Posted on 10/06/2007 2:38:18 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Ladies and Gentlemen and All Interested Parties...This is in regards to the previously advertised debate announced here previously.
The audio transcripts of the debate are now available here
The debate featured Professor Richard Dawkins, Fellow of the Royal Society and Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and Dr. John Lennox (MA, MA, Ph.D., D.Phil., D.Sc.), Reader in Mathematics and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, Green College, University of Oxford.
Dawkins, voted by Europe's Prospect Magazine as one of the world's most important intellectuals, is regarded by many as the spokesman for the "New Atheism." BBC has labeled him "Darwin's Rottweiler." He has written numerous best-sellers, most notable among them, his recent book, The God Delusion. TGD has been on The New York Times List of Best-Sellers for over thirty weeks. It is a no-holds-barred assault on religious faith generally, and Christianity specifically. According to Dawkins, one can deduce atheism from scientific study; indeed, he argues that it is the only viable choice.
Lennox, a popular Christian apologist and scientist, travels widely speaking on the interface between science and religion. Like Dawkins, he has dedicated his career to science, but he has arrived at very different conclusions. "It is the very nature of science that leads me to belief in God," he says. Lennox possesses doctorates from Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Wales. He has written a response to the notion that Science has exposed the Bible as obscurantist in a book titled God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?. The book will be published this fall.
This is precisely where so many atheists (of the second type in my list) find themselves ("who created God?") because they can only imagine causation relative to space and time. Which is to say, that causation had a cause which was not caused is inconceivable to them.
Thank you so very much for all of your insights!
And that, in a nutshell, is argumentum ad baculum. It is not at all attractive when worn by someone who claims to appeal to reason.
There are people who cannot see color, and there are people who cannot perceive melody. I had a friend in college who could not distinguish a circle from a triangle by touch.
Accommodate my skepticism when I doubt that a person's affinity for metaphysics enhances his resume.
Personally, js1138, I avoid that sort of thing like the plague. To attribute "attributes" to God is to anthropomorphize Him, to "cut Him down to human size," as it were. To say that God is "this or that" is to put a Limit on God. Beyond imputing Life, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and Justice to Him, nothing more needs to be said. And the only reason we can impute these things to Him is because His own four revelations to us speak eloquently that this is His essential nature.
Yet as Francis Schaeffer told us, in His revelations "God tells us of Himself truthfully, but not exhaustively...."
FWIW.
Quoting references does not change the nature of your argument. You step around the first order of special pleading with a second order special pleading. You have, in effect, defined an infinite regress of special pleadings.
I shall never give up on you, dear js1138, because doubting Thomas was an apostle, too.
Thank you so much for your kind words, dearest sister in Christ!
Me either! :^)
At this point in your case, I recommend a round of antibiotics. You seem not to have noticed that "Life, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and Justice" are attributes that you have imputed.
That and being uncaused. And perhaps -- thought this is not you -- the attribute of holding everyone accountable for noticing His existence.
But aside from Life, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Justice, self causation and holding everyone accountable for noticing His existence, you haven't imputed any attributes.
My patron saint.
Not at all, dear js1138. Please pay attention: I did not say I impute these things to God; I said that God revealed them to me (i.e., via His four revelations...). He wants me to know these things about Himself: This information suffices for me, and more than suffices.....
Then you're in good company. :^)
To condense the argument, it is not special pleading because it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite.
Cordially,
* “How do I know what is moral? I don’t on the whole.”
Nothing like directly contradicting yourself on something this important.
Of course you can’t traverse an infinite series. That is why it makes no sense to hold, axiomatically, that prior cause is necessary. It is demonstrably untrue. It may also be false as demonstrated by experiment.
At the very least it is possible to observe phenomena for which no cause can be discovered.
Axioms are the result of common, unrefuted experience. We no longer have the experience of seeing a cause for every event.
That statement seems to me to be a contradiction of the very concept of "survival of the fittest." It seems to me that "win at all costs", when examined under an evolutionary lens, would be much more successful than "compassion".
Just curious - does Dawkins have children? I can just see it:
Dawkins: Go brush your teeth, Johnny.
Johnny: Brushing my teeth is a waste of time.
Dawkins: No, it's not. I can show you study after study after study that says that brushing your teeth is necessary for good health.
Johnny: I'm skeptical of those studies, and until you can prove to me without a shadow of a doubt that they are accurate, I won't be brushing my teeth.
That would be the end of Dawkins claims about the one belief he would instill in a child.
Be careful what you label Christian when you would be better to use the term "pseudo-Christian". There are a lot of people that say a lot of things that they claim are Christian beliefs. That's why only the Bible can be relied upon as the true word of God (not the Pope, or a preacher, or any other book).
Exactly. And that’s why, if Darwinian evolution is true (which is what all atheists must believe by extension), then we can’t ever hold anyone accountable for their actions, because the INDIVIDUAL conscience is the only controlling factor that exists. A rapist rapes because it’s right for them. A murderer murders because it’s right for them. The result is anarchy. The fact is that we all know these things are wrong because we were programmed with that knowledge in our minds (endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).
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