Book Description (from Dembski at Uncommon Descent):Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, writes Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell.If you liked the previous books by Jonathan Wells and William Dembski then you'll love this one. If you didn't, then you won't.
Author William A. Dembski worked closely as an advisor with the producers of the Spring 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed starring Ben Stein. How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) is the intellectual argument that helped inform significant elements of the movie. This controversial feature-length documentary film about researchers, professors, and academics who claim to have been marginalized, silenced, or threatened with academic expulsion because of their challenges to some or all parts of Darwin’s theory of evolution is one of the top twelve highest grossing documentary’s of all time. It has attracted both praise and controversy in its challenge against Darwinism.
Did he really say "Ben Stein" and "intellectual argument" in the same sentence?
8 comments :
This seems to me to be a very odd book for the DI crowd to write. They seem to have a lot of trouble getting Intelligent Design accepted as a secular scientific theory by the courts, and yet they publish a book which I assume is challenging atheism. Seems counter to their ultimate purpose and just adds more ammunition to the pro-science crowd in claiming that teaching ID violates the separation of church and state. I'm all for them shooting themselves in the foot, but weird nonetheless.
"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, writes Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
I've heard him say this and I don't buy it.
The prior lack of an explanation as to the origin of life pales in comparison to the current lack of an explanation as to the origin of consciousness (ie the "think" in "I think, therefore I am").
All evolution did is produce an alternate explanation as to where all the cool species came from (which did undercut religious myths). Nevertheless I doubt we can be rid of religion until we really understand what consciousness is and I don't see why it should have been any harder to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist pre-evolution as opposed to now.
"Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling: The Challenge of Intelligent Design to Unintelligent Evolution" was the title of his disastrous presentation at the University of Oklahoma last year.
I guess he sauced up the title to be more 'hip' and 'cool' to pair with EPELLED... or not.
*gag*
This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin.
Hmm, sounds like they found some awesome cool new evidence for Intelligent Design.
Or not!
I finally managed to see Expelled yesterday. The DVD release has meant it's suddenly become available on various online streaming sites (I'm certainly not going to pay to see it!).
The production values are not bad but the whole 'evolution equals Hitler/Stalin' vibe is so over the top its going to jar with anyone with an IQ exceeding that of a root vegetable.
"...is one of the top twelve highest grossing documentary’s of all time."
One of the top twelve? What an odd number to use as a cutoff point. Suppose that's exactly where the film ranks but they worded it this way to give the impression that it might be higher? The lack of integrity knows no bounds.
It's clear that ID proponents not only believe there is an "intelligent designer" but that the majority of them believe it is the Christian God.
Yet when challenged to explain why they think this they cannot provide anything approaching reason to explain this. The truth is that it is very difficult to infer from the Bible their God is the driving force behind Intelligent Design - in fact the Bible makes a much stronger case that all that we see was specially created.
I think we need to more and more push back on the IDiots that believe Christian God is the man behind the curtain, and ask them for the evidence and causal linkage of why they think this is so (we also need to constantly challenge the ridiculous notion that somehow the identify of the designer is "out of scope"!).
The obvious point here is that if Christian God is the Intelligent Designer why did he not say so in his revelation to us (the Bible). I've yet to hear anything approaching a sensible explanation to this mystery (O'Leary's tried but you can imagine how well that went...). The reality is what God said in the Bible and what we see in nature (ID or evolution) are two very different things...
Yep, another example of the ID/DI crowd waiting their cake and eating it too. As Carlo pointed out they want ID to be accepted as a legitimate scientific area of study, but then they muddy the waters with books like this (and Dembki's previous book which was co-authored with evangelist Sean McDowell).
I'm constantly astonished that somebody like Dembski, with all his fancy degrees, can be so breathtakingy naive at times. As a side not it's interesting to note that Dembski has ordered all of the political grandstanding to stop on Uncommon Descent and for everybody to get back to discussing ID, and curiosuly the number of new posts has suddenly dropped all of a sudden (although DaveScot did manage to sneak in one of his global warming posts...)
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