific attack on religion which were made by John Lennox on the grounds of scientific reason and accuracy – arguments which Dawkins most tellingly chose to ignore altogether. Instead, he went for what he thought were the soft targets -- a credulous Irish Christian and a ‘dreadful woman’ journalist – and substituted smears and jeers for proper debate.
Unfortunately, he fell flat on his face. From this attempt to tarnish his opponents with the charge of dishonesty, we learn instead that for Richard Dawkins truth is a delusion. Who other than the similarly deluded can ever take him seriously again?
*Update: Muehlenberg points out here that Dawkins has even misquoted him by spatchcocking two separate remarks to create a misleading statement.
If the intelligent designer was not God, who created the intelligent designer?
The Creator is the intelligent designer.
ping
Thanks for the ping!
Evos deny evidence of intelligent design in nature yet expect us to learn more about God from studying the nature that they claim contains no evidence of intelligence or design.
What a hoot.
That’s all they’ve got- is misrepresentation- their case against ID isn’t strong enough, so they must resort to misrepresentaiton
So the author is irritated about the misrepresentation of ID and goes and and does the same thing with creation.
I have meant to say it so many times, but for one reason or another I have never quite got around to it...LOVE YOUR TAGLINE!!!
Ouch!
Thanks.
I hate welfare.
I don't think it's possible for you to learn more about God by studying anything.
I loved that scene in Cinderella Man, where depression-era boxer James Braddock (played by Russell Crowe) payed back every penny he received in welfare once he was back on his feet again! I’m surprised that movie ever made it out of Hollywood!!!
And this matters to who, maybe you and your cohorts over at dc.
There are different schools of thought on that. Just cause an evo has an opinion doesn’t make it so, no matter how adamantly they insist it does.
Ps 19:1-4 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Should I have underlined the word “studying” instead?
Does ID support evolution, and that the earth is over 4 billion years old?
yes or no.
To a true creationist, Intelligent Design is just another foot-in-the-door to prop up the badly failing theory of evolution. - It is an attempt to make evolution more palatable to God’s increasingly aware Elect.
That merely serves to move the question of the origin of life from Earth, where God did it, to a distant unknown, and thus unobservable point in order to deflect the question.
Personally, I think that the creation we see around us is there as an intentional act. Random mutations leading to genetic drift over millions of years is not something I have faith in. A Creator or a Designer who willfully made this creation is something I do have faith in.
We have the perfect observable bit of evolution, they for now are calling it 'swine' flu. And because there is DNA the high minded have deceived themselves that DNA then covers all life. But Christ Himself said that to 'see' the kingdom of God one must be born from above. Luke tells us in his description of the 'conception' what Christ tell is required.
Do you think there is a numbered 'souls' that were created before the Garden? Evolution as a word means something changed either slowly or quickly over time. Now what does Genesis say... I leave the WORD to instruct me and what the Heavenly Father told Moses and the rest of the holy prophets to pen to explain the foundation of what is 'science'.
The phrase 'scientific methodology' is a created systematic way to think. And one is deemed willingly ignorant or 'stupid' if one questions the system. Just read any of the high minded that are deceived into the system think accuse any who question the system that has just about passed puberty as being willingly ignorant..
Pretty amusing to read a system thinker accuse someone of ignorance given what Peter declares in II Peter 3 as to what the 'state' of mind would come to be...
“To a true creationist, Intelligent Design is just another foot-in-the-door to prop up the badly failing theory of evolution. - It is an attempt to make evolution more palatable to God’s increasingly aware Elect.”
Agreed.
Since the idea first started being floated around I haven’t liked it. Justify it all they want, but a god with no name is still no god at all.
If God is not Who He says He is then it would be better to just be an atheist and be done with it. (understanding of course He is who He says He is).
Nice of him to confirm what we’ve known pretty much all along...
Par for the course....
I find it amusing that so many of the fools that proudly drove around town with a bumper sticker that called us to “Question Authority” are want to question any authority that denies God. That ‘authority’ they gladly accept.
CottShop appears to support Intelligent Design.
"To a true creationist, Intelligent Design is just another foot-in-the-door to prop up the badly failing theory of evolution." -- Post 21 by editor-surveyor
editor-surveyor seems to be opposed to it.
Gentlemen, I propose that you discuss this apparent dichotomy. Rather than wait with bated breath for your response, I shall go and prepare some popcorn.
Ponder and discuss.
Yes, you’d love a war, but unlike yourself, Cott is a respectable postor here.
He’s entitled to his belief, and he never falsely attacks anyone.
How very selectively noble you are, sir.
I think that ID is *very* useful in proving to all but the obtuse that there *is* a God. WHO God is is a separate question, one that many may not research were it not for those working hard in ID theory. Blessings, Bob
Hey, Richard Dawkins spoke of space alien seeding as well. I think they’re on to something! Maybe they’re holding it! BTW, I’m certain that there is a perfectly logical explanation for blood lasting 80M years. Possibly prepared in formaldehyde. Bob
It’s in Ben Stein’s movie, and Dawkins is bitter with Stein about being exposed as a kook. lol Bob
Proof is not needed for a god. Once god is welcomed and accepted in your heart - no amount of “proof” could ever convince you otherwise, or is necessary to further the belief. You know gods existence, because you feel his grace in your day to day life, and see his handiwork about you.
I am not fond of ID. I’ve got enough of a evolution/biology background to know that the arguments Behe, Luskin and the like usually don’t hold water. Evolution is false simply because it runs contrary to the bible. It really is that simple.
I don’t agree, Rudman. I think that ID proponents such as Behe and Johnson make an airtight case. If belief in God and the Bible contradicted REAL science, I’d accept the science. But the idea that a protozoa, through a series of millions of happy coincidences throughout billions of years, became a human, or ant for that matter, takes blind faith, NOT science, to believe. Blessings, Bob
Im really in agreement with you that I don’t believe in happy coincidences either. But if you read behe’s books, for instance, and then go look up his references, he is clearly wrong on his irreducible complexity.
To me it is obvious that there is a god’s hand in all of this. However, I think that the approach taken by Behe et. al. to prove it is the wrong one - and leaves those of us who see the obvious to defend those who advance faulty arguments.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.