The ID gang at Evo-News give themselves away here by unwittingly showing that the design debate in this form is a political left/right issue, and grounds for caution at deceptive tactics. And the same holds true for the book cited, Return of the God Hypothesis, which I just read (very hurriedly, jumping to the conclusion and then reading backward in a skim). The book has some interesting points but its core is the fallacious abuse of the design argument as a front for conservative religion and politics. Here the Darwinists, and most biologists/Darwinists have completely boloxed the whole question by claiming that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, a point that seems beyond dull wits of Darwinian scientists who open themselves up to a sermon disguised behind often valid observations about evolution.
This debate has gone on too long but that’s because in Kantian terms it has no resolution. The famous antinomies of Kant come out in the open and beggar both sides. The Big Bang (assuming it is a solid theory) does indeed provoke a sense of design behind the universe, but at no point is it legitimate to take this as some kind of proof for the existence of god, let alone the Christian brand. Apart from anything else ‘god’ in such a discussion can’t exist because he/she is ‘beyond existence’ so the whole modus ponens enter the realm of Alice’s wonderland where storks are used as cricket pallets, kid you not. To be clear, inferring ‘atheism’ can result in similar confusions.
I think that the issue is easily settled: evolution is factually real, but its mechanism(s) are not known and the pretense otherwise has done harm to science. The tide of science favors the evolution thesis but a comprehensive view of cosmology/evolution still remains elusive. We learn the hard way that science cannot resolve evolution in the fashion of physics, while religion is stuck in its own illusion.
I recommend a study of my ‘eonic model’ as at Decoding World History (free pdf online) to see why the religious believers are so obsessed with the Old Testament, even as its combination of primitive elements next to a now forgotten ‘gnostic’ refusal to speak the name of god (IHVH, as pointing to a mystery, in probably the hidden prophetic early versions before the pop theism of ‘god’ took over the whole subject). The context of the emergence of religions in the Axial Age clarifies the stubborn hold of monotheism, even as it inexorably passes away just as what it replaced did, viz. polytheism. Monotheism was an attempted advance on paganism, and perhaps so it was, but its ‘god’ beliefs start to seem as fanciful as the pantheon of the Iliad. But, to be sure, a new and innovative ‘ god hypothesis’ is entirely possible for the future, but then you must renounce the old and grant its delusive religiosity. I can’t hold out much prospect for such an hypothesis, but in any case an hypothesis preempts jumping to conclusions, you must prove the hypothesis and not cheat at the rules by cribbing from past theologies. As to a new and improved ‘god meme’ from the hypothetical, well, I am still waiting.
I think that a brand of evolution that is honest enough to renounce the selectinist myth/deception along with a Kantian discipline brought to the design argument can help to at least reach a more sensible future that this stale and idiotic evolution debate that attracts mediocrity in both scientists and religionists.
I was hoping that Robinson would push the two of them to say what they think of scientific arguments for intelligent design, of the kind Meyer offers in Return of the God Hypothesis. He does ask them, “Do you buy any of this?” But they don’t really confront the subject head-on. That’s too bad because as Meyer points out, theism without God, so to speak, is “unstable and even dangerous.” Holland’s theme is that Christian ways of thinking are permanently with us — with all of us in the West — but that they can take alarming turns when not grounded by tradition. Meyer thinks that’s just what happened with Communism and now with wokeness.
Source: Meyer and “New New Atheists” in Discussion | Evolution News
1848+: The End(s) of History 