Re: Ool - out at first base?

On 12/22/24 10:49 PM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:07:20 -0500, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Martin Harran wrote:

I don't know if you are still reading this but in case you are, I
thought of you today when I read this in a religious newsletter that I
subscribe to:
>
"Only the silliest of scientists would think they could find God in
the world or prove that God does not exist. Existence is a property of
things within the world. Pose the matter in those terms, and you might
as well admit, God does not exist.

>
>
Very sensible.  My non-belief is not founded in any scientific
discovery, evolutionary or otherwise.  It arose before I had more than
the foggiest idea of evolution, and long before I studied cosmology. And
of course I know Christians who are better informed on evolution or
cosmology than I ever was or will be.
>
Mind you, if after thousands of years of investigation we had no idea
how anything worked, if the "gaps" were vast and unshrinking, I might
reconsider.
>
I can't recall the last time any scientist used his discipline to argue
against the existence of gods.

 Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris ....
 Not that I think any of them had any lasting impact; I got the
impression they were really just preaching to their own choir with few
new converts.
 

But I still see arguments that the
nature of reality conflicts with the claimed nature of one or more gods.

 It sems to me that most of that comes from the religious side, not the
science side. People like MarkE who just can't get their head around
science being the *how* and religion being the *why*.
 

>
On the other side Tertullian commented that if Marcion had contemplated
the beauty of a flower he'd have abandoned his whole theology.  Marcion
no longer being alive at this point, he couldn't reply with the
countless rebuttals available to him so we don't know how Tertullian
reconciled birth defects with his god of flowers.
>
One can waste infinite time on either side of this discussion.
>
William Hyde
>

 

Just so.  Dawkins in particular is obsessed with rejection of religion. I was very disappointed with his book on the matter (The God Delusion). He didn't examine the fact that all human societies have put forth religious ideas.  The evolutionary moral is very clear:  humans are benefited by them.  What we make of them with our "advanced" thinking is up to us.