Category Archives: Theism and atheism

A specific instance of the problem of evil

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This is The Skeptical Zone, so it’s only fitting that we turn our attention to topics other than ID from time to time.

The Richard Mourdock brouhaha provides a good opportunity for this. Mourdock, the Republican Senate candidate from the state of Indiana, is currently in the spotlight on my side of the Atlantic for a statement he made on Wednesday during a debate with his Democratic opponent:

You know, this is that issue that every candidate for federal or even state office faces. And I, too, certainly stand for life. I know there are some who disagree and I respect their point of view but I believe that life believes at conception. The only exception I have for – to have an abortion is in that case for the life of the mother. I just – I struggle with it myself for a long time but I came to realize that life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen. [emphasis mine]

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Is ‘Design in Nature’ a Non-Starter?

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A row is ready to erupt over two competing notions of ‘design in nature.’ One has been proposed under the auspices of being a natural-physical law. The other continues to clamour for public attention and respectability among natural-physical scientists, engineers and educators, but carries with it obvious religious overtones (Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Wedge Document and Dover trial 2005) and still has not achieved widespread scholarly support after almost 20 years of trying.

One the one hand is the Discovery Institute’s notion of ‘design in nature,’ which is repeated in various forms in the Intelligent Design movement. Here at TSZ many (the majority of?) people are against ID and ID proponents’ views of ‘design in nature.’ The author of this thread is likewise not an ID proponent, not an IDer. On the other hand is Duke University engineering and thermodynamics professor Adrian Bejan’s notion of ‘design in nature’ (Doubleday 2012, co-authored with journalism professor J. Peder Zane), which rejects Intelligent Design theory, but contends that ‘design’ is nevertheless a legitimate natural scientific concept. Apropos another recent thread here at TSZ, Bejan declares that his approach “solves one of the great riddles of science – design without a designer.”

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The theistic world view

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There was apparently an October 2010 conference at Biola U., under the title “God & Evolution.”  Videos for some of the talks are now available, and I have listened to three of them.  The ones that I listened to were talks by Denyse O’Leary, John G. West and Jay W. Richards.

The talk by Denyse O’Leary was the first that I listened to, and it is startling.  The other two are mild by comparison.  Early in her talk, O’Leary says:

The problem with Darwinism is that it is a cultural mood.  It is not really a theory in science.  If you look at the actual science literature, what’s available to show Darwinism is negligible, piddling; the major claims are not met. Continue reading →

Is Any Form Of Atheism Rationally Justifiable?

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Definition of God:   First cause, prime mover, objective source of human purpose (final cause) and resulting morality, source of free will; omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent inasmuch as principles of logic allow. I am not talking in particular about any specifically defined religious interpretation of god, such as the christian or islamic god.

Definition: Intellectual dishonesty occurs when (1)one deliberately mischaracterizes their position or view in order to avoid having to logically defend their actual views; and/or (2) when someone is arguing, or making statements against a position while remaining willfully ignorant about that position, and/or (3) when someone categorically and/or pejoratively dismisses all existent and/or potential evidence in favor of a conclusion they claim to be neutral about, whether they are familiar with that evidence or not.

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Is purpose necessary to acquire any apparently purposeful effects?

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For purposes of this discussion.

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Chance = non-teleological causes that happen to result in particular effects via regularities referred to as “lawful” and stochastic in nature.

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Purpose = teleological causes that are intended to result in particular effects; the organization of causes towards a pre-defined future goal.

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My question is: can chance causes generate all of the effects normally associated with purpose,but without purpose? IOW, is purpose necessary to produce all, most, or some apparently purposeful effects, or is purpose, in effect, only an associated sensation by-product or side-effect that isn’t necessary to the generation of any particular effect normally associated with it?

Honeys, I’m home!

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Thanks for keeping the site warm for me 🙂

Gotta lot of threads to catch up on, by the looks of things.

Still a bit gobsmacked by the number of Christians on Uncommon Descent who seem to think that William Lane Craig’s apologia for the divine command to genocide has any merit, and it’s left me somewhat sick of heart, but reassuring that Timaeus, and some others also find it abhorrent.

The idea that any action is good if you think that God commanded it seems to me so self-evidently dangerous that I simply cannot imagine how anyone can entertain it for a moment.  And that’s only one of the problems with it.

For those out of the loop,  the hoohah started here:

Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig

I think Dawkins’ excuse rings hollow, myself, but his link to Craig’s essay on the genocide of the Canaanites made my blood run cold.

 

 

Atheism and Theism: both statements about nature?

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In the previous thread, Jet Black made the following comment in response to one of my comments:

Atheism is a statement about gods, not a statement about nature. You just seem to be making them synonyms. This is precisely the same trick that creationists and religious people often try to play; implicitly claim that a bunch of things are synonymous, reject one, and then by induction, you reject them all.
LINK

I disagree. Here’s why: Continue reading →

God, or the HPoC, require …

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…a paradigm where ‘explanation’ means something different than the modern usage of the term.

I wrote this in response to a question about supernatural events but I think it applies to Chalmers’ ‘Hard Problem of Consciousness‘ also:

Me: Who said I was unattached and objective? Find me a single example of a supernatural event.

Other guy: Jesus’ resurrection.

Me: Perfect example. We’ll assume that Jesus’ resurrection was a real event, witnessed by millions. A team of doctors pronounce him dead as a doorknob. He turns blue, rigor mortis sets in, and the doctors take his liver and heart for transplant patients so we know he’s as dead as they come. No tricks.

Now, the next morning, a team of scientists representing every known discipline with every possible piece of testing equipment starts monitoring the cadaver. They have EEG, MRI, CAT, mass spectrometers, chemical analysis teams, scales, x-ray machines, scopes up his ass and forced through his urethra, down his throat, in his ears and nose and around his eyes up his femoral artery, cloud chambers to measure the particle interactions, and a cop with the insta cocaine detector kit snipping bits of his hair at 2 second intervals to make sure his carcass doesn’t commit a crime. After watching the decaying flesh vigilantly all morning, suddenly the systems reanimate. Brain waves start registering, a heart regrows and starts pumping, the liver develops and the gall-bladder fills with bile. Jesus takes a breath. Witnessing the monitoring devices with a mix of awe, fascination and horror, the eyelids flicker and Jesus sits up. The cop’s test turns positive and Jesus nonchalantly waves his hand and the test turns negative.

What do you think the scientists do?

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What does a theist mean by ‘God’?

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Crazy little thing called God:

In ancient times, unusual physical events apparently scared the shit out of the locals, even the local philosophers. Events like lightning, earthquakes, meteors, floods and things of that nature prompted fears and speculations about the wrath of some critter, a critter much more powerful than ourselves, that suffered petty jealousy and fits of rage. The goal, assuming such a being, becomes appeasement. That is a highly rational belief. Bad things are bad. It’s worth investigating ways to avoid them. It’s probably why Richard Simmons became a celebrity.

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