Replies

"It is logically impossible and scientifically unsupportable to contend, as Carl Sagan famously did, that “the universe is all there is, and all there ever will be”. Pressed hard, a Darwinist will relent concerning the origin of life, but the subtle subliminal argument made daily by advocates of Darwin is identical to Sagan’s ignorant assertion."
25 posted on Sunday, February 22, 2009 11:56:41 PM by ks_shooter

Bingo. It is a metphysical assertion and a priori truth claim of the kind Sagan & Co. protest when made by Christians or theists. There is no empirical event, lab experiment, or observation which could prove this claim, the central proposition of ontological materialism.

The modern physical sciences do not have the epistemological ability to determine with certain knowledge all of the things or beings which exist or the metaphysical structure of reality (such as claimed in obtological materialism either as a presupposition or declared metaphysical doctrine in the case of Sagan). That is ipso facto metaphysical in its very nature. It is unclear whether Professor Sagan understood what he was doing when he made such a claim. Based on other things he said and wrote one might conclude his background in philosophy was quite weak. It's such an obvious mistake.

But the advocates of scientism make these claims and errors all the time. The presupposition of scientific materialism usually just assumes this without reflection or critical examination. There simply is no epistemological foundation or any way to prove the claim that “the universe is all there is, and all there ever will be." Once that house of cards falls apart, the rest of the Weltanschauung of scientism gets pretty shaky.

You seem to be trying to get a lot of mileage out of deconstructing Sagan's statement. What you may be leaving out is that he is simply describing what the word "Universe" means, by definition.

Universe -- All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole.

That is its primary definition, "all there is", and by extension from laws of conservation of matter and energy, "all there ever will be".

It isn't philosophical; it's definitional.

This comment posted on another site says it best :

I think one of the best examples of an honest man seeking the truth is Antony Flew. He was a vehement atheist for something like the last 50 years, convinced until just fairly recently that a God did not exist, that life evolved completely accidentaly, and even at one point, that humans had no free will. In other words, he was a hard-determinist).

But then, by honestly looking at the evidence, he came to the conclusion that a God had to exist (although he is a Deist and does not believe in an afterlife) and that the genetic coding within DNA is prime example of intelligence. He was also inspired by the careful balance of the cosmological constants and natural laws and this sort of thing.

As far as ever becoming a theist, he said he is definitely open to the idea and says you cannot limit an omnipotent Being except for the logically impossible (such as a round square). He says he never knows what may happen. One day he may hear God speak to him, saying, “Can you hear me now?”

If everybody was this honest, we wouldn’t have these angry, raving atheists (not all, but those such as Richard Dawkins) and evolutionists (again, a prime example being Richard Dawkins) screaming at others for doubting their faith.