Anonymous was kind enough to provide his thoughts on my thoughts on the subject. Before answering, here are his comments in their entirety. (I do not mean any disrespect by the small font, as I will be answering each point at normal size; doing this just to save space for now.):
As you have written such a one-sided aggressive article, I provide comment the same...
Being of a scientific nature, and atheist belief myself, your assertions on 'our' beliefs are wrong - "where no such mechanism is observable or has been observed" the current scientific theory, science is ever evolving (no pun intended) and, by nature, should readily change "it's" views, should a more plausible theory be introduced.
"Atheism belief", to me, is born out of a need to witness proof, instead of just putting ones faith in something. And on a personal note, if any of theism's gods wanted to make me think otherwise, then they would provide evidence of their existence through whatever means that particular person / people, would be more than likely to believe (just as people who believe seem to have extrapolated, from somewhere, themselves), which leads to the obviously logical
Personally, (on a non-scientific basis) I cannot imagine a being that is so powerful, that it created the diversity of the university as we know it, but yet expects us to spend some of our time worshiping them. Surely a being such as this would prefer to see us spend all this time helping our fellow human beings, rather than thanking them for their gift of life (This point, to me, is especially hammered home, seeing as their has been little scientific evidence to prove their existence - Maybe they are making a point?)
Your reasoning that because we don't know everything (or more precisely science hasn't postulated solid theories to many questions) is, how do you put it - Absurd. A lack of knowing someone should not lead them to creating conclusions, without substantial evidence - Think about it, would you convict someone of murder with only circumstantial evidence?
The rational being, my fellow human being, "must accept" that we do not know all the answers, yet... And therefore one should not be proposing that one sides points are any less valid than the other.
I could go one, and on, but as your minds seems undoubtedly decided, and the postulations in your blog, I feel it worthless trying to open your mind to the consideration of other standpoints. conclusion that A) The god(s) do not care if we believe / worship them, or don't want "us" to, B) They don't care if a large portion of their children (Seeing as people who believe have many different faiths to choose from) believe in them, or C) They don't actually exist.
I'm not sure if it's "aggressive", but as to one-sided, well, I
am trying to prove a point. You'll note that essays on the wonders of Darwinism or atheism are not famed for being two-sided. But any argument should take into account possible objections or replies, and I think I did so. And I didn't see Anonymous arguing
my points.
Being of a scientific nature, and atheist belief myself, your assertions on 'our' beliefs are wrong - "where no such mechanism is observable or has been observed" the current scientific theory, science is ever evolving (no pun intended) and, by nature, should readily change "it's" views, should a more plausible theory be introduced.
There is a word for believing in something which you haven't yet observed. That word is "faith". Everyone exercises it to some degree, since we do not know everything we can know about most things. You are saying you have faith in science to eventually answer the big question of where everything came from.
But how scientific is that belief? Is that belief based on science or reason? I would argue "No".
First, let us remember that scientific inquiry is closed to us at the singularity of the Big Bang; all physical laws break down. So science will
never be able to answer that question. Brute fact. Although if you read and buy into Randy Alcorn's
Heaven, there is a possibility that we may one day understand, since science - like all other worthwhile human activities - will probably continue in heaven. But that will be too late for the purposes of this argument. You are betting your eternal soul on this impossibility.
Even if we come up with a plausible theory of creating matter from nothing, that still doesn't answer the question of what happened to
cause the Big Bang.
Remember that time as we know it
began to exist at the Big Bang. Therefore the cause of the Big Bang was outside of time, or, in theological parlance, timeless. It is interesting to note that, unique in ancient history,
only the Biblical account espouses this concept of time as finite - Buddhism, Hinduism, the Greeks, and the Romans all believed in unending cycles or of time stretching into eternity past.
Today, history is being rewritten to cast this discovery of the Big Bang as a triumph for atheism. But nothing could be further from the truth. At the time of its discovery, atheists were reeling in shock and disgust at the notion and implications of a Beginning. Arthur Eddington called it "repugnant"; even Einstein, formerly an atheist, struggled with the idea (leading to his infamous blunder, the "Cosmological Constant").
Finally, though, Eddington had to admit, "the beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look at it as frankly supernatural."
Why did these atheists so strongly oppose the Big Bang? Well, it's obvious. The next question readily pops to mind: what caused the Big Bang? Logically, it must have been something extremely powerful, acting outside of time. That we don't know all there is to know about this Cause does not negate this conclusion (see below). But, as Paul Davies argues, since the design of the universe is so precise, we can infer that a great Mind was at work to create the universe; and, so, the Cause is a Person. Other conclusions follow.
To your next point: It should be acknowledged that your position of readily changing your view (only)
once a more plausible theory is introduced is not scientific; it is a recent invention to stave off open thought, especially concerning origins.
For example, anyone can see that the bacterial flagellum or our vision system was designed, and that Darwinism has utterly failed to explain the step-by-step origins of either in anything even remotely approaching rigorous, scientific fashion. This can also be seen on a gross scale, of any biological organism when taking into account its structure and behavior. (Perhaps more on this later.) Any rational person would thus discard Darwinism as a possible answer to these. How do Darwinists cling to their faith? By requiring not only that their theory be shown useless, but that a
complete alternative theory be offered in its place. Let us be clear: This is not a scientific requirement. It is not even a rational requirement!
It's just plain silly. If someone shows you that 1 + 1 is not, as you claim, 3, you should not demand that that person write a successful version of the
Principia Mathematica before you discard your previous notion. It should be enough to know that your belief is wrong to spur you on to find alternatives.
Very few people almost understand quantum physics. Yet, according to this same standard, it would be Darwinists (and atheists) who would be insisting that it cannot be accepted because, although the evidence backs it up,
we don't fully understand it. This is analogous to rejecting theism because, although logic tells us that there must be a God, theists "cannot fully explain God."
This is like saying your TV "just came to be" because you don't know the people who allegedly made it and, even if you did, you cannot fully explain their origins. It's just silly. You can reasonably make certain inferences from the data you have and from experience of how the world works. In this way we deduce that the TV was made by persons unknown, but persons nonetheless.
Lastly, science is based on faith. In more than one sense.
First, science is based on the belief that we are actually experiencing the outside world. As Kant shows, and as explained by Dinesh D'Souza in
What's So Great About Christianity, this is absolutely unprovable. Read it and weep. To take it a step further, we cannot even logically prove we know anything, since all knowledge is based, ultimately, on sense experience.
Second, modern science came from the Church which, for more than a hundred years was the prime mover and funder of science. You have heard it said it was from the Greeks. Not historically true; they may have kicked it off, but their worldview stifled it. Can't get far if you believe thrown rocks tend towards the ground because, well, it's "in their nature." It was the Church which, believing in a God of order and reason who sustains the universe and its laws, who created matter originally "very good" (and, so, unlike the pagans, didn't consider matter "dirty"), wanting to "think God's thoughts after him" as reflected in his creation, sustained modern science as an organized enterprise.
Oh, but what about Galileo? You're in for a lot of surprises there. Read D'Souza. Or read
this article or
this one. But compare your stated position to Cardinal Bellarmine's:
I say that, if there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true.
The irony is, contrary to popular mythology, these guys understood how to do science. They were in fact
more scientific than Galileo, whose "best" proof at the time - the tides - was
completely wrong. They said sure, go ahead with Copernicianism
as a theory until you have proof. But he wouldn't listen, instead ridiculing the pope publicly, and reaping the whirlwind.
The other irony is that the Church was defending what it believed to be a
scientific view, which was actually a mistaken, pagan view that seemed to make sense. Kind of similar to the Catholic Church giving ground to Darwinism - except, of course, that geocentrism had much more "evidence" going for it.
Anyway, that's it for this post. If you can't wait for more, I strongly recommend reading ex-atheist Anthony Flew's
There Is a God. You could do the
ad hominem attack and claim he didn't write it, etc. - or you could take his word for it and consider the arguments on their merits. Perhaps you are scientific enough to do the latter.
