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To: VadeRetro
"What bothers me isn't just that creationism/ID is wrong. It's wrong-headed. It's anti-knowledge, anti-thinking."


Please, Naturalists have their dogma and Theists have theirs. One will dogmatically in advance refuse to consider the possiblity of divine intervention as an answer, the other will refuse to consider that time and chance, space and energy are all that is at work in the universe. No side is any more open minded than the other. You are attempting to take the intellectual and, somehow, moral highground on pretenses.

I would like to debate the specifics of the finds, it has been a while since we have tested one another, but the paper makes claims without getting enough supporting detail to evaluate those claims.
59 posted on 12/03/2003 7:12:59 PM PST by Ahban
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To: Ahban
Naturalists have their dogma and Theists have theirs.

Naturalist dogma is that things should be taken straightforwardly to be what the physical evidence says they are. Against that, a certain kind of theist--I wouldn't swear how typical of theists overall this kind is--says that if God didn't leave the right kind of evidence trail, we have to lie for Him.

Out for the night.

61 posted on 12/03/2003 7:18:47 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: Ahban
Please, Naturalists have their dogma and Theists have theirs.

The difference being, the "naturalist dogma" is far better supported by the evidence than the theist dogma.

One will dogmatically in advance refuse to consider the possiblity of divine intervention as an answer,

Poppycock. This is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific view. Science frequently "considers the possibility of divine intervention", and if the evidence indicated such an occurrence, then the provisional conclusion would be that a miracle had occurred. Unfortunately for your position, no such evidence has turned up.

What science *does* hold as a central premise -- and it seems a reasonable one -- is that simple lack of evidence either way (or lack of knowledge) is not a valid reason for presupposing supernatural occurrences in any particular observation. All conclusions must be drawn based on which direction the evidence points, and that *includes* conclusions of divine acts/intervention/existence. In other words, it's unscientific to *presume* the divine at the start (or to presume any particular naturalistic explanation) and then reach conclusions based on that pre-existing presumption.

This is often misunderstood by laymen (and almost always misunderstood by fundamentalist creationists) as some sort of "denial of God" or "refusal to accept God as a possible explanation", but it is neither.

Instead, it is like the tale about Napoleon and Laplace. Laplace explained his theory of celestial mechanics (i.e. orbits) to Napoleon, and Napoleon asked Laplace where God was in his theory. Laplace replied, "I had no need for that particular hypothesis". In other words, his theory worked just fine without shoehorning God (or any other additional factor) into it in order to be "RC" (Religiously Correct).

the other will refuse to consider that time and chance, space and energy are all that is at work in the universe.

Then rest easy, since science makes no such statement of "that's all there is" either. To imply that it does is another straw man argument.

More accurately though, "the other" will refuse to consider that God may not be involved in every single process, even those for which the evidence indicates occur fine on their own even without divine intervention.

No side is any more open minded than the other.

Thanks, I always appreciate a good joke.

You are attempting to take the intellectual and, somehow, moral highground on pretenses.

How do you figure?

422 posted on 12/04/2003 8:09:52 PM PST by Ichneumon
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