Starboy

Athanasius,

Are you saying that pointing out someone’s ignorance is rash speech? Pointing out that Christianity has been forcing its point of view on people who expect to enjoy their religious freedoms just as you do? If someone steps on my toe I am going to say ouch! If they ignore me and keep doing it because I am the little guy and they can flaunt the constitution and push me around I am going to get militant. Why aren't there more Christians on Christian’s boards sowing peace, love, understanding and tolerance? If you scoured the Christian boards for such messages and then scoured the atheists’ boards how do you think they would compare. If Christians practiced what they preach we would not be having this discussion!

Starboy

Bubba

Agreed.

I'm suprised someone else hasn't picked up on and written about the creduousness of trueorigins.org

Bubba

scigirl

Ok I tried to go to the trueorigins.org site and I recieve this message:
Excuse me? Doesn't a master's degree in Vet Molec Biology/Immunology qualify me to at least take a peek??

scigirl

Edited to add... ahh the link provided by Athanasius had an extra dot in it. . . I fixed it, and here it is again:

<a href="http://www.trueorigins.org/" target="_blank">http://www.trueorigins.org/</a>

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

Albion

No, Dawkins got where he is because he's a good public speaker. Unfortunately, a lot o fscientists aren't; they'd rather be left alone to do their science. I'm glad there are people like Richard Dawkins and Kenneth Miller who can carry the flag for the rest of the community.

However, I agree with you that Richard Dawkins is carrying his campaign too far by equating science (evolution in particular) with atheism. That's exactly what the creationist leaders want, and the ironic thing is that it's very close to their own position, it's just that they see a different winner from the one he does.

When I've debated creationists, I've often found that they really don't like it when I say "of course evolution is compatible with God, even with the Christian God; it just isn't compatible with biblical literalism." They WANT to hear that every supporter of evolution is an atheist who's trying to impose that atheism. Richard Dawkins is playing right into their hands.

Starboy

Is Dawkins an atheist or an a-theist? If he means a-theist, then I agree with him. All science is a-theistic. If science == metaphysical naturalism and Dawkins agrees with that and his world view is completely informed by science then he would be an a-theist. Playing games with Christians by avoiding the a- word is dishonest. The primary problem with most Christians is that they are ignorant. Their faith does not encourage them to rectify that situation, so our only hope is to do what ever we can to educate them whenever we can. Avoiding the issue is not the way to do that.

I also think that science is a crisis for Christianity. We have been watching a 400 year old car wreck in progress that started with Copernicus and has been going on ever since. As long as Christians look to the real world to validate their faith they will always be in crisis.

Starboy

tommyc

IMO, religion is in direct conflict with science. The only logical reason for being religious is because there is something which cannot and will never be explained by science and can only be explained by a supernatural force/being.

Edit to add: I thought the feedback pages were hilarious, I've now moved onto May!

[ August 06, 2002: Message edited by: tommyc ]</p>

GeoTheo

You seem to not understand the difference between metaphysical and methodological naturalism. Therefore your arguement contains a logical fallacy.
Science works with the assumption that all effects have a natural cause based on physical laws that can be understood emirically. It therefore limits its explanations to the material. It makes no claims of the supernatural. Methodological naturalism or scientific materialism merely limits itself. It does not say either way if the supernatural exists. Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical viewpoint. It makes a claim that the material Universe is all that exists. They are not the same thing. Limiting oneself to a certian viewpoint for the purpose of study in no way implies one believes that is the only valid viewpoint to adopt as a worldview. I may study an organism only in terms of its anatomy that doesn't mean I believe that is the only aspect of the organism I believe exists.

GeoTheo

Do you realize your statement is self contradictory?
How could an explanation for things that cannot be answered by science be in conflict with science?

[ August 06, 2002: Message edited by: GeoTheo ]</p>

KC

Could you please show me where Dawkins ever equated science with atheism?

Thanks,

KC

Godless Dave

In my experience creationists are far, far more likely to frame the conflict that way. Most (not all) scientists recognize that science is not capable of making statements about god(s), and religion is not qualified to make statements about science. They should be two separate spheres.

Tell that to Galileo.