Imagine God speaks to you, as many here claim. He hasn’t said a word to me!
I think the Nazi’s tried this already.
Empiricism is not inherently contradictory. Practicing 'empiricists' (scientists as opposed to philosophers) by and large do not understand empiricism. Scientists tend to believe that they can know with certitude certain things through scientific observation. However, empiricism only goes so far as to say that all we can know is what we obtain through our senses. Empricism goes on to say that because all we know is what we get through our senses, and since our senses are necessarily limited and imperfect our knowledge can never be certain.
Empiricism may not be your cup of tea, but it is a logically coherent position. It may be what God is referring to when he says that now "we see through a glass darkly". Our human limitations prevent us from experiencing the full glory of God's creation. However, what we can experience and observe carefully has allowed us with His help to advance our forever limited knowledge of His creation.
Because of the above glaring errors I am not certain if the biographical/philosophical information on Popper is correct. I do know that he was one of the founders of logical positivism. I believe that he was one of the philosophers that came up with the 'falsifiability theory', i.e. that a scientific/philosophical theory is only good if it is falsifiable. He may have thought that Darwinian evolution theory is not falsifiable because it only describes what happened in the past and does not allow scientists to construct experiments that could falsify it. However, evolutionary theory has advanced since his time. It is argued by some in the field that evolution has actually been shown to have occured in some instances. Also, it is possible to advance hypotheses and test them against the archaeological and geological data we have collected over the years. There are some that would claim that evolution is indeed falsifiable and is thus no less a scientific theory than the theory of relativity.
Logical positivism is no longer a going concern in philosophical circles. The falsifiability theory is itself not falsifiable. So logical positivism is in a way self-contradictory. Popper's prestige has taken a hit because of this, so he might end up being something of a strawman in this argument. It is not too hard to argue against a philosopher whose philosophical position was shown to be faulty more than 50 years ago.
It is never a good philosophical move to quote from a dictionary. Philosophical discussion advances when terms are correctly, exactly, and unique defined.
Dictionary definitions are not about trying to uniquely define certain terms so that everyone discussing them knows what they are talking about. Dictionary definitions are about listing all of the uses of particular words. This can often lead to equivocation when a word is used to mean one thing in one part of an argument and another thing in a different part of the argument.
If you want to look like a fool in court, bring a copy of a dictionary (especially one printed in 1828) and quote from it to the judge. I have seen it done before and it is never pretty.
It is very difficult to make sense of this sentence. 'Empiricism' in this author's mind is not equivalent to 'observationalism'. However because empiricism and observationalism disagree this somehow causes empiricism to contradict itself.
I did some research on observationalism. Evidently it is a very old philosophical position that was put in disrepute over a hundred years ago. Why anyone would bother to argue against it is curious to me. Why anyone would conflate a respectable philosophical position with an out-dated and disreputable one is also curious to me.
There is at least one thing that both ill-informed evolutionary scientists and creationists agree on. This is the faulty philosophical notion of 'naive realism', i.e. the unsubstantiated belief that what we see is what we get.
If what scientists tell us is actually true then we seldom see the world as it is. When we look at a table do we see that the vast majority of it is empty space between microscopic particles? Do we see the probablistic quantum blur?
What we see is an illusion. We see solid wood which really isn't solid at all. When we act as if the table is solid and stand on it, we don't prove that the table is solid. All that we prove is that it is reasonable to stand on top of particular tables.
The original essay is severely flawed. The comments in this thread are by and large much more understandable, defensible, and logical regardless if they are pro-evolution or pro-creationism.
SPIRITUAL, a.
1. Consisting of spirit; not material; incorporeal; as a spiritual substance or being. The soul of man is spiritual.
2. Mental; intellectual; as spiritual armor.
3. Not gross; refined from external things; not sensual; relative to mind only; as a spiritual and refined religion.
4. Not lay or temporal; relating to sacred things; ecclesiastical; as the spiritual functions of the clergy; the lords spiritual and temporal; a spiritual corporation.
5. Pertaining to spirit or to the affections; pure; holy.
Gods law is spiritual; it is a transcript of the divine nature, and extends its authority to the acts of the soul of man.
6. Pertaining to the renewed nature of man; as spiritual life.
7. Not fleshly; not material; as spiritual sacrifices. 1 Peter 2.
8. Pertaining to divine things; as spiritual songs. Ephesians 5.
Spiritual court, an ecclesiastical court; a court held by a bishop or other ecclesiastic.
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As you can see there is more than one definition. These definitions do not contradict one another, but they are not identical.
When making a philosophical argument it is best to define each one of your terms very carefully. If you are going to use 'spiritual' in a philosophical argument then it is best to state exactly what you mean by it so that no one will assume a different definition. Nowhere does the essayist make it clear upon what definition of 'spiritual' she is basing her argument.
A number of reasonable sounding philosophical arguments have been found to be flawed because the same word was used in different parts of the argument each with a different definition (which went unstated.)
The 1828 version of Noah Webster's dictionary may very well be the best dictionary that was ever published in the history of the world. However, philosophers that depend on it are still susceptible to the problem of equivocation if they don't make sure that every time they use a particular word they always intend the same definition.
I also noticed that nowhere is 'spiritual' equated with 'metaphysical' in Webster's dictionary. So the essayist is not using this great dictionary to bolster her argument, but is using some inferior document. Funk and Wagnalls, perhaps?
Imagine that God is quite more than whatever your religion pretends.
If I could imagine only evolution I could also imagine someone like Stalin as its highest achievement but both notions are the stuff of nightmares.
Life is a subset of creation. Creation includes the start of the physical universe which existed before life. Evolutionists focus on life changes and ignores how life started. God could have started the life chain from something small but matter has not been shown to create life.
Does an agnostic insomniac with dyslexia stay up all night wondering if there really is a dog?