ID: Testimonials ;)

They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. Look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines.  (Novelist Kurt Vonnegut, in an interview on NPR)

Extended transcript from and NPR interview Morning Edition January 23, 2006 - Steve Inskeep, Host  --with Novelist Kurt Vonnegut.  ((I happened to hear this one, and when I did, I thought, "Did I just hear what I just heard?))

Mr. VONNEGUT: But anyway, it's obvious through human experience that extended families and tribes are terribly important. We can do without an extended family as human beings about as easily as we can do without vitamins or essential minerals. Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and [excluding] intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.

INSKEEP: How are the scientists behaving tribally?

Mr. VONNEGUT: They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. Look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines.

INSKEEP: Does that mean you would favor teaching intelligent design in the classroom?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Look, if it's what we're thinking about all the time; if I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this. Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion. Also, I think that, you know, it's tribal behavior. I don't think that Pat Robertson, for instance, doubts that we evolved. He is simply representing a tribe.

INSKEEP: There are tribes on both sides here in your view?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Yes.

INSKEEP: May I ask what tribes, if any, you have belonged to over the years?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now; people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.

INSKEEP: Who are denounced by some religious people as secular humanists?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, that's exactly what I am. The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5165342



Antony Flew, Before:

"Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"  (Antony Flew)

Flew, After:

Although I was once sharply critical of the argument to design, I have since come to see that, when correctly formatted, this argument constitutes a persuasive case for the existence of God.”
- Antony Flew (There is a God, p. 95.)

Note: Antony Garrard Newton Flew (born 11 February 1923) is a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he is notable for his works on the philosophy of religion.


Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He has also criticized the idea of life after death,[1] the free will defense to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God.[2] However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism,[3] and later wrote the book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. This book has been the subject of controversy, following an article in the New York Times magazine alleging that Flew has mentally declined, and that Varghese was the primary author.[4] The matter remains contentious, with some commentators including PZ Myers and Richard Carrier supporting the allegations, and others—[5]including Flew himself—[6] opposing them.  (Wikipedia)