ID.Plus

An interesting snippet of news from Christians in Science - I am informed that downloads of my talk on ID are outstripping downloads of my theistic evolutionist's rebuttal by a margin of some three to one. I suspect this means my position is controvertial rather than that it is popular, but perhaps readers of this blog have been boosting the numbers for me! If you've listened to my talk but not to Professor Fox's reply, I'd encourage you to have a listen and then to read my response to a similar critique made by Professor Denis Alexander.

I've added a broad selection of new links to streaming video and audio files, not all of them on ID, to this blog.

Watch and hear some heavyweight Christian scholars, such as William Lane Craig, John Lennox, J.P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga and Dallas Willard, on a variety of philosophical topics including science, naturalism, Richard Dawkins and the influence of worldviews on our thinking.

Imagine my surprise, when surfing the web today, to come accross a website on philosophy and Christianity http://www.apollos.ws/ that lists four articles on the little mentioned aesthetic argument for God. Imagine my further suprise, upon following the relevant link, to discover a page listing four article, all of them by... Me!

According to a survey of 1000 British students publicised by the Guardian newspaper: ‘more than 12% questioned preferred creationism… to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design…’[i] Overall then, a little over 31% of British students actively embrace an origins theory other than evolution. Moreover:

Opinion-panel Research’s survey of more than 1,000 students found a third of those who said they were Muslims and more than a quarter of those who said they were Christians supported creationism. Nearly a third of Christians and 10% of those with no particular religion [the latter is a particularly significant point of interest] favoured intelligent design. Women were more likely to choose [non-evolutionary] explanations: less than half chose evolution, with 14% preferring creationism and 22% intelligent design.[ii]

Despite the fact that 57% of third-year students support evolution compared with 54% of first-year students (whilst showing no change in their beliefs about God’s existence)[iii], these statistics mean that while British students are less likely (indeed, nearly half as likely) to endorse creationism than the British public in general (12% of students support creationism compared to 22% of respondents in a recent BBC survey), they are more likely to endorse intelligent design theory (19% of students support ID compared to 17% of respondents in the BBC survey). As in America, an increased level of education correlates with a decreased level of support for creationism and an increased level of support for ID.

It isn’t all that difficult to concoct hypotheses that, if true, might result in people believing all sorts of things (including theism and atheism) irrespective of the truth-value of those beliefs, or despite the assumed falsity of those beliefs. Descartes’ suggestion that an evil demon may systematically deceive us, Schopenhauer’s suggestion that humans are in the impersonal grip of the will to life, Darwin’s suggestion that our cognitive apparatus is the product of a blind watchmaker who selfishly cares (metaphorically speaking) about nothing but survival, all qualify. Modern-day atheologians often employ Darwin’s theory to explain away theistic belief, without noticing that this theory can – indeed, on their own principles, must - be used to explain their belief in Darwinism. The fact that a given theory of belief, if true, can explain why theists believe in God on the assumption that theism is not true, does nothing to establish either the truth of the theory of belief-formation concerned, or the truth of atheism.

The website of the 'local South group' of Christians in Science has now posted up the audio files of my debate with Professor Keith Fox on Intelligent Design Theory and Thestic Evolution.

The files consist in:

chairman Dr Peter May's introductory remarks

my presentation

and Professor Fox's presentation

The hour's Q&A was not recorded.

For a sense of the sort of responses I would make to Dr Fox, cf. my response to theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander: Intelligent Designs on Science

The International Scoiety for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID) have just published my surreply to Professor Denis Alexander's theistic evolutionary critique of intelligent design theory, Intelligent Designs on Science, in their archive section (cf. Abstract).

This paper was recently published on my Access Research Network Featured Author's Page (Intelligent Designs on Science), but is here reproduced as a pdf with the correct formatting.

While not peer reviewed: 'The archive is moderated to assure that articles meet minimum scholarly standards and are relevant to the study of complex systems.'

This is my second paper to be published by ISCID, the first being Intelligent design, Aesthetics and Design Arguments (2002)