Re: Ool - out at first base?

On 12/23/24 11:55 AM, William Hyde wrote:

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:
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"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.

>
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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.
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I can't recall the last time any scientist used his discipline to argue
against the existence of gods.

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Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris ....

  I know that Dawkins commented somewhere that the fact of evolution allowed him to be an atheist.  Not the same as saying it made him one.
 Dawkins also maintains that there is about one chance in seven that god exists.  In my book that doesn't make him an atheist. A semitheist, perhaps.
  Have any of these actually said something like "since evolution is true there is no god"? I confess that I avoid Harris, have read only one of Coyne's books, and prefer Dawkins in biologist mode ("The Ancestor's Tale", e.g.).
 Makes as much sense to me as saying "e**ipi = -1 therefore there is a god".
 In fact science has many, many, times been cited as evidence of the existence of a god or gods, though the triple waterfall was a new one on me.
 William Hyde
   

The Ancestor's Tale is a great book.  That it's a little out of date wrt timescale detracts nothing from his discussion.