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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