RE: TEs vs materialism

Yes, McGrath's a great example. In fact, I wrote about him in one of my
science and faith columns for ChristianWeek. If more Christians wanted to
take on people like Dawkins and fewer wanted to fight with each other, we'd
all be miles ahead. - cheers, Denyse

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Scientist debunks atheist's God

By Denyse O'Leary

Have you noticed a double standard in the way science issues that concern
people of faith are addressed in the public square? Phillip Johnson, author
of The Wedge of Truth (2000), calls this double standard the Two-Platoon
Strategy, borrowing the term from American football. He uses the
evolution-intelligent design controversy as his example, but the strategy
applies to many other issues as well, including human embryonic stem cell
research.

Here's how it works: When leading evolutionary biologists feel free to say
what they really believe, they make clear that God is dead, using their
authority in science to silence any dissent from religious believers.
That's Platoon One. But when Christians protest that science educators are
teaching an atheistic worldview, not science as such, the defensive platoon
appears. Then come the "spin-doctored reassurances saying that many
scientists are religious (in some sense), that science does not claim to
have proved that God does not exist (but merely that he does not affect the
natural world), and that science and religion are separate realms which
should never be mixed (unless it is the materialists who are doing the
mixing)." Having placated the foolish masses, the defensive platoon leaves
and the offensive platoon goes right back to business attacking the theistic
worldview.

Thanks to the Internet, more and more of the foolish masses can find out
what is really happening for once, so this trick isn't working so well any
more. But identifying a problem isn't the same thing as providing an answer.
Fortunately, a just-published book may help us.

Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, is a
world-renowned theologian who also holds a PhD in molecular biophysics. So
he is well qualified to discuss faith and science. In Dawkins' God: Genes,
Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Blackwell 2004), he takes aim at fellow
Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous Darwinist. Dawkins
has long used Darwinian evolution as a platform for promoting atheism.

McGrath's attack is devastating because he aims at the science that
underlies Dawkins's claims for atheism. McGrath shows that, actually, very
little science underlies Dawkins's claims.

Here are just a few examples:

- Dawkins's hero is Charles Darwin who, he says, enabled him to feel
fulfilled as an atheist. But Darwin himself wasn't an atheist. He was an
agnostic who couldn't quite be an atheist because the evidence didn't really
support it. Dawkins, by contrast, blunders on, heedless of the roar of
contrary evidence.

- Dawkins insists that faith means belief without evidence. But no Christian
theologian actually teaches that. So most of his attacks are simply
irrelevant.

- Dawkins claims that religion is bad for you. But the vast majority of
studies on the subject demonstrate that it is good for you. Dawkins's only
response is that we must choose between health and truth. But how likely is
it that, in a reality-based universe like ours, the things that make for
health are untrue?

Interestingly, Proverbs 3 set out, thousands of years ago, the practical
benefits of following the commands of God: ". they will prolong your life
many years and bring you prosperity" (v2) ; "This will bring health to your
body and nourishment to your bones." (v8) If that's all false why has it
been demonstrated to work so consistently?
 
McGrath's book comes at an interesting time. A world famous British
philosopher, who has championed atheism for more than fifty years, now
believes that there is a God . on account of intelligent design theory.

Antony Flew, who became an atheist at 15, used to debate the great
Christian apologist C.S. Lewis in the 1950s, which shows you how far back he
goes. (Lewis died in 1963.)

So why did Flew change his mind? He says that the investigation of DNA "has
shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are
needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved."
Notice, we are talking here about evidence that life forms are designed. We
are not talking about stuff you can know only by faith. What convinced Flew
was evidence from science, not faith.

Didn't get the book you want for Christmas? If you are interested in faith
and science issues, I would recommend that you try to get hold of Dawkins'
God. Let's hope Flew has one more book in him too.

Denyse O'Leary is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. Her book By
Design or By Chance?: The Growing Controversy Over the Origin of Life in the
Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004) can be ordered at www.designorchance.com.

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I briefly responded earlier to Denyse's request for examples of ASA people
who've openly taken on scientific materialism. I've privately sent her a
bunch of names that occur to me, without specific titles, etc.

Alister McGrath is not in the ASA, though me might be a member of our
British equivalent (CIS). He's clearly a TE, and he's very clearly
responded to Dawkins directly in his latest book, "Dawkins' God: Genes,
Memes, and the Meaning of Life."

Does this count, Denyse, as the kind of response you are trying to locate on
the landscape?

ted

--
Read brief excerpts from my book, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing
Controversy On the Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004)
at
http://www.designorchance.com/press.html
Study Guide:
http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/books/b088sk.htm
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0806651776/qid=1109790930/sr=8
-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-8617533-8799957?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
My blog:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/ 
(go to other blogs from here)
Denyse O'Leary
Tel: 416 485-2392
Fax: 416 485-2392
oleary@sympatico.ca 
www.designorchance.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Davis [mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 3:15 PM
To: asa@lists.calvin.edu; oleary@sympatico.ca
Subject: TEs vs materialism