Posted on 04/14/2002 12:31:25 AM PDT by sourcery
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The militant folks on both sides tend to be almost comically unable to make a good case, don't they? I've had people try to prove both God and No God to me, and they never made much sense, usually getting into a really nasty tangle of logic that they strangle themselves with.
And my argument is that the fundamental refutation of Platinga is this: just how reliable (or unreliable), in quantifiable terms, should the human mind be, given either evolution or creation as the preferred theory? Without such a quantifiable, testable prediction, no statement concerning any difference between the "predicted" and actual reliability/fitness of human reasoning has any scientific basis, and so cannot provide any scientific justification for preferring one theory over the other. I have not seen this refutation clearly stated elsewhere, and it seems to me to strike most fundamentally at the core of the issue.
How about simply admitting that you are not perfect and there are unknown things that you do not know? Is the alternative of acting like a primitive tribesman, creating an angry god of the sky to explain those bright flashes and loud sound, any less absurd?
Reality by fiat is even less attractive.
But that doesn't make much logical sense. Lack of proof to the positive doesn't constitute proof to the negative. Even as an atheist I have to admit our knowledge is not unlimited, and therefore we can't reach such conclusions of non-existance. That would be getting just as high-and-mighty as the theists who claim to have The Answers.
One of these days, I'll be able to write this clearly.
I've seen the two camps divided into "strong atheist" (there is no god) and "weak atheist" (I personally have no supernatural beliefs). It's stupid, and I hate being classified as being in any "weak" category.
ROTFL! This is seriously funny! Who is this guy?
Yeah, I read about that. But it's an accredited school! Yep, by an accreditation mill. Cute. (BTW I worked at a real university when they were getting accredited by real accreditors, it's no walk in the park.)
A thesis a work in progress? At that level of writing? At the time I didn't know much about higher education, so I found the opinion of some real Ph.D.s. It's basically along the lines of "This isn't a doctoral thesis, it's an undergrad paper deserving of a C at best."
[rim shot]
Ouch! Everybody seems to be writing far better than I am today. Time for another coffee.
"Anymore"?? Really?? Why are museums and school science books still irresponsibly illustrating and displaying the "ascent of man" as though it were an actual scientific gospel truth instead of a wildly unproven absurdly?
Anyway, two points to be made - I may have to reconsider the "man at the top of the ladder" evolutionary premise based on the apparant Cro-magnon/Neanderthalian pseudo-homosapien behavior of certain "missing links" living in the Middle East region of planet Earth...
Secondly, with regard to "random mutation", there still has never been proven any actual missing link or characteristic beyond changing within a species other than color or slight alterations in appendages or eyes for example. Or perhaps you have sources that prove otherwise?
Dave Hunt is an internationally known author and lecturer who's written more than 20 books (as of 1996).
LOL -- and you are...??
For sure, a false dichotomy, but you can understand them thinking, "First, we have to destroy what's there."
"The Un-Discovery Institute" would be a better term.
You could as easily posit that man might be headed back to ape-hood if not amoeba-hood if the selection pressures take him that way. Even if man continues to develop intelligence and the fruits of intelligence, how does "godhood" result?
In this vein, Evolution can be considered both a science AND a religion.
No, it's just you, thinking religiously.
Apparently someone whose voluntary medications (a.k.a. recreational pharmaceuticals) are not as good as this guy's.
Could be. At any rate, I've never considered myself a "weak atheist." (OK, I could use some time in the weight room.)
"Ameoba-hood"?? "Get the microscope out Honey, and say hi to the your crazy Aunt and Uncle (who are now in the midst of a cell division).
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n the last decade or so, creationism has grown sophisticated. Oh, the old-fashioned creationists are still around, especially in the Bible Belt. They're the ones who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that God created it and all its inhabitants in six days and that fossils are a product of Noah's flood. In the early 1990's, however, a new breed of creationists appeared. These ''neo-creos,'' as they have been called, are no Dogpatch hayseeds. They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the authority of Scripture; rather, it proceeds from premises that are scientific and philosophical, invoking esoteric ideas in molecular biology, information theory and the logic of hypothesis testing. 