P
PRmerger
Guest
Yep.
And it’s often the ones who bristle so much about others’ choice of words who are the ones who need it the most.
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And it’s often the ones who bristle so much about others’ choice of words who are the ones who need it the most.
B
Bradski
Guest
I think that we need to put something to bed (and I’m in transit for a few days so any replies I make may be intermittent).
The entire universe operates, as far as we have been able to tell up to this point, in a manner which is decipherable to the scientific method. That is, in a manner which we call ‘natural’.
From the formation of planets and galaxies to that of a snowflake, if you gather enough information and apply the scientific method you can discover the natural way in which the process works.
All reasonable Christians (there are exceptions) accept this without question. They just work on the not unreasonable assumption (for them), that this natural process is the modus operandi that God has used in creating everything. If there is something which we don’t understand, all reasonable atheists (there are exceptions) will say: ‘hey, let’s investigate this, apply scientific principles and see if we can’t work out what’s going on’. From, obviously, a natural viewpoint as science cannot deal with the supernatural. By definition.
The reasonable Christian will say exactly the same thing. With the unspoken rider that discovering what exactly is going on is simply discovering the method by which God has caused it to happen.
At this point, the atheist and Christian are of one mind. They solve the problem, high five each other and congratulate themselves on increasing the sum total of human knowledge. The Christian heads off to church to give thanks for this insight into His methods and the atheist…well, I don’t know…heads to the pub for a celebratory cold beer.
The unreasonable Christian looks at the problem and says: ‘No, there is no natural explanation’. Maybe they think that despite God being omnipotent, solving this particular problem by natural means (a method which He has apparently used for literally everything since Day One) was beyond Him, so He needed to just instigate a little ‘Kazam!’ moment and slip in a little supernatural jiggery pokery.
Classic examples of this would be biblical literalists who insist the planet is 6,000 years old and was made in 6 days (what on earth took Him so long?) and those morons at the Discovery Institute who insist that God couldn’t have set things up to allow us to evolve by natural means but needed to give a wave of the Divine Magic Wand to help things along. I mean, if God is omnipotent, then…why?
These are the guys who are responsible for the God Of The Gaps. These are the guys whom Bonhoeffer castigated for trying to limit God in what He can do. These are
the guys who use the gaps in scientific knowledge into which they have to squeeze their God. Because they insist that what we don’t understand is therefore supernatural and therefore proves God. Whereas all the reasonable people know that EVERYTHING is natural. And with my Christian hat on, is the method by which God operates.
The God Of The Gaps is NOT an argument. It cannot be used as one. It is simply a position into which some Christians force God when they insist that the gaps in scientific knowledge is where God can be found. Squeezed into the spaces left to them by our increasing, yet still limited knowledge of how everything works.
‘Don’t do it!’ Should be the call from reasonable people on both sides of the fence.
From a Christian perspective, the reason not to do it is obvious: If you claim that there is no explanation for something, therefore God, there will be an obvious response when the explanation IS found: Therefore no God.
From an atheist perspective, the reason should be equally obvious. It is a call to stop the investigation. ‘We have the answer!’ say the Christians Of The Gap. ‘There’s no need to search for a natural explanation as there isn’t one’. It’s a call to effectively close down scientific enquiry, because if the answer is supernatural then science cannot access it.
It is the literalists, the fundamentalists and those such as the contemptuous ID brigade (aka Creationists) who are foisting this concept upon us all, Christian and atheist alike. We should all join in telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they should take this concept and put it somewhere out of sight. The best position for that I will leave to you.
The entire universe operates, as far as we have been able to tell up to this point, in a manner which is decipherable to the scientific method. That is, in a manner which we call ‘natural’.
From the formation of planets and galaxies to that of a snowflake, if you gather enough information and apply the scientific method you can discover the natural way in which the process works.
All reasonable Christians (there are exceptions) accept this without question. They just work on the not unreasonable assumption (for them), that this natural process is the modus operandi that God has used in creating everything. If there is something which we don’t understand, all reasonable atheists (there are exceptions) will say: ‘hey, let’s investigate this, apply scientific principles and see if we can’t work out what’s going on’. From, obviously, a natural viewpoint as science cannot deal with the supernatural. By definition.
The reasonable Christian will say exactly the same thing. With the unspoken rider that discovering what exactly is going on is simply discovering the method by which God has caused it to happen.
At this point, the atheist and Christian are of one mind. They solve the problem, high five each other and congratulate themselves on increasing the sum total of human knowledge. The Christian heads off to church to give thanks for this insight into His methods and the atheist…well, I don’t know…heads to the pub for a celebratory cold beer.
The unreasonable Christian looks at the problem and says: ‘No, there is no natural explanation’. Maybe they think that despite God being omnipotent, solving this particular problem by natural means (a method which He has apparently used for literally everything since Day One) was beyond Him, so He needed to just instigate a little ‘Kazam!’ moment and slip in a little supernatural jiggery pokery.
Classic examples of this would be biblical literalists who insist the planet is 6,000 years old and was made in 6 days (what on earth took Him so long?) and those morons at the Discovery Institute who insist that God couldn’t have set things up to allow us to evolve by natural means but needed to give a wave of the Divine Magic Wand to help things along. I mean, if God is omnipotent, then…why?
These are the guys who are responsible for the God Of The Gaps. These are the guys whom Bonhoeffer castigated for trying to limit God in what He can do. These are
the guys who use the gaps in scientific knowledge into which they have to squeeze their God. Because they insist that what we don’t understand is therefore supernatural and therefore proves God. Whereas all the reasonable people know that EVERYTHING is natural. And with my Christian hat on, is the method by which God operates.
The God Of The Gaps is NOT an argument. It cannot be used as one. It is simply a position into which some Christians force God when they insist that the gaps in scientific knowledge is where God can be found. Squeezed into the spaces left to them by our increasing, yet still limited knowledge of how everything works.
‘Don’t do it!’ Should be the call from reasonable people on both sides of the fence.
From a Christian perspective, the reason not to do it is obvious: If you claim that there is no explanation for something, therefore God, there will be an obvious response when the explanation IS found: Therefore no God.
From an atheist perspective, the reason should be equally obvious. It is a call to stop the investigation. ‘We have the answer!’ say the Christians Of The Gap. ‘There’s no need to search for a natural explanation as there isn’t one’. It’s a call to effectively close down scientific enquiry, because if the answer is supernatural then science cannot access it.
It is the literalists, the fundamentalists and those such as the contemptuous ID brigade (aka Creationists) who are foisting this concept upon us all, Christian and atheist alike. We should all join in telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they should take this concept and put it somewhere out of sight. The best position for that I will leave to you.
P
PRmerger
Guest
P
Peter_Plato
Guest
Well, Brad I have never been one to heap contempt where it might become unsightly later in the day.
While I do suppose that the young earth creationists may require a bit of straightening out in the investigatory skills department, I don’t think every ID proponent necessarily should be tarred with the same brush.
After all, no one has adequately explained the complexity of genetic code, amino acid sequencing, functional proteins or, for that matter, how life arose on this planet and whether it exists anywhere else in the universe.
It seems to me that until the inclusive “us” you wish to exhort to camaraderie has provided some of the down and dirty in terms of actual explanation, your “uncertain terms” lack, well… a little certainty.
I’ve never been a joiner at heart, so while I am not in your “us” tribe, I am neither in the “them” outlier group. And, frankly, don’t really care what either group thinks about that.
I think the truth will turn out to be far more subtle and nuanced than the picks and shovels that each group currently uses to carve out territory will be able to determine. In the meantime, I think both groups should be left to their devices to go as far as they can without the belittlement and hostility which seems so easily brought into the “dispute.”
Why is there any reason to mock another’s work? Especially work that is known to be futile? I would be more worried about a great deal of success – scientific or otherwise – in the hands of the unscrupulous than those who attempt to “foist concepts upon all of us.” Even there, there are far more troublesome “concepts” being “foisted” upon humankind than the idea of human beings being created 6000 years ago, for me to preoccupy much of my concern with that quaint little whimsy.
B
Bradski
Guest
You don’t have to join anything. And in any case, it might be a little galling to you to find yourself on the same side of the barricades as me., although I have no problem with it. But you do need to have a position.
Either: You say we can stop looking, we have a supernatural answer (the position of the literalists and creationists)…
Or: You say that we must keep looking to find out, not who did it (you know that already), but HOW He did it.
Tell me that the second option is not a reasonable one that all reasonable people should take.
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PRmerger
Guest
Except, curiously, when the answer points to the Numinous you will note that some atheists succumb to, “I’m okay with saying ‘I don’t know’. We don’t need to know the answers to everything.”
S
Solmyr
Guest
Very nice summary, but you overlooked something.
Every time a “miracle” is being asserted, it is an implicit “goddidit” or “god of the gaps”. After all a “miracle” means an event which could not have happened without a supernatural agent (aka God). It is assumed that a miracle cannot be explained by natural means, in other words it denies that the universe is “decipherable”. If it could be explained in natural terms, it would not be a “miracle”
D
DrTaffy
Guest
I am aware that in some sentences either phrase can be used - as I am aware of other sentences where the use of quid pro quo is wrong.
Just as it speaks about one’s mental state if you enjoy irritating others and feel the need to gloat about it publically?And I do enjoy me my GIFs,
However there is a world of difference between irritation, or even the rage you seem to be fondly imagining, and pointing out the hypocrisy of inviting us to ‘reason together’ while posting empty mockery and GIFs.
You enjoy that do you? Fascinating.
I have never been that mad, no. Just as I do not take pleasure in making other people mad.
If you mean your comparison of atheists to the God of the Gaps argument, it has been refuted. Indeed you yourself have been sneering at arguing against the unthinking members of the opposition, ‘bratty kids’, yet have failed to produce even a bratty kid making the argument you assert atheists make, let alone showing that it is representative of thinking atheists.
Oh, I expecting nothing else PR. But at least now you have admitted that you are deliberately posting them to irritate people, at least in your own mind!
Harking back to:
Anyone who knows anything about modern quantum mechanics will have heard of virtual particle pair creation, which is just that - something popping into existence like your strawman of a turnip materialising on a plate.
More to the point, anyone familiar with modern cosmology will know that the Universe does not need to pop into existence out of nothing. Even in the most naive version of the Big Bang Theory, since space and time are part of the cosmos, there is no time ‘before’ there was something, there was always something from the time t=0.
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DrTaffy
Guest
Or a few seconds - minutes at most - with a dictionary. Given the fact that you immediately assumed I had needed to look those words up, and the way that you recycle a handful of the same florid words in your rhetoric , I am guessing that you went that route.
Well no. As already pointed out, good writing is about communication. Inutile and otiose affectations that gratuitously obfuscate the message in a vain and self defeating attempt to emphasise or even exaggerate one’s edumacation is bad writing.
Sadly we stuck to actual physics and philosophy.
Demonstrably false. After all you assume that your God has no seperate cause. Put another way, define the ‘Universe’ in its conventional sense of “everything that exists” and either it has no seperate cause or you are asserting that it was caused by something nonexistent.
Nope. The physics is more nuanced than you realise.
D
DrTaffy
Guest
Gosh. How do you square that with the facts that not only have I not claimed what PP asserts, but that you made your claim long before I joined in?
Anyone on a slow connection? Especially when the GIF adds nothing but sneering to the debate.
D
DrTaffy
Guest
Nope, not one of those says what you assert.
So not only are you still arguing against the ‘Unthinking’ members of the other side in the debate, but you have failed to produce one example of an atheist as unthinking as the strawman you are attacking.
“Are” in the present tense, nope. Also, there is a difference between a scientist who believes in God and one who thinks that God has been scientifically proven by the evidence. Or one who doesn’t want to lose his job or his right to publish, let alone his life.
So you don’t know what ‘atheist’ means, or at least are misusing it. Surprise.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Would you mind repeating for me what conclusion you draw?
P
Peter_Plato
Guest
Where, precisely, do ACTUAL physics and philosophy demonstrate that the universe could exist without a properly explanatory cause?
Let me guess…
… in the dreams you have nightly trying to reconcile your atheism with reality?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Well, no actually. This is not an assumption, but a conclusion of metaphysics and logic.
At some point, a fully explanatory – i.e., a sufficiently explanatory – first cause cannot explain anything if the explanation for itself lies outside of it. In other words, the explanatory sufficiency has to be integral to or within the nature of the first cause itself for it to be a sufficient explanation or fully explanatory cause of anything else. No internal explanatory sufficiency, no sufficient explanation for anything. It IS that simple.
That means for anything to be THE sufficiently explanatory first cause of anything it CANNOT have a separate cause. Metaphysics 101.
Now, we can debate whether God’s attributes are appropriate to or necessarily must be an aspect of what constitutes a plausible explanatory first cause, but you can’t just willy-nilly declare fully explanatory causes must, themselves, have outside causes. That is just logically incoherent and shows you haven’t thought much about the question.
Yes, I know…
… David Hume. :nope:
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Peter_Plato
Guest
“Write off” is a bit disingenuous.
I suppose you similarly want to “write-off” the fact that you will die if you don’t eat as a pernicious “tool” from God to “nudge” you with a reminder that eating is important. I am not clear how it is necessarily very cruel and un-Catholic of God to make eating of food a priority for keeping us alive by using our potential deaths as a “nudge” to make us eat.
It is merely a fact of life.
Ditto that children in Africa require food.
I would suppose that the kind and Catholic thing to do would be to acknowledge that. Just as it would be with regard to our own children.
I am fairly certain that you would not view the hunger and potential deaths of your own children as a “cruel and un-Catholic” means for God to remind you to keep them fed, would you?
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PRmerger
Guest
Oh, dear. Ohdearohdearohdear.Or a few seconds - minutes at most - with a dictionary. Given the fact that you immediately assumed I had needed to look those words up, and the way that you recycle a handful of the same florid words in your rhetoric , I am guessing that you went that route.
Well no. As already pointed out, good writing is about communication. Inutile and otiose affectations that gratuitously obfuscate the message in a vain and self defeating attempt to emphasise or even exaggerate one’s edumacation is bad writing.
Sadly we stuck to actual physics and philosophy.
Demonstrably false. After all you assume that your God has no seperate cause. Put another way, define the ‘Universe’ in its conventional sense of “everything that exists” and either it has no seperate cause or you are asserting that it was caused by something nonexistent.
Nope. The physics is more nuanced than you realise.
It is good for you to be here, Taffy, and in dialogue with knowledgeable believers, so I suggest you re-think your posting style again.
It would be a shame for you to be banned or suspended again, for you need to be here, to be sure!
You started out quite well on this thread, and I had high hopes for you this time–truly, I did.
But it has devolved quite quickly.
Please, Taffy, learn from prior posts, so you can stay here and chat with us.
P
Peter_Plato
Guest
The “conclusion” is that there are no conclusions, just facts and the facts speak for themselves.
Well… whisper, really.
They tell secrets. Things you would never know to be true, except that the facts reveal them.
But don’t go trying to think or conclude anything about it. You must just let the facts speak.
P
Peter_Plato
Guest
Actually, what I find “galling” – though not really – is the need to draw up sides to begin with.
What is, is.
Any barricades we put up will be shown to be contrived. The very simple question, that we all should be most interested in, is: “What is the truth?”
I am quite happy slipping past barricades and asking, “Made any progress, yet?” Or, “What’s happening there?” Provided the truth is seriously being considered.
Saves me from the compulsion to get all protective and territorial. You know… “Foxes have holes…” …and all that.
Y
ynotzap
Guest
Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of things, being as being, the ultimate causes and effects of things. If the concepts have no ontological existence, they would have no being, and if that is the case you could never have concepts. but the fact that you do have concepts mean they do have being and existence, so you make an erroneous statement. If the only evidence you are looking for is “physical”, then logically you will not find any spiritual evidence, (non-physical or material) The spiritual is known by it’s effects, such as the soul being the source of immanent activity in living things, whether they be plant, animals or humans. There is an extremely coherent definition of soul is scholastic philosophy, apparently you don’t seem to be acquainted with it. I can readily understand why reality as I use it is meaningless to you, but does that mean it is meaningless, not true?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
This kind of insistence that ideas don’t “exist” is a rather peculiar one. Sure, they are not influenced by gravity, perhaps, but to insist they must be to have “ontological significance” is a tad presumptuous. Ideas obviously impact the physical world as effectively – though, perhaps, not with as much frequency – as gravity does.
How can something non-existent build ships, skyscrapers and airplanes that tread lightly along the edges of the reach of gravity? Let’s say ideas exhibit gravitas. They have influence and are respected by the servile residents of physical reality, though their ontological pedigree is – well, as far as Solmyr is concerned – a tenuous thing.
Still, it would seem he is committing something like a black swan fallacy by insisting that ontology requires existing things have certain physical traits. Sure, he won’t admit it, but it does appear that he is letting his method determine his metaphysics by defining permissible ontological traits according to methodological constraints. Again, he will deny this, but I am certain he can provide no non-question begging-reasons for thinking his view is correct.
I think he is returning. It is awkward talking behind someone’s back. Look busy.
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