{"id":44724,"date":"2017-10-29T10:28:35","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T16:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44724"},"modified":"2017-10-29T10:28:35","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T16:28:35","slug":"atheism-and-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/atheism-and-evolution.html","title":{"rendered":"Atheism and Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
DNA\u2019s Double Helix (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still pilfering my notes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The zealous Oxford polemicist for Darwinism, Richard Dawkins:\u00a0 \u201cEven if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory . . .\u00a0 we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Simply because it is naturalistic.<\/span><\/p>\n

C. Todd, a professor at Kansas State University, published a letter in the prestigious scientific journal Nature<\/em>, announcing that \u201cEven if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Anglo-American writer Tom Bethell:<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who believes [in materialism] must, as a matter of logical necessity, also believe in evolution.\u00a0 No digging for fossils, no test tubes or microscopes, no further experiments are needed.\u00a0 For birds, bats, and bees do exist.\u00a0 They came into existence somehow.\u00a0 Your consistent materialist has no choice but to allow that, yes, molecules in motion succeeded, over the eons, in whirling themselves into ever more complex conglomerations, some of them called bats, some birds, some bees.\u00a0 He \u201cknows\u201d that is true, not because he sees it in the genes, or in the lab, or in the fossils, but because it is embedded in his philosophy.<\/strong>[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t a question of creationism versus evolution.\u00a0 Obviously, if I could demonstrate that the world was created in six twenty-four-hour days, the biological argument for theism\u00a0would be essentially over.\u00a0 If contemporary species of plants and animals were formed instantly by an act of divine special creation, the atheistic viewpoint is untenable.\u00a0 However, I intend to confront that viewpoint at its strongest, accepting the assumption of an evolutionary origin of species and a very, very old earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael J. Denton, at the time of writing a senior research fellow in human molecular genetics at New Zealand\u2019s University of Otago (and a religious agnostic?), remarked in 1994 that:<\/span><\/p>\n

No other theory or concept ever imagined by man can equal in boldness and audacity this great claim . . .\u00a0 that all the starry heavens, that every species of life, that every characteristic of reality exits [for the sake of providing a suitable environment] for mankind. . . .\u00a0 But most remarkably, given its audacity, it is a claim which is very far from a discredited prescientific myth.\u00a0 In fact, no observation has ever laid the presumption to rest.\u00a0 And today, four centuries after the scientific revolution, the doctrine is again reemerging.\u00a0 In these last decades of the twentieth century, its credibility is being enhanced by discoveries in several branches of fundamental science.<\/strong>[4]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker<\/em> (New York: Norton, 1986), 287. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> S. C. Todd, in Nature<\/em> 410, 6752 (30 September 1999): 423. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Tom Bethell, \u201cAgainst Sociobiology,\u201d First Things<\/em> 109 (January 2001):18-24. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Michael J. Denton, Nature\u2019s Destiny<\/em>, 3-4. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two\u00a0other science-related items for your interest and delectation:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe universe shouldn\u2019t exist, scientists say after finding bizarre behaviour of anti-matter: We don\u2019t know why the universe isn\u2019t destroying itself\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy Clocks \u2018Falling Back\u2019 Are Good For Your Brain\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Still pilfering my notes: \u00a0 The zealous Oxford polemicist for Darwinism, Richard Dawkins:\u00a0 \u201cEven if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory . . .\u00a0 we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.\u201d[1]\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Simply because it is naturalistic. C. Todd, a professor at Kansas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAtheism and Evolution<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Still pilfering my notes:   The zealous Oxford polemicist for Darwinism, Richard Dawkins:\u00a0 \u201cEven if there were no actual evidence in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/atheism-and-evolution.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Atheism and Evolution\" 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