Why I don't recommend Dawkins?????

[_Some Schmo]

Seriously, this is why Stak is telling you people to get a little education on religion before spouting off. At best you make strawman arguments, at worst you come off looking ignorant.

Come off looking ignorant to people who believe in a global flood, a talking snake, or a guy living in a whale for 3 days?

Or come off looking ignorant to people who base their worldview on arguments of incredulity and "sophisticated" definitions of god?

Either way, it's hard to get worked up about that.

[_MrStakhanovite]

So basically, this whole thread is an admonishment to atheists to prepare to debate Craig, and if you can't do it, you're a thoughtless, overconfident atheist. Gotcha.

Schmo,

What I’m trying to get across is, that someone’s claims about a topic should be comparable to what they know about said topic. It’s perfectly fine for someone not to know anything about any religion at all, or theism for that matter, as long as they don’t make claims along the lines of, “ All Theistic arguments for the existence of God suck badly.”

[_Some Schmo]

So basically, this whole thread is an admonishment to atheists to prepare to debate Craig, and if you can't do it, you're a thoughtless, overconfident atheist. Gotcha.

Schmo,

What I’m trying to get across is, that someone’s claims about a topic should be comparable to what they know about said topic. It’s perfectly fine for someone not to know anything about any religion at all, or theism for that matter, as long as they don’t make claims along the lines of, “ All Theistic arguments for the existence of God suck badly.”

As we've discussed before, I agree that more knowledge is better. You'll get no argument from me on that point. There's nothing specifically wrong with what you're saying here, but I think it reflects a very small percentage of the atheist population.

If I were to say, “All Theistic arguments for the existence of God suck badly” what I'd really mean is “All Theistic arguments for the existence of God that I've heard suck badly.” I wouldn't presume to comment on arguments I haven't heard. But here's the thing: I haven't heard a new argument for the existence of god in quite some time. It may appear new at first, but once unpacked, it ends up being a variation of something I have already encountered. I suspect that if an atheist really did make the quoted claim, they would justify it in this manner (although I also won't presume to know what any atheist is thinking except me).

Is it your contention that most atheists criticize religion/theism without learning anything about it first? According to this poll, atheists and agnostics are among the most knowledgeable about religion (as are LDS, interestingly enough – I wonder if that’s partly why exmos often turn atheist). Of course, being knowledgeable about religion doesn't necessarily mean you're knowledgeable about the theistic justifications for a god, but it does say something about atheists'/agnostics' exposure to religious ideas.

[_Buffalo]

Marg,

You keep asserting that theism has no explanatory power but it does. It offers an explaination of why there is a universe and why that universe has the broad form it does. It does so in a philosophically sophisticated manner that to some of us at least is coherent. The main competing explaination seems to be "the universe is just there, that's all"

In general, religion doesn't really explain it at all. It just adds another step.

Q: "Why is there a universe?"
A: "God made it."
Q: "Why is there a god?"
A: "God is just there, that's all."

Not much of an explanation.

[_Hoops]

Among the truth claims in and regarding the scriptures mentioned, here is a sampling of those that can be objectively tested:
- The first humans magically appeared as a breeding pair upon the Earth less than 10,000 years ago and all modern humans are descended from this initial breeding pair.

Your phrasing belies your bias. One wonders why any religious person should take you seriously. Nonetheless... explain how you can verify naturalistically that which is by definition supernatural.

- There was a global flood at the time of Noah.

So you are saying you can prove there was no global flood at the time of Noah? Please do. You can start with when was the time of Noah.
-

The sun gets its light from Kolob.

The facto is that, in direct opposition to science, religion is based on unfounded belief including demonstrably false and unfalsifiable truth claims. Furthermore the means and methods by which religionists seek and confirm "truth" are an anathema to the scientific method.

And the scientific method is the only way to test certain claims? Okay. But let's get to the point... your statement above is false, which makes the rest of your claim difficult at best.

Fundamentalist religionists tend to deny science when it conflicts with their core unfounded beliefs.

What does this even mean? I don't see religionists denying science, rather, they appeal to other methods.

The scientific community goes to great lengths to insure that religionist methods for evaluation of truth claims (such as promptings of the spirit, or the teachings of leaders, or scripture, or other means of generating unfounded belief) do not contaminate the scientific method or science itself.

So what?

If you think that the methods and aims of the Discovery Institute are not in direct opposition to the methods and aims of the Max Planck Institute, for example, or any other secular research university or legitimate scientific institute, then you need to get out more.

Ah, the old "you must be stupid ploy." How predictable. However, there are many much smarter than you who have come to a different conclusion. So now what do you do? Since your appeal here is to the experience and knowledge of those who differ with you, then greater knowledge and experience must inevitably lead one to think like you. But... mercy... peanut M&M"s... that hasn't happened.

http://www.geraldschroeder.com

[_Some Schmo]

I don't see religionists denying science, rather, they appeal to other methods.

ROTFLMAO

No, you're right. I've never once seen a religious person deny evolution, geology, cosmology, etc etc. How silly to even suggest it!

*wipes away tears of laughter*

[_Phillip]

Marg,

Maybe it would help if I was more detailed in my assertions about the history of science and education. I certainly don’t want to produce overblown propaganda, to be honest I think most of the propaganda and distortions come from those who try to discredit religion at any cost. I readily admit that there were tensions between the supposedly revealed truths of Christianity and what human reason could discover on its own. If I do happen to be wrong then I am willing to change my views, it wouldn’t cost me anything personally. My understanding of that history is that in the High Middle Ages the Catholic church supported the creation of a European wide university system. Granted, a primary purpose of this was to provide skilled administrators to both the church and secular governments. Nothing new there. What was arguably different was the central role that reason and logic would play in the study of almost all subjects, including within certain limits, theology. Other novelty was the standardization of higher education in Europe. As the prominent historian of science David Lindberg (who is no apologist) wrote in his ‘Beginnings of Western Science’:

“For the first time in history there was an educational effort of international scope, undertaken by scholars conscious of their intellectual and professional unity, offering standardized higher education to an entire generation of students …

Methodologically the universities were committed to the critical examination of knowledge claims through the use of Aristotelian logic … Thus in medieval universities, Greek and Arabic science (almost in their entirety) at last found a secure institutional home.

Finally it must be emphatically stated that within this educational system the medieval master had a great deal of freedom. The stereotype of the Middle Ages pictures a professor as spineless and subservient, a slavish follower of Aristotle and the church fathers (exactly how one could be a slavish follower of both the stereotype does not explain), fearful of departing one iota from the demands of authority. There were broad theological limits, of course, but within those limits the medieval master had remarkable freedom of thought and expression; there was almost no doctrine, philosophical or theological, that was not submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism by scholars in the medieval university. Certainly the medieval master, particularly the master who specialized in the natural sciences, would not have thought himself as restricted or oppressed by either ancient or religious authority.”

This university system with its fundamental commitment to reason was birthed in the Middle Ages when Christianity was at the heights of its cultural power. What happened with Galileo was an unfortunate exception to the normal support offered to science, and the church should have let the issue alone. But powerful institutions often don’t act in their best interests. From the same author more generally on the how the emergence of Christianity affected scientific progress:

“how did the presence and influence of the Christian church affect knowledge of, and attitudes towards, nature? The standard answer, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and widely propagated in the twentieth, maintains that Christianity presented major obstacles to the advancement of science and, indeed, sent the scientific enterprise into a tailspin from which it did not recover for more than a thousand years. The truth, as we shall see, is dramatically different, far more complicated, and a great deal more interesting.

One of the charges frequently leveled against the church was that it was broadly anti-intellectual, that the leaders of the church preferred faith to reason and ignorance to education. In fact this is a major distortion.”

[_Phillip]

The respected historian Edward Grant (again not an apologist for Christianity) has also written extensively on this topic. One book in particular was influential in forming my understanding of these things, ‘God and Reason in the Middle Ages’. It’s an interesting read even if one doesn’t particularly care about the current debate between atheists and theists. He emphasizes the considerable importance that the study and use of logic played in medieval intellectual life. From the conclusion:

“If modern science has progressed almost unrecognizably beyond anything known or contemplated in the natural philosophy and science of the Middle Ages, modern scientists are, nevertheless, heirs to the remarkable achievements of their medieval predecessors. The idea, and the habit, of applying reason to resolve the innumerable questions about our world, and of always raising new questions, did not come to modern science from out of the void. Nor did it originate with the great scientific minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton. It came out of the Middle Ages from many faceless scholastic logicians, natural philosophers, and theologians, in the manner I have described in this study. It is a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world, a gift that makes our modern society possible, though it is a gift that may never be acknowledged. Perhaps it will always retain the status that it has had for the past four centuries as the best-kept secret of Western civilization.”

In the long run the church’s support of education ultimately came back to bite it when the knowledge and critical thinking skills that that education provided were turned against Christianity itself. From ‘The Passion of the Western Mind’ by Richard Tarnas:

“Their [Jesuits’] educational strategy, however, involved not only the teaching of the Catholic faith and theology, but also the full humanistic program from the Renaissance and classical era … all in service of developing a scholarly ‘soldier of Christ’: a morally disciplined, liberally educated, critically intelligent Christian man capable of outwitting the Protestant heretics and furthering the great Western tradition of Catholic learning … Hundreds of educational institutions were founded by the Jesuits throughout Europe, and were soon replicated by Protestant leaders similarly mindful of the need to educate the faithful … But as a consequence of such a liberal program, with its exposure of students to many eloquently argued viewpoints, pagan as well as Christian, and with its disciplined inculcation of a critical rationality, there could not but emerge in educated Europeans a decidedly nonorthodox tendency towards intellectual pluralism, skepticism, and even revolution. It is no accident that Galileo and Descartes, Voltaire and Diderot all received Jesuit educations.”

Finally, I think it is an unfair to compare the scope of education today with that what was provided in the medieval and early modern periods. We are vastly more wealthy than they were and can more easily provide education to the masses. They couldn’t have provided free university education for the entire population even if they saw the need for it. And there was no economic need for it, even for basic literacy for most laborers. That’s not the economic world they lived in. Today there are economic incentives for the majority of people having a formal education that did not exist in the past.

[_Hoops]

I don't see religionists denying science, rather, they appeal to other methods.

ROTFLMAO

No, you're right. I've never once seen a religious person deny evolution, geology, cosmology, etc etc. How silly to even suggest it!

*wipes away tears of laughter*

While you're wiping away your tears, and maybe mommy can get you into your jammies and a new binkie, you can cite an example. Now get on your booster seat and furiously do your internet search.

[_Buffalo]

While you're wiping away your tears, and maybe mommy can get you into your jammies and a new binkie, you can cite an example. Now get on your booster seat and furiously do your internet search.

Here you go:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html