"Atheism makes an assertion, oh yes it does. It is agnosticism that says there is no persuasive evidence and so no evaluation is made, and it is the 'negative' form of atheism that says 'there is insufficient evidence, therefore I disbelieve the claims for God.'"
agnostics do not believe in God. Agnostics lack theistic belief and are therefore a-Theist. In my opinion most atheists are agnostics.
The remaining atheists make an assertion that they know there isn't a God. That is faith based atheism and those people are..ahem..irrational..often rebellious kids.
"MEanwhile the ID proponents are going to continue to gain ground and theism will triumph"
I often hear an argument from ID proponents that ID is fit for schools because it is not based on religious belief. We are told that ID doesn't mention who the Designer is, it could be aliens, God, anything apparently. But everyone knows that in reality the Intelligent Design movement is the old Creationist movement in disguise. So it is quite funny that you accidently (?) reveal this by saying "theism will triumph" in reference to ID.
"Even Antony Flew agrees now that the evidence is on the side of theism"
Who?
"As a theist it warms my heart to see materialistic atheists put their hands over their ears and close their eyes and tell the world that there is no evidence for philosophical creationism."
The only evidence for supernatural design has always been a lack of knowledge. Thousands of years ago we could easily have considered *everything* to be a product of the supernatural. If with limited knowledge of nature we cannot comprehend how something like a rainbow can form then that has always been treated by many people as evidence that its formation is not natural.
The theory of evolution is currently strongest at the large scale level of fossils, species and populations and the general mechanisms for how they can evolve. This is essentially the kind of stuff Darwin produced. It is what convinces me.
How evolution occurs is smaller level stuff like genetics and molecular evolution. Despite over half a century of work these areas are still no way near fully understood yet, I don't believe it is evidence for evolution. ID locks onto this lack of knowledge to claim it is evidence of intelligent design. But the lack of natural explaination is possibly due to the lack of understanding of the ties between genetics and embyronic development. People ask what are the genetic stages of say eye evolution, but noone is in a position to answer that yet. A lack of an answer now doesn't mean a lack of an answer ever. If noone can explain how unchanged DNA works to develop an eye in a fetus then how can they be expected to know how slight changes to that DNA will affect eye development?
I expect that when scientists can actually simulate every step of expression of a DNA strand into an organism and can easily modify DNA to see the developmental effects it has, figuring whether structures can evolve or cannot evolve can actually be done.
Although I would find it bizarre if it turned out they cannot evolve as so much at the large scale convinces me that it has.
That sounds like a semantic argument that I dont care to waste our time with. The definitions I use I think are more accurate, for what that is worth, but I think they have more 'symetry' if you will.
To me the first questionis whether one 'believes there is a God; Theists say 'yes', Atheists say 'No' and Agnostics say 'maybe, maybe not'.
The Fideist says 'yes' to God no matter what possible evidence one provides (evidence is by its nature insufficient to address the question of God existing), while the Apologist says he believes in God for reason of evidence (evidence relevant). The Theistic Existentialist claims no evidence, but chooses to believe in God because it suits him to (evidence irrelevant).
The Negative Atheist says that he disbelieves in God because of a lack of evidence (evidence relevant and wanting), while the Positive evidence asserts knowledge that God does not exist (evidence relevant and affirms a negative). MEanwhile the Agnostic says there is not sufficient evidence to warrant a decision in either direction. I think the Negative Atheist and Agnostic often seem squishily similar, but are different in the conclusions drawn from the void of evidence they claim is there.
The remaining atheists make an assertion that they know there isn't a God. That is faith based atheism and those people are..ahem..irrational..often rebellious kids
I suspect you are right in most cases, and I think there is a similar immaturity or insecurity on the part of many strident Theists.
I often hear an argument from ID proponents that ID is fit for schools because it is not based on religious belief. We are told that ID doesn't mention who the Designer is, it could be aliens, God, anything apparently. But everyone knows that in reality the Intelligent Design movement is the old Creationist movement in disguise. So it is quite funny that you accidently (?) reveal this by saying "theism will triumph" in reference to ID.
Maybe I misunderstand ID, but I thought it was more than the old argument from ignorance. My concept of their claim is that design is testable and that there are cases where it is necesary and not simply the best WAG for what happened. For instance, Irreducable Complexity is more than an argument based on ignorance, it is asserting that there are cases where complexity CANNOT be reduced, which is qualitatively different from asserting that there is 'no known method' to accomplish complexity.
I know that I am not sufficiently trained to thoroughly evaluate this claim, but I see that more people are coming to accept it as time goes on, and so I am wanting to see more debate on the issue and not see it stifled by some ideological process based on philosophical presumptions science cannot appropriately address.
The theory of evolution is currently strongest at the large scale level of fossils, species and populations and the general mechanisms for how they can evolve. This is essentially the kind of stuff Darwin produced. It is what convinces me.
Agreed, though I think as time goes on, Darwins original idea will be qualified and further defined much as Newtons physics were.
For example, I think Punctuated Equilibrium is a better model than a theory of uniform development, etc.
ID locks onto this lack of knowledge to claim it is evidence of intelligent design. But the lack of natural explaination is possibly due to the lack of understanding of the ties between genetics and embyronic development. People ask what are the genetic stages of say eye evolution, but noone is in a position to answer that yet. A lack of an answer now doesn't mean a lack of an answer ever.
Agreed, but this is not the case with ID *if* they are asserting a provable inability to randomly acheive a type of complex order that they have found in nature that is a small fraction of the cases known.