"Spooky free will..."

When you have all the possible imperatives grouped and arranged and described the issue is… which ones to implement? You often have multiple options... decisions need to be made these are ‘binaryised’. We face T junctions in our lives...they are real... they display AND determine our character. To deny their reality is to commit conceptual/mental suicide and abandon both thought and speech. There is an ‘I’ that makes them...that ‘I’ is not a material reality it is a person… this very obvious reality has become ‘spooky’ to us.

It is the nonsense of "natural selection" that was truly devolutionary.

 

…the true leader is… not a revolutionary. He is instead someone who reestablishes the genuine covenant, or contract, that has always guided mankind. He is instead someone who brings his spirit into alignment with what has always been great. He is, therefore, someone who renews, rather than someone who shatters and then too radically and hubristically reshapes; someone who can identify and reserve what is truly nourishing and offer it once again for mass consumption. Such a figure only has as a revolutionary mien when the society against which he is standing has forgotten so much and become so corrupt that the good now makes itself manifest as a shocking revelation.

Peterson, Jordan B.. We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine (p. 333). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

This is why the idea of intelligent design is perceived as shocking in the modern scientific world. It was not always so. Science was born out of a conviction of intelligent design as the foundation stone of reality. Intelligent design is part of the genuine covenant that has always guided mankind. It is the covenant of the eternal reality of the personal which is what we mean by God. The material is built on the personal not the other way around. Modern science has become so entangled with a materialist mindset that it cannot even see what has happened.

What is the argument?

 The argument about design is - in the end- about what a person is and whether they exist or not.

The most fundamental place where this argument takes place it with regards to origins. This is not the only place where it is important however.

Everyone involved in the argument knows that this argument has the largest possible consequences all down the line.

This is not merely a dry as dust academic puzzle.

This is not a place where anyone can be objective and without personal interest.

It is about the most basic foundations of your whole way of life and thought.

Everything is at stake here for everyone. There are no disinterested parties here.

How nice is our argument?

This is not simply a logical puzzle. This is not simply a game.

Many people think we should be just "nice"!

Many people think we should be just "winsome"!

I was once told the story of a crash on the M6 motorway. It was because of dense fog and there was, in the fog, a pile up of cars. There was no warning and more and more cars were piling into the fatal carnage.

I was told of a man running up the hard shoulder of the motorway shouting and screaming and throwing road cones into the road... trying to slow the traffic. Trying to stop more and more cars ploughing into the crash.

I want to be that man.

We are to be careful.

We are to use our words with kindness and consideration.

But...

We are to be alarmed

We are to be alarming

We are to be angry.

We need to identify the lies and we need to identify the deliberate liars.

The argument

 The argument is regarding evidence for design. Christianity is built on the idea that there is clear proof for the reality of God and that this evidence is available to all and is inescapably convincing. Christianity is built on the idea that the design argument is solid. As we examine the universe around us we are aware that we did not make it and we did not make ourselves. Either it happened or God did it. It is my contention that the nature of our thinking necessitates theism. There is an orderliness to the universe, to life and to our own inescapable way of thinking that requires that it be built on an eternally personal foundation. This is the great choice at the bottom of all our seeing and thinking. It is either a basically personal universe or a basically impersonal universe. Theism says that the universe is built personally and is the stage for a display of the glory of its creator. The stage proclaims his glory and the play of history will also proclaim his glory. 

If you choose the impersonal view of reality then you have no basis for your own personal reality. 

The impersonal view provides no proper explanation for the origin of life or consciousness or language. The theistic view is that these are all eternal realities.

The material view of a person is totally unsatisfactory it provides no basis for the imperative to truth and goodness. It ends up in denial of what is impossible to deny if you wish to deny anything. It ends up with the dissolution of the entirety of the reality of the personal on which all that we value most rests. No one can be a consistent materialist. No one can be a consistent atheist.

Trust requires a truly personal object. This is entirely different from a material mechanism. You cannot resolve what we all mean by a person into the material and impersonal. All our language and thought is built on assumptions about the personal that are incompatible with materialism and atheism.