I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Mary Eberstadt's satire on atheism. The main benefit I got from it was excellent counter-arguments about theism/atheism and the aesthetic (e.g., Chartres) and moral (see later)high ground. One point she makes is that abortion is the key issue of our day and the theists have been right on this. Another is the fact that atheists like Steven Pinker and Peter Singer have argued for infanticide and bestiality respectively. If these are heinous yet acceptable in principle to atheists, then the claim that an atheist is as likely to be moral is problematic. Furthermore, she notes an excellent survey that correlates theism/atheism with generosity/selfishness respectively when it comes to giving $$$ to charity. Finally, her comeback to Dennet's reference to atheists as "brites" is to point out "the woman problem," i.e., that women are more likely to believe in God than men: so the question Eberstadt poses is, does Dennet believe that men are brighter than women?
Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
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