Posted on 02/24/2012 10:12:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.
He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain. Last week Baroness Warsi, the Tory party chairman, warned of a tide of “militant secularism” challenging the religious foundations of British society. The discussion, in Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre, attracted attention from around the world. As well as being relayed to two other theatres, it was streamed live on the internet and promoted fierce debate on the Twitter social network.
For an hour and 20 minutes the two men politely discussed "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin" touching on the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language – and Dr Williams’s beard.
For much of the discussion the Archbishop sat quietly listening to Prof Dawkins’s explanations of human evolution.
At one point he told the professor that he was “inspired” by “elegance” of the professor’s explanation for the origins of life – and agreed with much of it. Prof Dawkins told him: “What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing – that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Do you think rejection is the same as just not being able to believe something?
How rational is that?
Can the ability to believe something be absent even when the thing is true?
Why isn’t it rational?
Is not believing something the same as rejecting to you?
Is saying you believe something when you really don’t, rational...or honest?
Sure, especially when it requires a leap of faith in the first place to even think that it’s true.
Can you give me an example—in which you think something is true—that doesn’t require a leap of faith?
If a person were to hold up 2 fingers on each hand, that same number would be represented by holding up 4 fingers on one hand. That is true and does not require a leap of faith.
As far as something someone thinks or believes, that could easily require a leap of faith for another to believe it.
Essentially, most physical things are provable and the psychic, metaphysical, supernatural, spiritual, etc, require leaps of faith. But surely you already knew that, didn’t you?
Most physical things are not provable. They are merely demonstrable, with evidence, but that isn’t proof. Only math is provable as you have illustrated.
For example, you can’t prove the world wasn’t created five minutes ago and given the appearance of age, complete with a programming of your memory banks to make you think you had a past.
You can’t even prove there are minds other than your own. But you have the right to continue accepting it—and everything else in your life—on faith.
OK, replace provable with demonstrable with evidence.
Please demonstrate, with evidence, how your sins have been forgiven.
The point I was trying to make is that a large portion of our most basic beliefs are held even though there is neither proof nor evidence for them.
The demand for evidence has been termed “evidentialism” and seems to be an artificial outworking of the materialist world view. Not only artificial, but simplistic to the extent that it handicaps us intellectually.
Your belief that there are minds other than your own, or that the world wasn’t created fifteen minutes ago with the appearance of age are called “properly basic beliefs.”
Properly basic beliefs exist in a sort of hard wired or innate way. Like belief in God.
And when belief in God is supplemented with concrete evidence, the rationality for holding the belief is even stronger. As is the case with the Resurrection.
When God raises his only begotten Son from death by crucifixion, an act which was foretold by Holy Scripture, it’s not a stretch to believe God’s word that the act was done for forgiveness of sins and in fact it’s probably the most rational among all competing beliefs about the event.
And they are just that, beliefs...not facts. I happen to believe that people are hard-wired differently, making leaps of faith different for each individual.
And they are just that, beliefs...not facts. I happen to believe that people are hard-wired differently, making leaps of faith different for each individual.
But why is it so easy to take a leap of faith when there’s no religious connotations—such as having faith that there are minds other than your own, and many other examples—yet so difficult when it comes to faith in Christ?
Don’t know. I think leaps of faith are probably a hard-wiring thing. Some people are just different.
Think of something that millions of others believe, that you don’t. How would you make yourself believe as they do...even if you wanted to?
It’s always seemed, best I can tell, that believing something on faith starts with the will. An example is the child who continues to believe her father is on the job working hard to bring home the family’s income, even though every indication suggests he is out gambling and drinking.
Or the voter with no inside information who still supports his favorite politician in spite of false allegations—which appear true—of fraudulent activity.
Then the question becomes—is the will hard wired?
You are saying that it is easier to take a leap of faith in order to believe the following;
-A man was born to a virgin
-A man performed miracles
-A man came back from the dead
-A man’s death forgave all your sins
than it is to believe there are minds other than my own and the world was created more than 15 minutes ago?
Are you saying that if someone wants to hard enough, the leap of faith will happen and they will believe? That’s very convenient...if one doesn’t believe, they just haven’t tried hard enough.
Thanks for your time.
Not that it’s easier, but that it is not more difficult.
The sole premise of the skeptic is that only those events explainable by known laws of nature are possible, otherwise stated as “the supernatural is not possible.”
But skeptics accept the Big Bang theory, which tells us that known laws of physics are not universal. These laws did not exist prior to the Big Bang.
Therefore, the supernatural necessarily exists and the skeptic (David Hume) has no ground to stand on.
Regarding the will to believe—I would say that for every belief x there is a competing belief y, which excludes x and is preferred a priori by the believer. This explains the unwillingness to believe x.
Yes, those are some of the reasons I believe it is easier to take a leap of faith for things not religious.
Which reasons—that the supernatural necessarily exists?
Or that things not religious are preferable to you from the beginning?
That the things I listed only happened once, a very long time ago and are extremely hard, if not impossible, to believe.
If I did not prefer things religious, do you think I would spend so much time discussing them?
But your comments in these discussions show you prefer not to believe.
The events surrounding the Resurrection are very well documented by standards used to determine historicity.
Given this, along with the fact that the supernatural truly exists, it seems to me these events are as easy to believe as the claim that Julius Caesar lived in Rome.
Unless a competing belief is preferred, even prior to examination of the facts.
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