I assume most here are atheistic materialists

Michael Todd has joined our discussion, and makes the assumption in the title of this thread.  Michael introduced himself with “Greetings all. I’m new here. I’m also a Christian.”

Here’s the rest of what Michael said in that comment:

I assume most here are atheistic materialists. Fine. However, the dilemma is yours. Why? Glad you asked. Materialistic determinism. Everything that happens, according to the necessary tenets of your creed, is a result of the properties inherent in matter. This would include all of your mental life – personality, memory, and perceptions. This would mean that all of your assertions are nothing more than expressions of an unrelenting matter/energy cascade.

The discussion started by Michael will be moved to this new thread.

117 thoughts on “I assume most here are atheistic materialists

  1. Relative book sales? Try checking any Dawkins book against any Dembski or Behe book on Amazon.

  2. If we had been willing to present our case for intelligent design as a religious argument rooted in this or that holy book, the Darwinists would happily have ignored us. But we have worked to show that the case for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and tools of reasoning available to anyone, regardless of creed.

     – Intelligent Design Uncensored

     

  3. Yet she was posting at UD much more recently than that. Go figure.

    This link documents her banning as ‘Febble’. She came back under heavy disguise as “Elizabeth Liddle”, until that sock was eventually banned also, along with a whole raft of others.  

    And now it seems people are banned for merely disagreeing with Barry Arrington. Yeah right.

    Er … yeah. Right. It’s widely documented, and the relevant threads are up at UD, as well as a history at Panda’s Thumb. I won’t bother searching for the links – you can assume I’m simply lying; that saves time all round.

  4. His qualifications to write about the existence of god ase the same as anyone’s. The evidence or lack of it is freely available.

    But the sales comparison should be made based on total sales, not rank within category, and you should also check out books on evolution.

  5. Remind me what Dembski’s qualifications with regard to *any* biological field of study are? 

  6. Anything ‘could be’. 

    What do you have evidence for? Which of those scenarios do you personally believe is more accurate? Or are you unwilling (unable?) to take a position on *anything*?

  7. My point would be that one needs expertise to write in a field that has evidence based knowledge. Religion has no evidence, so anyone’s writing is judged on the merits of the writing rather than on the credentials of the writer. 

    Religious writing is no longer propped up by fear and political power, so the existence of god is no longer the default position. Certainly not the existence of any particular culture’s patron god.

  8. Mung: The information is not transferred from the designer but rather comes into existence when it is instantiated.

    If only the designer “knows” what “information” is required, then only the “designer” could be a “source” of that information.

    It has to get from “him” to the matter at some point.

    If he doesn’t use matter for the transfer, then Upright BiPed is wrong.

     

  9. Mung: It could be that information in a material universe does not begin to exist until it is instantiated in matter.

    You could probably make the claim that the “formation” of something must exist as matter, but to use the word “information” is an attempt to connect the “form” of something with a coded description of that something.

    IDists try to make a connection to “data processing” with analogies of this type.

    So far, that’s all ID has; analogies.

     

  10. Mung, perhaps you should go talk it through with Upright, Gpuccio and Joe et al and come up with something that can co-exist together all in the same framework? 

    Then, perhaps, you’ll know yourself why you are (claim to be) an ID supporter. 

    You know, rather then trying to invent a new definition for “transferred” that is only relevant to “the designer” and a specific argument of Uprights. 

  11.   Who’s Mike Gene?

    He wrote a book (self-published) called “The Design Matrix” which proposes a theory of ID. However, I bought the book and found no evidence supporting his theory. He advised me the evidence would be included in the sequel which is yet to be published. 😉

     He has a ‘scientific’ blog at designmatrix.wordpress.com and his religious blog is shadowtolight.wordpress.com.

    Wesley Elsberry refers to him as Mike Gene/Julie Thomas for reasons that are almost lost in obscurity! 

  12. Alan Fox wrote

    Wesley Elsberry refers to him as Mike Gene/Julie Thomas for reasons that are almost lost in obscurity!

    Julie Thomas. Man, there’s a name out of the deep past (in internet years, anyway)!

Leave a Reply