Again, this does not seem to be "intelligent design" as I have heard it
expressed. I thought that intelligent design claimers suggest that life *as
it is* is too complex to have evolved by natural selection. He seems to
accept natural selection as an explanation for how life came to be in the
"incredibly complex" forms we see. It is the first spark of life he seems
to attribute to an intelligent being. Again, I wonder how this differs
greatly from straight ahead belief in evolution by natural selection, given
that we don't actually know what did cause the original spark. If this
"god" has no interest in human affairs and does not interfere in the course
of the evolution of species, than what is the belief seems harmless--as well
as not offering very much in the way of benefit to the believer either.
Paul Okami
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 11:13 AM
Subject: RE: Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
Unfortunately, the article focuses on the fact that a person changed his
mind, rather than on that person's reasons for changing his mind. I don't
think it's very interesting that a person changed his mind - I can't imagine
that many of us think that there's anything particularly miraculous about
that, especially among those of us who do not believe that there was an
intelligence behind the origin of life (since I would expect that most of us
in that naturalist camp have already changed our own minds about that when
we rejected the standard creationist claim in the first place).
On top of that, I think that those of us with naturalistic beliefs about the
origin of life are well aware of how counterintuitive those beliefs are, and
how seductive the notion that "anything extremely complex MUST have been
made by someone like us - an intelligent being" is.
In short, without a new argument for intelligent design, this seems like old
news. The only argument presented in the article is the old "incredible
complexity" thing combined with the argument from ignorance ("It has become
inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a
naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism" -
yeah, of course. It's difficult. We knew that already). The story here,
apparently, is one aimed at intelligent design believers, who will be
enthusiastic about the fact that they have a convert, rather than at
naturalistic origin believers who, as we've already seen on the list, won't
find such a conversion relevant to the issue itself.
Now, despite the seductiveness of the intelligent design argument, it seems
somewhat unlikely that a person who has put serious thought into the issue
would change his mind after all this time in response to such old and poorly
thought through arguments. That makes me wonder if he did come up with some
new and interesting argument that didn't make it into the article simply
because the article's author and editors thought that there didn't need to
be anything more than those old arguments. I guess the answer to that will
probably have to wait for the publication of the book mentioned in the
article. If there ISN'T any new argument in that book then I think we can
only see this as an individual's personal failing.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
At 4:50 AM -0500 12/10/04, Jim Guinee wrote:
>It truly IS the season of miracles ;)
>Dr. Jim Guinee
>
>===============================================
>
>Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
>
>By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP Religion Writer
>
>NEW YORK - A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion
>of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now
>believes in God ....
He also likens his belief to that of Thomas Jefferson (who edited his
own version of the Bible to eliminate all references to the
supernatural).
Be careful what you claim; you might get it ;-)
--
"No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain
people." -H. L. Mencken
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mnsu.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
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