Your words, "smoke making great billowing clouds" rather precisely describes your own postings here, which I have been carefully trying to cut through to find some core of argument worthy of response.
You may appreciate how difficult that is... ;-).
YHAOS: "Oh, so you do agree with me that most posts pretending to represent Science, or to defend Darwinism, are pointless and in violation of Science principles."
And again we see the "great billowing clouds" this time hoping to blow their way between my very words!
So let us begin with the fact that nobody I've ever seen on Free Republic defends Dawkins' religious opinions, except in his right to express them.
YHAOS: "The crux of the matter, and one I’ve held from the beginning, and the point you’ve attempted right along to obfuscate with much smoke making . . . great billowing clouds."
Sorry, but the "great billowing clouds" were your hors d'oeuvres, your entree and now, it appears, also your dessert.
Really, is there nothing else on your menu?
Nothing I've said is difficult to grasp, except for someone determined to misunderstand.
My point boils down to one simple idea: the word "science" refers only to: natural explanations for natural processes.
As soon as YHAOS or Dawkins or anybody else starts talking religion, it's not "science" any more.
YHAOS: "There’s nothing to prevent you from correcting his fans on FR who assail his FR critics by directing everyone’s attention to the myriad Science heresies he commits when he directs his poisonous tongue to Judeo-Christians.
So why don’t you?
In fact, there are no such "fans" posting of Free Republic, except in the projections of your own rather fertile imagination.
The most anybody here will do is just what I've done: defend Dawkins' right to express opinions, scientific or otherwise.
YHAOS: "The quotes I provided from T. Aquinas, Of God and His Creatures, Book I, Chap. 7, address that very point."
Sorry, but no.
Anything I've read from Aquinas assumes or asserts that religion and natural-science must be in harmony.
So far as I know, Aquinas never addressed questions later raised by, for example, Galileo Galilee -- when findings or theories of science seem to contradict scripture.
YHAOS: "You don’t need to convince me."
Then our areas of agreement may be larger than some of those "great billowing clouds" might suggest... ;-)
By the way I like your whole paragraph on Marx, expecially this:
Of course, "science" by definition cannot "prove" any such thing.
YHAOS: "Since you seem to understand that my main objection is to Scientists of an Atheist persuasion, primarily if not entirely, who misrepresent themselves as speaking authoritatively, not personally, that Science proves God does not exist, why do you tell me all these things you apparently know I know?"
Go back and reread my posts #41, #55 and #72 to see what they actually refer to.
YHAOS: "From Marx to the present, it has ben the mantra of all Liberals/Socialists/0bamatrons, that it is Science generally, and The Theory of Evolution particularly, which “proves” that Capitalism and the Judeo-Christian God are both dead."
Doubtless some do, but I've never seen that argument made by posters on Free Republic.
To “see” one must look. In the first instance Dawkins represents his opinions as scientific fact and refuses to acknowledge that his opinions are religious. You may twist and turn at your pleasure. Nonetheless, Dawkins states that the “question” of whether there exists a supernatural creator is “scientific” and that his answer is “no.” He does not qualify his response as his “opinion.” He makes his statement as an unqualified assertion, knowing full well it enjoys the notoriety of his reputation as an evolutionary biologist and author (for whatever that is worth).
See Debate/Interview excerpt between Professor Dawkins and Dr Collins, conducted at the Time & Life Building in New York City on Sept. 30, 2006:
TIME: “Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?”
DAWKINS: “The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.”
In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins not only declares The Judeo-Christian God to be nonexistent, but also questions the mental state of any practicing Christian (maligning religious people - particularly Christians - as delusional, and worse - misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent). The book’s title likewise makes it manifest that the existence of a god is what he considers them to be delusional about.
See: David Quinn & Richard Dawkins in an interview with Ryan Tubridy on the Ryan Tubridy Show: The main subject of contention was Dawkins’ book The God Delusion.
From the transcript:
Tubridy: “. . . Let’s just talk about the word if you don’t mind, the word delusion, so put it into context. Why did you pick that word?”
Dawkins: “Well the word delusion means a falsehood which is widely believed, and I think that is true of religion. It is remarkably widely believed, it’s as though almost all of the population or a substantial proportion of the population believed that they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. You’d call that a delusion. I think God is a similar delusion.”
Professor Dawkins grounds his reasoning in Science.
In other venues Dawkins has gone so for as to propose that parents should not be allowed to teach their children in religious practices and that any who enroll their children in church should have their children taken from them by the state.
“Darwinism” is purely a political system, advanced as a “scientific” theory in an effort to provide a justification for various Socialist/Marxist ideas, and an effort to undermine, or otherwise subvert, Judeo-Christian and Capitalist ideals.
You may as well have a neon sign slapped on your forehead, flashing TROLL.
Now, what is the expiration date on your memory? When will you again not remember what Dawkins has said and need to be reminded? Your defective memory (and that of many of your calumnious associates) is the greatest reason for my reference to “great billowing clouds.”
“Sorry, but the “great billowing clouds” were your hors d'oeuvres”
If you grow weary of my “great billowing” description, abandon and renounce your tactics.
“ there are no such “fans” posting of Free Republic, except in the projections of your own rather fertile imagination.”
Really?! I, and many others of my acquaintance, know differently. We know with whom we are dealing when we encounter correspondents on FR who deny the existence of God, who opine that morality comes only from human heads according to their narrowly defined interests; that any idea to the contrary is the product of childish adults; or when they insist that talking donkeys, talking snakes and other Biblical “fantastic stories” are central to Biblical Instruction. These “fans” mock Christians with sneering references to “Demonic” possession and accusations of the adoption of the principal that a lie, told often enough, acquires a semblance of truth by virtue of sheer repetition. Your blatant denial of the patently obvious is so irrational as to be comedic.
“So far as I know, Aquinas never addressed questions later raised by, for example, Galileo Galilee -- when findings or theories of science seem to contradict scripture.
What?! When Aquinas, in his work Of God and His Creatures, states “Since therefore falsehood alone is contrary to truth, it is impossible for the truth of faith to be contrary to principles known by natural reason” he is telling us that if faith and “principles know by natural reason” appear contrary to each other, then it is obvious that our understanding either of faith or truth (or both) is faulty.
A case in point: Into my late twenties, Science seemed to be quite convinced that the Universe was in a “steady state” and was eternal (some scientists - such as Einstein - suspected this was not exactly accurate as early as the twenties, but this suspicion did not find its way into the general public’s knowledge (or public school text books) for some forty years. But, in the meantime, bible scoffers were pleased to heap scorn on the opening phrase of Genesis, “In the beginning”), claiming that obviously there was no beginning.
In another example; for a very long time a great many people believed that the Biblical phrase “the four corners of the earth” was “proof” that the earth was flat.
We now know that both beliefs were erroneous (although ever since the discovery of the red shift, Einstein’s relativity, and the background noise of the “Big Bang,” Scientists have desperately been trying to walk back the discovery that there was a beginning, which philosophers (including Aquinas), for an uncountable time, had known.
Aquinas cannot be read as though his writings are lab report in a peer-review research paper (nor can the Bible).
“Of course, "science" by definition cannot "prove" any such thing.” (That Science “proves the nonexistence of God.”
Of course. So why do you continue to tell me something you know I know?
“but I've never seen that argument made by posters on Free Republic.”
You strain credulity. Again, to “see” one must look.