Sunday, April 11, 2010

VJ at UD on ID

Over at Uncommon Descent, VJ Torley offers a polite reply to my post below on ID theory and mechanism. I’ll respond as soon as I get a chance, but in the meantime you can read what Frank Beckwith and Brandon Watson have to say in reply to Torley.
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2 comments:

  1. SuyutiApril 13, 2010 at 12:24 PM

    Also what are you views on this:
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201004/why-atheists-are-more-intelligent-the-religious

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  2. AnonymousApril 13, 2010 at 1:38 PM

    That article reminds me of Daniel Dennett's embarrassing book, Breaking the Spell. So what if "religion" does in fact have an evolutionary origin? That doesn't tell you anything about whether those beliefs are in fact true and thus command rational consent. To be sure, this is my problem with all such evolutionary attempts to "explain away" religious faith, either explicitly or implicitly: its advocates must of necessity slip off the edge and commit one big, fat genetic fallacy. Out of fairness, how about they attempt something similar with the evolutionary origins of mathematics? Or, better yet, the evolutionary origins of belief in Darwinism? (of course, they won't dare open that door)

    As to the general claim that "atheists are more intelligent than the religious"(and, let's be honest, prima facie, that is such a clumsy statement to make, not to mention an unabashedly arrogant one), it is ridiculous, for so many reasons. Do we really need to start naming names? Einstein? Aquinas? Newton? Leibniz? Godel? Kant? Pascal? We could go on forever. Almost every great scientist, mathematician, philosopher, artist, musician, and writer of the past 3000 years either fully embraced religious faith or were extremely sympathetic to it and instead opted for some other form of supernaturalism.


    In my experience, though, oddly enough, both the most intelligent people and the most ignorant people that I've ever met have been theists. Atheists and skeptics seem to fall in the middle. Reminds me of the old dictum from Francis Bacon: "A little learning inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in learning leadeth him back to God." Or, as Pascal said it, "extremes touch."

    But I suppose more conceptual care cannot be expected from an author who writes the following equally clumsily-entitled article: "Why liberals are more intelligent than conservatives"

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives

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