In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins said “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” I have quoted Dawkins many times, but until it was brought to my attention recently, I never recognized the glaring—albeit implicit—admission he makes about atheism. To say Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist would mean the rejection of God’s existence came before there was sufficient reason to think it possible that God did not exist. Prior to Darwin, one’s commitment to atheism was a commitment of the will, not a commitment of the mind based on evidence. Only after Darwin could account for the apparent design of the universe in purely material terms could atheism be taken seriously.
Unbeknownst to Dawkins, he testifies to the truth of Romans 1 in two ways. First, creation reveals the Creator, and the appearance of design cries out for a Designer. The revelation of creation is so clear that those who rejected it prior to Darwin did so only to the detriment of their own intellectual honesty, for while they could not explain the existence and form of the universe without God, they rejected Him anyway.
Second, as Paul said, people already know God, but suppress that knowledge because their deeds are evil. Atheists are not being intellectually honest with themselves when it comes to the question of God’s existence. Atheism is a commitment of the will in search of justification, no matter how weak that justification may be. Darwinian evolution is a case in point.
Thinking to Believe 
June 4, 2008 at 8:58 am
Samuel Skinner
No, what Dawkins meant is it dismantled the argument from design.
Previous to that is was an argument from ignorance and so you could throw it out, but that left a big how? behind. They didn’t know. So atheism was consistent and logical, but a piece of the puzzle felt like it was missing.
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June 5, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I don’t see how your response counters my point. To say one could not be an intellectually fulfilled atheist prior to Darwin means pre-Darwin atheism was intellectually deficient. Why? Because atheism had no good answer for the apparent design in the universe, and thus had no basis for denying the prima facie intuition that the presence of design requires a designer. Having no explanation for the intricate design of the universe is a major intellectual deficiency for a worldview that claims there is no Designer, and that the universe is all there is.
Jason
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June 5, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I might also add the following observations:
1. Given the flimsy evidence for Darwinian evolution, I don’t see how Darwin allows an atheist to feel intellectually fulfilled even now.
2. Accounting for the design of the universe was not, and is not the only gaping hole in the atheistic worldview. Atheists cannot explain the following in a satisfactory manner:
a. Why the universe exists at all (the age-old question of why there is something rather than nothing at all)
b. Why the universe has the properties it does (particularly the highly improbable physical constants that are life-permitting)
c. Objective moral values (they often deny their existence despite our deepest intuitions to the contrary)
d. Free will (they often deny its existence despite our deepest intuitions to the contrary)
e. Consciousness
f. Human equality
g. Transcendent human rights (such as the right to life, liberty, etc.)
h. Rationality (laws of logic, knowledge of truth)
i. Preservation of personal identity through physical change
j. The existence of mind
So atheism is still not an intellectually satisfying position, in my estimation. Given the popular understanding of faith, I think it takes a lot more faith to be an atheist than it does a theist.
Jason
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June 5, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I forgot to mention atheism’s inability to explain the origin of life. The more science studies life and understands what would be required to get it going, the more improbable a fully naturalistic origin of life seems.
It’s almost laughable to think Darwin allows an atheist to be intellectually fulfilled when all Darwinism offers is a naturalistic explanation of how life evolved from one species into another, not how life came to exist in the first place from non-living materials.
Add to this atheist’s inability to explain why the universe exists at all, and why it has the unique life-permitting properties it does, and atheism, even with Darwinism, doesn’t explain a whole lot.
Jason
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June 6, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Samuel Skinner
No, it means they didn’t have an answer to a very important question. To see why that isn’t a valid argument see “fallacy of arguing from ignorance”.
Design? What design? Life shows design due to evolution, the universe is almost entirely random on its largest and smallest scales.
1) That is because you are an idiot. The evidence is good- you just are too stupid to understand it. If you want, crack open “Origin of Species”- it is outdated, but it had enough evidence to convince the worlds scientists. Obviously THEY know something you don’t.
2) All these are (again) arguments from ignorance.
a) Theism doesn’t answer this. An all powerful god has no reason to make a universe!
b) You assume a God would want life.
c) What are you talking about? You do realize people in the past didn’t have the same values we do? They practiced slavery, genocide, torture… Not very objective if the majority of the human species never followed said code.
d) There is no free will. There is only randomness and determinism. You are either the sum of your past or there is a dice in your mind. Even a soul wouldn’t help- you’d be determined by your past and its contents.
e) See the current field of neuroscience for the answer. Also, note this isn’t an argument against atheism, but materialism.
f) See the civil rights movement.
g) See transendant morality. Not very “transendant”.
h) Simple- people discovered/invented them.
i) Easy- it doesn’t happen. Ypu just think it does. Why? Because how would you be aware of the alternative? Conciousness, by definition, can’t record what happens when it isn’t running.
j) Once again see neuroscience
Lifes origins- See chemistry. Current theories
-ice is nice
-in the vents
-shallow wading pools
Darwinism explains why life exists in such variety and why it looks designed.
a
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June 6, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Samuel Skinner
Essentially all your arguments are those from ignorance. I don’t know how x occured, therefore God did it!
It isn’t a valid argument.
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June 9, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I wonder how you’d interpret the following comment:
“Intelligent design made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled creationist.”
Would such a statement, if made by a creationist, mean that creationism is driven by the will not the intellect.
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June 11, 2008 at 3:13 am
Samuel,
I don’t know what prior history you and Jason Dulle have, but I can’t understand the need for your belligerence in your response.
Since you’ve taken a simple label/point & dismiss approach to posting, allow me to do my own to your responses.
1. “Obviously THEY know something you don’t.” This smacks of strongly of the logical fallacy of appealing to an authority. The rest of your response for no.1 amounts to undue fluff.
2. “All these are (again) arguments from ignorance.” That would be easy to try to dismiss them as such, however, these are all age old philosophical questions that modern science has not accounted for.
b) “You assume a God would want life.” You’re kidding me right? I googled your name and found some of your articles, posts, responses, et cetera. From your writing I can tell your pretty familiar with the basic atheism/theism approaches & arguments. How then could you make such an elementary mistake of supposing you know what an “all powerful” god wants, needs, etc? You’ve left the “does god exist” debate and ventured into theological questions of who God is and what would he need, do, require…
c) You have a valid initial arguement to his post on this matter.
d) See quantum mechanics.
e) Yes, please do check the field of neuroscience and you’ll find a number of theories trying to account for the human concious and no resounding consensous amongst the objective. Only ardent materialists gravitate towards various journal articles as “proof” of an answer.
f) I have no real beef with your response. As simple as it sounds, it’s unclear to me what (Jason) is implying with “human equality.”
h) “Simple- people discovered/invented them.” You’re familiar w/Bahnsen’s presuppositional/transcendental argument. Humans may have articulated them, but the laws of logic preexisted any man made definitions. That’s like saying humans invented gravity, as if gravity never existed until it was “discovered.”
j) Yes, please see neuroscience…objectively.
Best-
Phillip
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June 11, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Samuel,
I’m a little peeved at technology. I responded to your comments, and for whatever reason they did not take. Bummer. And I don’t feel like doing it all over again.
So let me just respond to those points that Philip did not, or agreed with you on to one extent or another:
c. You are confusing moral epistemology with moral ontology. Just because people disagree about X does not mean X is neither true nor false. To provide an analogy, just because different people may give different answers to a math question does not mean there is no true answer, or that none of them is right. This is a fallacy.
f. My point about human equality is that there is nothing equal about humans, so why think they should be treated equally? Some are bigger, some are smarter, some have more wisdom, some are more athletic, etc. There is no criterion you can name that we all share equally. The only thing that can make us equal is that we all share in common human nature, and that nature is determined by a creator God. Dispense with that, and human equality becomes a fiction.
Jason
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June 11, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Arthur,
Your question reminds me of Victor Stenger, who, rather than asking why there is something rather than nothing, says we should be asking why there is God rather than nothing. It has a nice ring to it on the level of Kennedy’s “Ask not what your nation can do for you, but what you can do for your nation,” but not the same substance. God is a necessary being. Asking why there is God rather than nothing is to ask why a necessary being exists. Must is must.
In the same way that Stenger’s question was not really the intellectual opposite of asking why there is something rather than nothing, your statement is not the intellectual opposite of Dawkins. The fact of the matter is that no one needed intelligent design to be an intellectually fulfilled creationist. Creationists have always had intellectual fulfillment because their conclusion of a Creator was based off the basic intuition that things which appear designed are actually designed by a designer. In fact, it is because that intuition is so basic that the atheist could not be intellectually fulfilled prior to Darwin. He always had that nagging intuition barking up his tree.
All the ID movement has done is try to document that intuition in scientific terms, particularly with mathematics. They have attempted to show how the design inference is made on a scientific level. This is a great advance, but it does not advance intellectual fulfillment. If I landed on Mars tomorrow, and I saw what looked like a hotel, I would immediately conclude that the hotel was designed by an intelligent agent, and would be quite fulfilled intellectually in my conclusion. Having Dembski come along to explain to me mathematically why I inferred a designer adds little to my fulfillment.
Jason
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June 13, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I’m always skeptical of arguments that are so strongly intertwined with ad hominem attacks and base insults, but I find that it is common in such emotionally charged discussions. Too often, people so strongly associate with their ideas that they fail to separate criticisms of their theory from attacks on their person.
I find militant atheism to be a hugely interesting contradiction. If you passively accept atheism, then a theist can be someone you laugh at or view with a bit of incredulity; the nature of atheism is that it is a simple fact, and one that does not require any action on your part. The militant atheist is someone who is deeply invested in the doctrine. Based on your passionate assault on Jason and your aggressive arguments for the case of evolution, I have to ask, “Who are you trying to convince?” if your position is true, then we as Christians should be merely laughable, but not despicable. Your passionate and aggressive comments make it seem as though you protest just a bit too much. What do you have invested in this doctrine? Why do you care so much if we believe in god or creation?
Arguing evolution from the position of nature, I think you have a weak case. There are too many inconsistencies in nature that point to some sort of designer, or even a first cause, that evolutionary theory is utterly incapable of answering. This includes, but is not limited to, the extraordinarily unique chemical properties of water. Additionally, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy), nearly defies the Big Bang Theory. Finally, the most overwhelming question goes back to that point – how did it all begin? If our universe is truly a result of a Big Bang, and not even addressing the mind-boggling mechanics of it all, then why is it that our universe is not only continuing to expand, but accelerating in its expansion? Scientists point to “dark matter,” the description of which is laughable. The imaginative leaps taken to succinctly explain evolution and atheistic origin of life and the universe makes theism and Christianity seem downright rational and quite unimpressive.
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June 13, 2008 at 10:54 pm
b,
Thanks for chiming in. I absolutely agree with what you said. I’ve always found it ironic how emotionally charged some atheists get against believers. I’ve never met a boy who knew Santa Clause did not exist getting angry at his fellow classmates who still think he exists. If God is just like Santa Clause, why so much emotion?
I do have to disagree, however, with your claim that “the second law of thermodynamics (entropy), nearly defies the Big Bang Theory.” Actually, the second law of thermodynamics is fully at home in the Big Bang theory. The 2nd law states that entropy is increasing. The world, like a top, is spinning down, which implies it was would up at a finite point in the past. That is exactly what the Big Bang claims: the universe began a finite time ago fully charged with a finite amount of energy that has been increasing in entropy ever since.
Contrary to popular conception, the Big Bang is not opposed to Christian theology. Big Bang cosmology actually supports a Biblical truth that has been denied for millennia, namely that the universe had a beginning. The theistic implications of this discovery actually made many scientists reluctant to accept it (even today, many are trying to find a way out of it). While Big Bang cosmology identifies the Big Bang as the point of creation, interestingly enough the theory does not purport to explain how the universe came into being (without God). The theory is simply impotent to explain the cause of the Big Bang, and thus it cannot challenge theism. Anyone trying to get atheistic mileage out of it is using it improperly.
I figure it’s better for an ideological partner of yours to point this out than to wait for Samuel to do so!
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June 14, 2008 at 5:20 am
I appreciate your point, Jason, but I fear I was not quite clear. This often happens when I engage these discussions too late at night. My argument is that, according to the second law of thermodynamics, the rate of expansion of the universe should be decreasing as it reaches equilibrium. This is not the case; rather, the universe is accelerating in expansion. Scientists blame “dark matter,” but they dont have any real idea of what it is or why it works.
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June 16, 2008 at 2:08 pm
b,
Ah, I see. Actually, dark energy was postulated to account for the increased speed of the expansion (somehow the cosmological constant fits in there as well). Dark matter was postulated to explain why gravitational force is not weakened for stars at the outer rim of a galaxy. But your larger point still stands. The Standard Model did not predict an increased rate of expansion.
Jason
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June 16, 2008 at 9:22 pm
this is what happens when English majors try to play astrophysicist …
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June 17, 2008 at 11:53 pm
What happens when a theologian and apologist tries to play astrophysicist?
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August 28, 2008 at 6:00 pm
This might be off topic, but has to do with evolution, which has been brought up within this discussion:
If you look up books like Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, and a particular paper by Stephen C. Meyer you find out that the theory is on really, REALLY shaky grounds.
Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome” shows that the human genome is literally degrading due to all the mutations passed down through each generation. Mankind will eventually hit a point of mutational meltdown and go extinct. If mutations, the very thing supposedly needed for Neo-Darwinian evolution, is actually causing our extinction, how could it have ever caused our evolution? The book also shows that on the genetic level, even beneficial mutations could not be (or very rarely) selected within a population because Natural Selection only selects the whole of an organism. Not at the molecular level. So say we have a have a population of 100 humans and 1 human being has a protein that has been mutated towards a (but not completed) better protein. Because the newly-forming protein is not complete (and even if it was it’s a possibility that it’s not useful without other new proteins) this human has no advantage in being selected over any other. If other humans, even without this newly-forming protein, are better fit than the human with the protein, it’s more likely they will be selected. Thus the newly-forming protein will actually be lost! Also, even if we grant that 1 human somehow gained a completely new, useful protein, there’s no guarantee that it will be passed on.
Stephen C. Meyer in his paper “The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories” (http://www.discovery.org/a/2177) shows how the Cambrian Explosion reveals an incredible increase in genetic information. This genetic information he argues cannot be explained via present day theories including Neo-Darwinism, self-organization (mainly because it lacks any evidence), punctuated equilibrium, or structuralism. He also shows that things such as macro-evolution has not been documented. Interestingly where an organism has the potential to develop in a macro-evolutionary manner, at the early stages of embryo development, the organism usually perishes. While micro-evolution, which occurs later in the development of an embryo, does not kill the organism. I’d suggest reading the article, and the book if you have the time. Both an excellent read.
Keep it cool guys,
Tim
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August 29, 2008 at 10:15 am
Tim,
You are exactly right. The vast majority of mutations (even neutral ones) are ultimately harmful to a species. Behe’s newest book, The Edge of Evolution, shows that even mutations that offer an organism some survival benefit, only do so by destroying existing genetic machinery, not by building new and complex machinery. That’s no way to create a new species!
Jason
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August 30, 2008 at 12:34 am
Jason,
I wish more people understood this. To me design seems so apparent and obvious. While Darwinism has so many flaws it’s not even funny, let alone any actual evidence to back up the theory. They can make up just-so stories and say animals have similarities all they want but this doesn’t prove anything. It’s not even science!
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September 4, 2008 at 11:54 am
Tim,
Yes, design is apparent. Even Dawkins admits this. But he thinks it is an illusion that can be explained in terms of natural selection.
You’re right about the evidence for evolution. While I would consider the theory of evolution to be scientific in nature, the evidence supporting the theory is flimsy. Apart from an a prior commitment to philosophical or methodological naturalism, there would be no reason to think Darwinism is more rationally compelling than creation.
Jason
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