Allow me to quote someone I personally feel is wittier and more intelligent, Carl Sagan:
GK Chesterton’s statement is predicated entirely on a presupposition, that not only was the universe formed by an all-powerful sentient entity, but that this entity is the God of Christianity. It begs the question to say one is denying the truth of the sentence. Yahweh is neither provable nor falsifiable, and so we can not say with any certainty that God created the universe (and thus created atheists).
That is simply not true. Was there a man named Jesus that was crucified around that time? Maybe, even probably. Can it be substantiated that he rose from the dead? No, especially when the four gospels have irreconcilable differences regarding the story.
You’ll find that most atheists don’t say that the story is impossible, but instead that no concrete evidence has been presented to make them believe it. We do this all the time when we are presented with a tale. We will tentatively reject it barring future evidence. The grander the tale the more proof is needed.
We can extrapolate how 2+2=4, but we don’t have a similar throughline of evidence to say the same for the claims made by Christianity.
Western methods of knowledge developed in part in Christian societies, but weren’t formed on the basis of Christianity. We know this because Christianity is predicated on faith, whereas our ways of knowing are all about testing and verifying.
Other faiths also claim the mantle of supernatural truth, yet they differ in many ways with that of Christianity’s version. Christians obstinately deny the supernatural truths of other faiths, and so by what you’ve said they are not using pure reasoning. What many atheists are obstinate about are 1, asking for evidence for a god akin to that we use for other things in our lives and 2. not believing first and then making a mad scramble to find things that even slightly confirm that belief.
Catholicism uses that very term, mysteries, to describe things that it believes but can not explain. The difference being science has encountered mysteries that it has solved. The speed of light was once a mystery. Smallpox was once a mystery. Some mysteries simply won’t ever be solved, and there were always be new mysteries, but don’t mock science because there are mysteries that have not been solved. The amount of knowledge we’ve gained on cosmology has been astounding. Dark matter and dark energy is another hurdle to overcome. You have to give cosmologists time to work it out.
You do understand that the scientific method involves employing methodological naturalism, right? Why would scientists assume God in the equation when they haven’t yet ruled out natural causes? Scientists aren’t ruling out God, just not assuming it because they’re desperate for any answer right or wrong. Imagine how foolish it would be to have attributed something to God that we now know has a simple scientific explanation.
How foolish is affirming both?
I guess it depends on what the something is. Let’s take the world of medicine. If science comes up with a cure for a disease, we can concretely attribute the cure to science. Religion may wish to claim a piece of that credit (“It was God that inspired the doctors who came up with the cure.”) and that claim is not provable or falsifiable.
There are no irreconcilable differences. That aside, compare the account to a trial. Multiple witnesses may differ on some details, but if they all corroborate a material fact of an event, that further substantiates the claim.
What evidence would you accept?
So you collect corroborating testimony from multiple witnesses of an event and say, “This isn’t enough, we need more” — based on what exactly? How much evidence is enough?
How so? I’m not following the analogy. Did you see all these fish?
Western metaphysical axioms developed into modern science in Christian societies. Naturalist atheism doesn’t offer anything new, it only rejects theism, and undercuts the axioms.
We share a lot in common with other religions, and do not claim to be the only ones with supernatural truth. Where other religions deny the Resurrection though, then they don’t have a truth that we do.
TBF, dark matter and energy might be explained scientifically some day.
I’m a big Carl Sagan fan. He’s pretty smart, although he tends to fray around the edges when it comes to religion.
Most people are established in their worldview by the time they reach young adulthood, and once established such is the security gained from it that it takes a major crisis in which this worldview is seen to have failed before they are open to alternatives.
And even then, the explanation may be satisfactory only to some. The standard scientific explanation for going from no life to life is currently more or less: yeah, you have all these chemicals lying around and then BY CHANCE they fit together perfectly and boom! you have a living cell. Therefore this should be happening in many parts of the universe… well guess what? they haven’t found any other life outside earth so we still live in the best of all possible worlds.
A naturalist would find Sagan witty and its prophet. Others find him circular.
It is like a roulette wheel but instead of 40 positions, there are (many more than) 10^40 possibilities. We are just at the time which had (much less than) 1/10^40 chances of occurring. A probability of
A court will understand if a witness says a blue car hit theirs while the other says it was gray. A court will think something is fishy if one says it was a car that hit them and the other a horse.
One devoid of contradictions would help (How many entities did the women see inside the tomb, 0, 1, or 2? Did the women see the angel move the stone or was it already moved when they got there? Did they or did they not tell others about what they saw? Did they or did they not see Jesus outside the tomb?). Evidence that shows elements that would have been noticed by others without a stake in the story would be useful (e.g. The claim that there were 3 hours of darkness, or the other dead rising.)
Do you find the testimonies of the two groups of witnesses who claim to have seen the Golden Plates of Joseph Smith to be sufficient?
The number is either odd or even. Anyone who strongly claims even or odd is correct does so without evidence. For some they want the fact that they have an answer to be a stronger position than one who has no answer, but confidence is no substitute for knowledge.
Please give a metaphysical axiom exclusive to Christianity that is used in science.
As I mentioned before, science by default employs methodological naturalism. Scientists who are religious (e.g. Newton) tend not to use their faith in their science.
Where other religions deny that Muhammed was God’s sole prophet, then they don’t have a truth that Muslims do.
Few things hinder learning like presuppositionalism. There’s nothing wrong with a premise or hypothesis, but it has to allow for disconfirming evidence. Early geologists were looking for evidence of a global flood and found there was none.
I would disagree. In his quote he’s applying Occam’s Razor (correctly). He’s not allowing for elements to the question that are not shown to exist or elements not (at least yet) shown to be necessary. A big jump is to add such an element in god (yours or any other).
The first question is whether a universe could exist with different constants. It’s not like these numbers are randomly generated like a role-playing game. It’s quite likely these constants have an impact on each other.
The difference being that we can say confidently that there is a universe. We can not say the same for God. It’s an added element beyond what we can speak about with certainty.
I don’t thing a naturalist or one who doesn’t believe any gods exist feel it’s prejudicial when asked where the universe came from. In fact, those who’ve studied the matter will probably talk your ear off about it
I would not use the word decision. One can not choose to believe or disbelieve in something, but merely feel they have or lack the needed evidence. Sagan’s quote doesn’t rule out the existence of a supernatural cause for the universe; but demonstrates that inserting a god is not necessary, especially considering the same things that can be said about the origins and knowability of God can be used for the universe.
But think about what usually occurs. Christianity demands answers of others what it refuses to ask of itself.
You can’t just define something into being true.
It’s a placeholder answer until “God did it” can maybe become “This is how God did it.” If the pattern holds, as science learns more and more cosmology religion will not add much to the conversation.
Except that long before he made this quote, he decided there is no evidence for a deity.
Just to clarify, your position is that the Earth won the Cosmic Lottery and that the hundreds of thousands (even millions) of things that had to happen, in the correct locations, order, and amounts happened without the intervention of anything other than the matters/chemicals bouncing off each other and somehow combining in the correct amounts/order.