Just pour one for yourself, but thanks for the kind offer ;-)
Cheers!
Posted on 07/20/2010 6:09:03 PM PDT by firerosemom
That's the price one pays for being historical: just as we can't go back and re-play the battle of Waterloo where Napoleon had a pair of A-10 Warthogs for backup fire.
The mistake made by the atheists is to assume that if something is not susceptible to the blandishments of "scientific" investigation, then it is necessarily false.
Occam's razor works great on reducing false positives, it is not so good with false negatives.
The other issue is that the scientific ansatz is based upon the working supposition of "uniformity of causes in a closed system."
Once you allow (even for the sake of argument) the actual possibility of the supernatural, your boundary conditions go out the window.
Cheers!
Thanks. I even got to learn a new word (didn’t remember “ansatz” from my college days)! Would love to buy you an cold beverage if I could.
Just pour one for yourself, but thanks for the kind offer ;-)
http://justbeer.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/mississippi-mud.gif
Cheers!
Just pour one for yourself, but thanks for the kind offer ;-)
Cheers!
well it was supposed to be a pun. But the real point is how ridiculous these scientists are running around trying to prove by science a matter of faith.
Agreed.
Who are these ‘powers that be’, if you would, please?
Thanks for the most thoughtful comments. I agree that our theories are far too immature to be coming even close to a “theory of everything”. I’m also skeptical whether such a theory - if attainable - would add anythiung to the debate about a possible creator. But I think you’re right that the empirical approach is by far the most promising.
Take care.
I guess the point is that, if someone who is seeking to answer those questions that come to us all - who am I, where do I come from, how did everything come to be, is there a beginning and end of everything, etc, - it would be nice to examine what *can* be known by reason, and see where that knowledge fits into the answers. That, I would think, gives us a more deeply informed power of choice.
I certainly respect your opinion.
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of the truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” Pope John Paul II.
I like to paraphrase this as “faith and reason are two wings by which man ascends to heaven.”
I think the history of Christian thought has emphasized both faith and reason as ways to know God. Special revelation and general revelation have played a role. As an example of special revelation, God spoke to Moses and provided him with the Ten commandments.The miracles that we are familiar with from the Bible are examples of special revelation.
General revelation involves looking at the world and seeing the handiwork of God. These are everyday miracles. Our universe, vastly improbable, incredibly finely tuned to allow intelligent life, is an example of general revelation. The complexity of your body, composed as it is of trillions of cells, each more complex than a nuclear submarine, is a miracle. Your consciousness, easily explained as your soul, but really inexplicable otherwise, is another miracle.
Many intellectuals in the 19th and 20th century used “science” (junk science and junk philosophy) to “debunk” religion. Rather that take on the debate many religious people simply responding by saying “I believe.” Well, it is a short argument which leaves time for family, work, and church. So it is an efficient reply. But I think correct reflections on science can be supportive of religion. I suspect the evidence will always be mixed, allowing people to choose what to believe. Free will, that's what it's all about.
OK, I’ll bite.
What is IBTHTP?
IBTHTP = I Bet The Hole Tea Party
okay, I feel bad now, here’s what it really means ...
IBTHTP. (In before the Helen Thomas pictures)
I’ve yet to see any argument that disproves or even offers to disprove the “first mover argument” originally put forth long long long ago.
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