I don't claim to speak on any authority except whatever logic my arguments might exhibit. You choose to disregard the arguments I make, and opt to throw up a bunch of important-sounding names instead.
But your arguments are usually based on straw so there is rarely a need to address them. So often is the case that I ignore your comments because I agree, but you assume I disagree and that my silence is proof that you've "kicked my butt."
You can't even keep basic chronology into perspective.
For instance, I typed out an entire chapter and you quipped on it before you read even half of it. Now you want to accuse me of mentioning names in response to your arguments when in fact those names appeared before your straw man arguments were presented. You never dealt with them, you merely hand waved them aside.
It seems that you haven't grown out of your religious upbringing, with its contempt for logic alone, and its inexplicable need for authority figures. Pity.
Funny. It is so obvious that you couldn't handle me on a live one on one debate if your life depended on it, because you rely too much on stupid rhetoric like this, along with the cackling hens to provide cover fire for your diversions.
Even now you can't come to gripes with the fact that you've clearly spoken in ignorance, and have accused me, on numerous occassions, of holdng beliefs I do not hold. This reveals a weakness in your position. The only way you know how to argue is to argue along the lines of Dawkins. So you require that I hold certain positions, especially when I don't. You cannot adjust your arguments to address the actual positons that I hold, without blowing smoke with the attacks, making excuses for your own lack of understanding, regurgitating an irrelevant quip from Dawkns, etc. Pity.
Thank you for admitting this.
This has always been my position. Case in point. You're a very slow learner.
It's not my terms -- it's science's terms.
Nonsense, this is what Dawkins says, and you only know how to parrot him. If what you say were true then there wouldn't be scientists claiming there is no conflict between religion and science. Stephen Jay Gould is just one of many scientists who held this position, as did Hawking, Ruse and others. But you're not interested in important names and what they have had to say on the matter.
Apparently, you're only interested in recreating the situaton to suit the your own atheistic agenda. What I am pointing out is that there are a handful of bigots in science today with "important-sounding names" who insist on attacking religion on their own terms because that is the only way they can attack it. This is very unscientific and unprofessional of them.
And tell me how it is "science's terms" to insist the Bible must be taken literally in everything it says? Come on genius, explain the "scientific basis" for that! (Quick, go look up Dawkins, page 72.)
I know you've never heard of this before, and that's understandabe since they usually hide information like this in books. But the fact is there is an entire "science" (that's right, science!) geared to address the Bible and to ascertain what its original authors intended to convey. That science is called hermeneutics, of which you and Dawkins are abysmally ignorant.
He's content to think the Bible is literal and that billions of Christians all assume it all has to be down to the last detail. When Christians say they don't believe that, he attacks them and tells them they are being hypocritical. You see, he needs them to believe these things. That makes his campaign easier, and that is why I say he attacks and misrepresents religion on his own selfish terms. For example, his definiton of faith is ludicrous, but he claims that is the religious definiton, so he proceeds to write a chapter discrediting it in scientific terms while bobble heads like you are going "yeah yeah that's true man."
And then he had to run back more than a century to use a discredited theory of social religion that was rejected shortly after it was born, to establish another straw man before spending another chapter knocking it down to entertain the bobble heads. There is simply no reason this guy should be taken seriously on anything he has to say about religion, because he has exhibited a willfull ignorance and an ambitious campaign to blindly attack what he doesn't understand. You're just another one of his many armchair bobble head atheists who can't seem to muster enough laboring brain cells to spark some critical thinking.
But hey, you're kicking my butt, right? That's gotta count for something, somewhere, in the atheist halls of shame.
You seem very eager to shroud religious claims in the guise of science, without subjecting religion to the disproof that other objects of scientific inquiry are liable. You can't have it both ways.
You still don't understand the argument (shocker!). Religious claims cannot be tested using the modern scientific paradigm, this is true. However, the argument from teleology can and has in fact provide strong evidence for a divine intelligence, whether you want to call it scientific or not. It has compelled career atheist Antony Flew to admit the obvious. Einstein was born in the full light of Darwinism, and even he felt he had to admit it. It is convincing atheists and scientists all over the globe, from every corner of academia. The evidence is mounting. It provides plenty of explanatory power even if it doesn't really fall into the category of "scientific" expanation. Teleological argumentum used to be synonymous with science but science has since evolved from one paradigm to the next, landing squarely into the mechanistc paradigm of today. And that's fine. Nobody is saying God should be proved, except idiots from the radical atheist fringe. And the only "religious claim" that I have ever been interested in is the claim that a divine intelligence exists.
Don't you think that the bishop should have some reason to believe that the Bible is metaphorical and poetic, if that's what he wants to say? Probably not, because reason is obviously not very important to you.
YES! And this again proves that it is Dawkins who is the irrational one, not the theist. For what reason does Dawkns assumes the Bible is not metaphorical and poetic? Necessity, that is his reason. That isn't a very good reason let alone a scientifc one, but it is all he has.
I should also ask how the bishop knows which parts to interpret metaphorically -- why can't all the parts about the existence of God be metaphorical, too?
As I said, there is an entire science dedicated to this subject, and religious leaders of all stripes have at least some backgroud training in the field. Priests are generally required to learn the ancient languages from which the Hebrew and Greek Bibles were written. Even the whackos at Biola take pride in their Greek training. Now why would they even bother if, as you and Dawkins insist, they think the modern English translation is all we need?
Regarding Genesis we can compare it to contemporary literature to see how the author(s) of Genesis was probably trying to appeal to a previous tradition to get certain points across. As evolution requires adjusting as further evidence is discovered, so too is the understanding of the Bible as scholarship progresses in light of new archealogical finds. But idiots like Dawkins act like this 4000 year old document was written by an English speaker addressing 21st century Americans, so it will do for him to operate along those lines. Again, this is something only the ignorant can appreciate.
Let's get this back to the original point: you said that science precluded spirituality. I showed a scenario where spirituality could be championed by science. That shows that your assertion was wrong. Please admit that you were
Here you are again trying to prove and disprove on your own terms. It might appear scientific to someone who doesn't know much about science, but this would be such a convoluted "scientific" experiment because it rests on several premises that are unwarranted. Do religious people really believe that by simply praying over someone dying with cancer, that the cancer will fade away and the person will live? I know quite a few religious people, and even a few religious nuts, and while they maintain that anything is possible if God wills it, there is no expectation that such a thing would necessarily happen based on prayer. So if the religous have no such expectation, then why the hell would an atheist in a labcoat demand it?
Generally, prayers at hospitals are done to provide comfort to those suffering, and even if studies proved this succeeded (and I believe some have) then this wouldn't be proof for much of anything definitive since it could easily be chalked up to science in the form of the "placebo effect".
Nice dodge. Just answer the question.
Simply put, it explains why the universal constants, which have baffled scientists for centuries, are what they are. The only common values that they all share is that they are what they are so that life on earth could emerge. This turns Compernicus on its head. Again humans are at the center of the universe it seems. Not in a spatial sense, but in a teleological sense. This is what religious traditions have been claiming for thousands of years, and now we see evidence popping up everywhere in the universe confirming it. Genesis said God created the universe and time. Genesis says plant life and ocean life existed before mankind. Thanks to evolution we know this to be true. What's more, modern science has uncovered, finally, what religon has known for thousands of years: the universe and time both had a beginning. This pissed off atheists to no end when this was discovered, and for good reason too.
Genesis is not a scientific document by any means, but that doesn't preclude it from presenting scientific truths mixed in the myths. And it is highly suspicious that religious people were aware of things long before science proved them. This flies directly in the face of modern atheistic claims, that suggest religion presents X as truth and requires blind faith, whereas science presents Y to be true and provides empirical evidence. This is the game atheists like to play, but in reality the two are not mutually exclusive.
My position is that if the universe has a beginning, then it is logical to presume a creator. To your eternal dismay, Hawking sad that this is a reasonable position to take. And so if God created it, then God would have to transcend it, which means there is nothing within the mechanistic universe that could prove or disprove God exists. We woldn't even expect there could be. If knowledge about God is possible, it must be done via teleological inference which is apparently what the ancient religous nuts already knew to be true. The heavens proclaim God they said, and now we see the evidence is actually coming from cosmologists and astronomers who can't seem to make any sense of the universe except in the sense that it was a "put up job."
Now your orginal complaint against religion is that it never changes. This is nonsense straight from Dawkins' manuals, but I already proved religion is perfectly willing to change, if required, in accordance with new scientific discoveries.
I addressed the citations.
There is nothing you can say to outweigh their authority. We are not talking about scientific claims, we are talking about the state of modern science as materialism dominates it, and how the premise is assumed, not proved. This is an establshed fact, so there really isn't anything you can say to change it, even if you were a scientist.
The evidence does no such thing, and the scientists who follow this argument as credulously as you do are a small minority (not that I give a s*** about what scientists think, if it doesn't make any sense).
Apparently, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but what's new? You're completely oblivious to the cosmological evidence and how it weighs in on the question of God. It upsets you, as it does Dawkins, that authorities in the natural sciences have no problems delving into that area, proving that science and religion are not inherently at odds.
Hawking wasn't stupid enough to say anything about that creator, though.
Suddenly the biggest names in science are walking on the fine line of stupidity in your view. You're just proving how out of touch you are. Keep your head up Dawkins' ass ok? Here are some citations from Hawking:
"It is difficult to discuss the beginning of the universe without mentioning the concept of God. My work on the origin of the universe is on the borderline between science and religion, but I try to stay on the scientific side of the border. It is quite possible that God acts in ways that cannot be described by scientific laws, but in that case, one would just have to go by personal belief."
"These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it"
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"
"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator [the cosmological argument]. But if the universe is really completely self- contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
Yeah, he never mentions a creator does he! Why must you continue to embarrass yourself? Is Dawkins really the only scientist you read?
Even if you take these first-cause arguments seriously (and you shouldn't), you can't impute any of the characteristics of "God" to this creator.
What characteristics are you referring to? All I have done is provide the evidence that strongly and compellingly suggests there is some kind of superior power in the universe, which is intelligent and transcendent. This in and of itself throws atheism out the window which means any of the known religions could be true, since a transcendent God is perfectly consistent with their notions.
Hawking didn't say that this creator was all-good (it could be amoral, or even evil), or all-powerful, or even intellige
Of course not, nor would he need to. And he didn't feel he needed to do all of this in order to note the evidence for its existence.
Here is where you pull a Dawkins manuever (yes, I've seen almost all of his debates).
The main reason Dawkins rejects the God hypothesis for an explanation is that he has strapped himself down to Universal Darwinism. Meaning, for Dawkins, if God exists, he would have to be too complex for us to imagine. And evolution on earth shows that living beings move from simple to complex, so for the universe to begin with an extraordinarily complex lifeform, would throw his worldview out of whack. The problem is, Dawkins begins with the fallacious premise that Darwinism applies to the universe. It ends up being a circular argument. He refuses to reach a reasonable conclusion because he has already placed limits on what he's willing to accept.
This moron also thinks he has refuted Paley's argument in the Blind Watchmaker. Physicist Stephen Barr explains how Dawkins unwittingly strengthened Paleys argument:
What Dawkins does not seem to appreciate is that his blind watchmker is something even more remrkable than Paley's watches. Paley finds a "watch and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point. Bu that is absurd. How can a factory that makes watches be less in need of explantion thn the watches themselves?
For one kind of life to evolve into another may be attributed to the blind forces of nature, but the anthropic principle implies that these forces were set in motion delibertely, purposefully, with a view to producing precisely the living beings that biologists superficially presume to have gotten here by accident. It's one thing to say that the finche's beak and the moth's hue and the human eye all evolved by chance. But the universe that lawfully produces finches, moths and humans is quite clearly the product of intention and creative design. So Dawkins's 'reutation' of Paley fails gloriously and completely. Paley was right all along. (Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, pp. 78-79)
Saying the evidence for the existence of a creator must be dismissed since there is no evidence for a specific kind of deity, is pretty damn funny, too. I don't see multiverse proponents using this logic, or else they'd have to abandon these "Scientific" theories since they can't attribute any characteristics to these supposed universes. But these are used to refute religion, so they can be called science without a fuss. Gotcha!
Science hasn't proved dick about the universe having a beginning -- that's outside of its realm of inquiry (at least for now).
You heard it first here folks. According to JSM, the Big Bang is just a scientific hoax. All of these Nova shows are just pseudo-scientific drivel in the spirit of ID. Next thing you know he's going to be saying evolution doesn't prove humans came after plants and sealife.
Now look who is attacking science? You should abandon your atheistic distaste for reason and just accept science, man. Its the only rational way to go. But I guess your religion of atheism has conditioned you to reject it. Pity. (tongue firmly tucked in cheek)
I'll agree that it's not the final word, at least.
Well this is where you part ways with others here, including Schmo and Mercury. a while back when I first got into the theistic debates, I was told that science was the only way to any truth. Check out my sig line.
I disagree with Dawkins on a few things. But the fact that you don't understand evolution is not exactly compelling evidence that is doesn't exist.
I understand evolution well enough I think. At least, you haven't shown where I don't understand it. But then, you're still operating under the delusion that I disagree with evolution. FTR, Dinesh D'Souza doesn't contest evolution either.
Why should I accept the Gospel according to Crick? I don't.
That wasn't my point. My point was simple and straightforward. My point was that there are big names in science who entered the field with an anti-religious agend in mind, and that those who attack religious people for making wild claims, give a free pass to scientists who make equally ridiculous claims. Again, you're essentially hypocrites. Why isn't Dawkins attacking Crick's belief that space aliens planted cells on earth? How in the hell do any of these morons get away with such blatant bigotry and myth making? It speaks poorly of science when you got people like Dawkins leading the pack.
Natural selection doesn't tell us anything definitive about the origin of life on this planet, but it does provide plausible theories, and points scientists in certain directions.
Like what? Don't tell me, "on the backs of crystals"? Tell me another story before bedtime, Ok? Natural selection has absolutely zero hope of explaining how nonlife came to life, period.
You're not really interested in explanation, though, and prefer the "I Dream of Jeannie" mode of creation, so I can understand why you'd want to ridicule people who are actually trying to figure stuff out.
Of course I want an explanation, but I want you to name them so we can all see just how ludicrous and even fairytalish they sound. You're avoiding the question because you know they do.
You're absolutely right -- we CAN'T explain how life originated, at least we can't right now. The difference between our side and yours, though, is that we know what we don't know,
And with an equal level of bombastic certitude, you "know" despite the teleological universe flooding the universe and making itself known to us, that it couldn't be God. Why? because you are irrationally putting yor faith into the belief system of materialism, despite the fact that there is no reason to believe it is true. Hence the main point of the chapter I provided.
After all the blustering, you still haven't addressed the subject.