Request for comment by Stak, the philosophy god.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

If you have some time to waste.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7002 ... ncept.html

[_Panopticon]

"Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, "is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism," with its random process of natural selection, he writes."

I tend to lump evolution deniers with Holocaust deniers and UFOlogists.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Hi spurven,

Your praise is much too high, but thank you.

To be honest, I’m really saddened by this. It’s very dangerous for a philosopher to wade into the scientific realm without some serious training before hand (like a undergrad degree or something), because you can’t rely on popular works.

This book is not exactly getting a warm reception either, and apparently in a chapter on Behe, the only critic of Behe that Plantinga looks at is by philosopher Paul Draper. Now I love Draper, one of my favorite philosophers, but he isn’t the first or even 10th person you should go to when concerning Behe’s thesis.

[_EAllusion]

In a happy coincidnece, one of my favorite philosphers, Eliott Sober, is responsible for writing some brutal takedowns of Plantinga's naturalism defeated and Behe's form of intelligent design arguments.


http://fitelson.org/plant.pdf

http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/ID&PRword.PDF

[_MrStakhanovite]

In a happy coincidnece, one of my favorite philosphers, Eliott Sober, is responsible for writing some brutal takedowns of Plantinga's naturalism defeated and Behe's form of intelligent design arguments.


http://fitelson.org/plant.pdf

http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/ID&PRword.PDF

Elliot Sober is just awesome.

[_LDSToronto]

Hi spurven,

Your praise is much too high

Damn right.

H.

[_KevinSim]

"Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, "is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism," with its random process of natural selection, he writes."

I tend to lump evolution deniers with Holocaust deniers and UFOlogists.

Panopticon, what's your point? I read the article, which clearly said that Platinga isn't an evolution denier, and neither am I.

Evolution certainly questions whether deities are needed as an explanation for how biological creatures (like humans) came about, but it has been a long time since I saw that as an important role for God. Humanity doesn't need God to create it; humanity needs God to preserve it. Without someone who knows how to preserve some good things from humanity, the day will eventually come when humanity (or for that matter anything that evolves from humanity) will all be extinct, and the universe will go on as if humanity had never existed. That's a future I can't accept; yet it will inevitably come without a deity to prevent it.

[_Tarski]

yet it will inevitably come without a deity to prevent it.

Nonsense. There is no evidence that a God is needed to preserve goodness. The idea that it would all go down the crapper without a magical supervisor is just based on your fears.
Besides, preserving a species and preserving goodness do not seem to be necessarily connected anyway. An evil and violent breed of humans might be quite good at reproducing. Indeed, we are such.

By the way, if your God is in the preventing business then it seems clear that your God needs to do a lot more and better preventing (not to mention preserving)!
To wit:

[_MrStakhanovite]

But Tarski...helping those people would have violated their Free Agency! The greatest gift Heavenly Father has given us!

[_Tarski]

But Tarski...helping those people would have violated their Free Agency! The greatest gift Heavenly Father has given us!

Which is why, as a parent, I would never step in to stop it if one of my kids was cracking another one of my kids over the head with a frying pan. I must not remove the free agency of the agressor!
After all, the only kind of freedom worth having is the freedom to destroy lives and cause horrible pain (never mind the fact that a dead or maimed person is somewhat less free).
(not)

Praise the God who preserved the free agency of the Nazis but not the free agency of those shackled and starving Jews.

I wonder what the world would be like if it there was nothing to prevent evil but human beings themselves (would it look kinda like the one we live in?)