Here is a jump start of a thousand words...
Posted on 11/24/2008 12:56:31 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I really enjoyed the author’s book “What’s So Great About Christianity.”. I disagreed with him on some points but I consider him to be a brilliant thinker.
The opinion piece is not particularly surprising if you’ve read the book but it does serve as an update on current events in the religion of secular humanism (atheism).
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis makes this statement at the end:
“Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held.
First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.
The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds.
Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up.
And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense.
Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, “I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,” or, “I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.”
Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science- and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes-something of a different kind-this is not a scientific question.
If there is “Something Behind,” then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.
The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.
And real scientists do not usually make them.
It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense.”
Could one say that C. S. Lewis is denying not only the scientific legitimacy of the ID “Movement”, but also “independent” natural theology in general?
Re: “Independent” natural theology:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0qXBpoIE_QwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=independent+natural+theology&source=web&ots=lzRLQ4nHO_&sig=LC-daa499EeMg9ykE-4Oq5_TCJ8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPR5,M1
“Is it reasonable to misbehave if there is not a deity? No”
Respectfully, the term “misbehave” is a meaningless abstraction if there is no deity. If there is no deity then moral relativism is the closest we can get to truth. Relativism is in conflict with itself and, consequently, negates all meaning. For example, can it be both morally good and morally bad to commit rape?
If you wish to answer, please also explain why your answer should be favored over anyone else’s answer.
At any rate, the only reason it would be unreasonable to misbehave in the absence of a deity is because there is no basis upon which to reason about morality without one. In other words, it is not misbehaving that becomes unreasonable in the absence of a deity. Ratther it is the attempt to reason about morality itself that becomes unreasonable.
It is logic like this that leads people to believe in intelligent design.
Posts #11 and 22 were the most “reasonable” I’ve seen on any of these threads lately.
It’s always seemed to me that science and religion address different realms...to believe one is not to exclude the other.
A nice explanation.
“A full account of why such behavior is not reasonable in the universe as we currently understand it would not be a quick write. Maybe another time. Note, though, that if someone rejects rationality as a criterion for judging conduct, the conversation is at an end anyway and it?s probably wise to make sure your gun is loaded when you?re dealing with that person”
In other words, you cannot offer a credible (reasonable) definition of good behavior and you’re going to threaten anyone who asks for one with a gun.
I’m glad I own guns too.
I like the message I’ve seen around on shirts etc. “Friends don’t let friends go to hell.”
One of the most profound words is in John 3:17: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
One of the saddest verses in scripture is: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which is right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
And to all: “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6)
As some have pointed out; you can rightly divide the word of truth, and you can wrongly divde the word of truth: In Timothy 2;15, we read: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God,(an AUG degree)a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly diving the word of truth.”
And religion requires reason. There is no actual conflict between the two.
“I think it is because some militant athiests believe that simply because a lot of people kill in the name of God, that if they stop believing in God they will stop killing.”
Stalin alone killed from 20 to 100 million. Probably closer to the 20 million. Mao killed 20 to 75 million. Probably around 30. Hitler killed 6 million. Pol Pott killed 2 million people. This is just the top of the list.
Just in the 20th century, atheist have probably killed more than religious causes have through the course of human time.
ff
Then let me give you the good news: There absolutely IS, and He is the one, true God.
ping and bump for later
There is only one universe. The idea of “multiverses” or “alternate universes” is stupid.
Q's, no doubt.
Now THERE was Science!!
Here is a jump start of a thousand words...
A sinister and desperate effort to work the laws of statistical probability out of the equation. I luv when scientists grasp at straws. The reasoning should get the "Stanley Miller" award.
“.... if there are other universes, they will operate according to different laws of physics than the ones in our universe, and consequently they are permanently and inescapably inaccessible to us”
Sounds like religion to me
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