Tag Archives: Atheism

Podcasts

What caused an atheist on RichardDawkins.net to become a Christian?

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Here is a very interesting dialog featuring a pastor, an ex-atheist and a fundamentalist atheist. (H/T Two or Three)

Here is the MP3 file.

Check out a summary from Two or Three.

Excerpt:

But what made him convert?  Two things.  First, Robertson asked him two simple questions.  Why are you an atheist?  What would it take to convince you that God is real?  Morgan, who was used to philosophical arguments rather than more personal, emotional arguments, was taken aback.  He realized that he was not open to actually being convinced otherwise.  Second, he remembered the following scripture, which led to his conversion experience, an experience of love which made him a believer:

1 John 4:19
We love Him because He first loved us.

This conversion, and discussion in the interview, bring out a few interesting things that Christians might want to observe in their outreach:

  1. We should pray before posting responses when arguing with unbelievers
  2. Often, simple repetition of the truth of God’s love go around philosophical barriers that opponents have in their mind
  3. We must engage respectfully and kindly (argh!) and consistently
  4. The *experience* of God in genuine conversion is critical

This show was extremely interesting and helpful for understanding how atheists think, and why they become atheists. Don’t forget the testimony of former atheist A. N. Wilson that I wrote about before.

News

British government plans to spend 400 million pounds to spy on problem families

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Story from the Daily Express via Canadian blog Dust My Broom. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.

But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 – a potential total bill of £400million.

Let’s see. The government of Britain embraced secularism, feminism and marxism by electing the left-wing Labor party continuously for over a decade.

  • Secularism destroys objective moral values and duties
  • Feminism destroys marriage and parenting
  • Marxism destroys prosperity and responsibility

How did it help children to undermine morality, marriage and prosperity? How does it help the most vulnerable people in society to debunk all of the institutions that are needed to protect and nurture them?

Polemics

What is the scientific evidence for intelligent design?

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This article summarizes three types of evidence for intelligent design.

They are:

  1. Fine-tuning of the laws of physics to allow for advanced life
  2. Information in life
  3. Irreducible complexity

(Not discussed in the article are three other mainstream scientific arguments against naturalism, from the origin of the universe, habitability-observability convergence and the sudden origin of body plans in the fossil record)

Recall that intelligent design is based on the notion of specified complexity. A sequence of symbols is complex if it is composed of a large number of symbols. It is specified if it conforms to an independent pattern. If it is large and conforms to a pattern, then it exhibits specified complexity. Sequences that exhibit specified complexity are designed.

Examples:

  • Neither complex, nor specified: “AB”
  • Complex, not specified: “AB KN IH KML NIFCS YDH HOEHS KFSA”
  • Specified, not complex: “The”
  • Complex and specified: “Obama is the worst president ever”

Now you know more about intelligent design than 99.9% of journalists who bash intelligent design.

Here’s a snap shot of each of three basic arguments for intelligent design:

Fine-tuning

The fine-tuning of the laws of physics and chemistry to allow for advanced life is an example of extremely high levels of CSI in nature. The laws of the universe are complex because they are highly unlikely. Cosmologists have calculated the odds of a life-friendly universe appearing by chance are less than one part in 1010^123. That’s ten raised to a power of 10 with 123 zeros after it! The laws of the universe are specified in that they match the narrow band of parameters required for the existence of advanced life.

The Origin of Life

Studies of the cell reveal vast quantities of biochemical information stored in our DNA in the sequence of nucleotides.  No physical or chemical law dictates the order of the nucleotide bases in our DNA, and the sequences are highly improbable and complex. Moreover, the coding regions of DNA exhibit sequential arrangements of bases that are necessary to produce functional proteins. In other words, they are highly specified with respect to the independent requirements of protein function and protein synthesis.

Irreducible complexity

One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can tested and discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures through genetic knockout experiments to determine if they require all of their parts to function.  When experimental work uncovers irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed. This method has been used to detect irreducible complexity in a variety of biochemical systems such as the bacterial flagellum.

Now you know what the word “intelligent design” really refers to. Notice that it has absolutely nothing to do with religion, in much the same way as atheism nothing to do with science.