Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [80]
7. Unless we happen to be the first space-faring species, which the Copernican Principle (that we are not special) predicts is unlikely.
8. Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (Minneapolis, Minn.: Winston Press, 1985).
9. Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth: A Study of the Christian Doctrine of Creation (New York: Doubleday, 1965). I am grateful to Michael McGough’s insightful essay on why Intelligent Design is bad theology: Michael McGough, “Bad Science, Bad Theology,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2005, p. C12.
10. Cited in S. J. Grenz and R. E. Olson, 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (Exeter, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 1993), p. 124.
11. Quoted in G. H. Smith, Atheism: The Case against God (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1989), p. 34.
4. Debating Intelligent Design
1. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1859). Published in the same portentous year as Darwin’s Origin of Species.
2. As a secondary benefit, we can reinforce skeptics with additional intellectual firepower for use in their own debates with True Believers and Fence Sitters. And on a tertiary level, we can witness to both cohorts that skeptics and scientists are thoughtful, witty, and affable, and sans horns, rancor, and pathos. To wit, after my debate with Hovind I was handed several notes from Christians whose feedback led me to conclude that, at the very least, they were convinced that skeptics and scientists are not Satanists. Here are two:
I am a believer of Creation. However, I wanted to tell you I respected your professionalism in your execution of what you had to say. I almost want to apologize on behalf of some Creationists present tonight.
I cannot say that I agree with you, but I would like to thank you for your professional presentation, unlike your opposition.
If you think I exaggerate the perception of skeptics as Satanists, a note given to me after the debate, from “an Evangelist Christian—Born again,” reiterated this fear: “I just want to tell you that we fight against a spiritual world and Satan will do anything to blind your eyes from the truth. I just ask you to consider this as a possibility! I will be praying for you!” A common question I get at such debates is: “Why did you give up your faith?” The question is asked out of genuine curiosity, but there is often a substrate implied in the voice and revealed in the eyes: “This couldn’t happen to me, could it?” When I answer in the affirmative that, indeed, it could happen to anyone who is intellectually honest in their search for answers to life’s most ponderous questions, I am sometimes accused of a false faith ab initio:“You were never really a Christian.” How convenient, and cognitively bullet-proof. But tell that to my annoyed siblings and non-Christian friends, who tolerated my nonstop evangelizing for seven years. The sentiments were quite real.
3. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). Originally published in 1758. Emphasis added.
4. Herbert Spencer, Essays Scientific, Political and Speculative (London: Williams & Norgate, 1891).
5. I discovered the Fossil Fallacy not in my research on evolution deniers, but in my study of the Holocaust deniers, who demand “just one proof” of the veracity of the central tenets of the Shoah. For example, they ask: Where are the Zyklon-B gas pellet induction holes in the roof of the gas chamber in Krema II at Auschwitz-Birkenau? “No holes, no Holocaust,” they claim, a slogan even emblazoned on a T-shirt worn by Holocaust deniers. We have since found these holes, but the fallacy is in assuming that the Holocaust is a single event that can be proven by a single piece of data. Just as the Holocaust was thousands of events that occurred in thousands of places and is proven (reconstructed) through thousands of historical facts,