evolution again, etc

I’ve been making a couple of comments at Online Opinion, in which every month there’s an article on religion. This month it was the sceptics’ turn, with a piece on the advance of science and the retreat of religion. It also dismisses, I think rightly, Stephen J Gould’s attempt to separate science and religion into mutually exclusive spheres. But boy what a commotion these issues cause. About ninety comments so far, way more than for any other article this month.
Out of the comments, some remarks about Anthony Flew’s apparent switch from atheism to ‘deism’, according to one commentator. I’ve yet to discover what the difference is between deism and theism, if any, but Flew says, in an interview with Gary Habermas that he has not been swayed by any versions of the cosmological argument, or the ontological argument, or any other argument but the teleological one. He claims that the argument for intelligent design has become much stronger in recent years. My next task, then, will be to examine these arguments.
Flew claims that new work in physics, around the big bang theory, has helped to turn his mind towards deism. He also feels that the theory of evolution increasingly suffers from serious flaws. He also seems to have problems with the failure to account for the origin of life itself within the theory of evolution or any other theory. Another commentator on the essay at Online Opinion, incidentally titled The Science of Religion, points out that self-replicating organisms are ‘irreducibly complex’. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it must be addressed.
This brief article by Edward Max responds well to some of the issues raised by creationists, but it doesn’t touch much on the origin of life issue, presumably because he considers it irrelevant. It does provide a clever challenge to present the evidence against evolution on the basis of its violation of the second law of thermodynamics, an argument or ploy often used by creationists, apparently. That’s to say, to present a detailed mathematical analysis of how evolution violates the second law. Apparently no ‘creation scientist’ has taken up this challenge, though many still make the claim regardless.
So much to do, I just drift or shift from one fascinating theme to another, moving along the thread of my own wonder. I’ve read today an article critiquing most negatively a book by Oxford theology professor Alister McGrath, and why not I say, for McGrath clearly blames atheism for way more than it could reasonably be blamed for thereby revealing much prejudice and ignorance, but along the way, and what most interested me about it all, was the question of whether atheists positively believe in no god or just negatively disbelieve in a god or gods, and the article claims that you just have to not believe to be an atheist, but some have distinguished two types of atheism, weak atheism or negative atheism which just doesn’t believe, and positive or strong atheism, which does believe in no god, or takes the positive position of denial. Now I personally believe you can’t be an atheist without taking up the strong or positive position. Babies don’t believe in god because the concept hasn’t been introduced to them, but it would seem absurd to call them atheists. And the same for dogs or cats for that matter, they’ll always be atheists if to be an atheist simply entails not believing in gods, but calling a dog or a cat an atheist is simply a category mistake, I think that’s what they call it. No, to be an atheist is to take up a positive position, to affirm a particular belief, that there are no gods in the universe. I agree that this doesn’t amount to a belief system, though it is a position, and I suppose for it to be coherent it has to fit with other beliefs (for example, atheists tend not to believe in the after-life, or spiritualism, or astrology, and these non-beliefs are not accidentally associated with atheism. Atheism is often, indeed surely almost always, associated with a non-supernatural or a materialist worldview). You can see how believers would tend to see a belief system there (though of course communism is no more a part of that system than is belief in capitalism or democracy or absolute monarchy).
Maybe though I’m getting weak atheism as a position all wrong, since some fairly astute thinkers claim to be weak atheists. This atheists’ website describes weak atheism as ‘simple scepticism’, so it’s not really like not having a position is it? And where does it sit with agnosticism? The same website offers two types of agnosticism, strict agnosticism and empirical agnosticism, the first based on the idea that we cannot ever know, the second claiming simply that we do not know. So where so I place myself? A strong atheist? Can I prove this negative? No, but I firmly believe that there are no gods. So how do I defend myself against the claim that this belief is based on faith and not on evidence? Wouldn’t it be easier to do a Bertie Russell and ‘retreat’, if that’s what it is, to strict agnosticism, saying that, whatever my firm conviction might be, I don’t believe that there’s any conclusive proof one way or another? Maybe if I was a better logician I’d do just that, but out of ignorance and maybe pig-headedness I want to assert the non-existence argument, citing as proof that naturalist explanations reduce substantially the likelihood of a god’s existence, except maybe as initial ball-roller, something very remote indeed. I do think though that a better understanding of the origin of life itself would deal a further blow to the theists, and that this might come from extra-terrestrial examples (Mars being an obvious candidate). That’ll be enough of this meandering stuff for now.