The Bias of Richard Dawkins and Atheism- Part 5

The 5th and penultimate part in this series working from chapter 6 of Tim Keller's book, "The Reason for God".

Category:

Education

Tags:

• God
• Jesus
• Christ
• Richard
• Dawkins
• atheism
• truth
• scriptures
• gospel
• faith
• Bible
• science

[hackenbollox]

The major problem I see here is that the foundation of the scientific method means that god is completely unnecessary. If you apply the same rigorous analyses that must be applied to science to the existence of god, god fails at every turn, simply because the scientific method requires evidence. Since there is no evidence for the existence of god, god doesn't even stand up to the most cursory scrutiny.

Epic fail.

[bberchin]

So... science defines everything; even things which it has no business speaking to? Just because science cannot prove or disprove God does not mean God does not exist. In fact, it proves that science cannot speak to it because there is not enough evidence to make a scientific determination. You're a fool to think science disproves the existence of God. Evidence is not proof and much of the evidence you would use to disprove I would use to prove His existence. Science fails as much as man's mind.

[hackenbollox]

1. I don't believe I said that science defines everything.

2. There is nothing that should be outside the purview of science. That's the point of the scientist. Question everything, even what you think you know.

3. I didn't at any point say that science disproves the existence of god. What I said was that the same testing can't be applied, and that god is a logical improbability. Interesting that I can read your words, since science has failed.

Double fail.

[bberchin]

God is a logical improbability? Ok, from your perspective I can see how that is true. Understanding by faith with knowledge enables me to look at the evidence differently than you and realize there is no possibility that God doesn't exist. Your reasoning and logic is all based on the flawed and unreliable mind of man.

[telpro1]

I thought the use of the word scientism was exactly correct. I'm an agnostic but I can see a world in which scientism is the chosen religion and that "scientist" is the new name of the high priest. Sciense and mathmatics take years of study before one can gain a working knowledge and because of this fact when we listen to scientists we believe their words without doubt. Also science can't stand up to its own testing- "the outcome of experiments are affected by the observer observing it" what!!!

[cruelfate45]

Integral as in material and spiritual (physicality and consciousness as two parts of the same thing).

I would agree, concepts of truth aren't cut and dry. In human beings, one survival mechanism is really developed, pattern recognition. But I don't think we can really piece together the larger phenomenon of nature conceptually yet. Fortunately we have a lot of tools, science being closer to our senses than say religion or philosophy.

[hackenbollox]

Integrating what? Science and philosophy?

Not sure about that. I can work from either standpoint, but only one of them points to tangible truth. Besides, you'd have huge trouble getting the language to work effectively. Different concepts of what truth is can be a difficult one to overcome. lol

[cruelfate45]

What do you think about an integral approach?

[hackenbollox]

Beautifully phrased and completely meaningless.

[cruelfate45]

Science doesn't aim to be anything, that would contradict your entire argument. Some humans aim to be omnicompetent. Competence implies mind. The very argument against other modes of knowing actually presuppose those other ways of knowing. It's pretty much the reason why philosophers have gone away from materialism in the first place. It makes no sense because if existence can account for itself by existing, why can't materialism account for itself? Because awareness is immaterial.

[hackenbollox]

Science is not omnicompetent, I agree (and nor have I ever heard Dawkins espouse the notion that it is), but it aims to be. Whether or not it will ever reach that goal is another topic entirely, but it has provided the only useful answers available to us, and underestimating it is folly in the extreme.

[cruelfate45]

And those hard facts about physicality and the chain of physical causality, I have no problem with. I just have a problem with extrapolating certain scientific knowledge into full blown philosophical theories that dismiss first philosophy. The basis of our understanding isn't simply the fact base we pull from, it is our model of interpretation, our dealings with the known vs. unknown and so on. Science is very revealing in many ways, but it isn't omnicompetent as Dawkins puts it.

[hackenbollox]

Yes, science is a human construct, but the phenomona it observes are not. Yes, science should be questioned, and so it is. Nothing is accepted within the scientific community until it has been subjected to intense scrutiny and experiment by the process of peer-review. In fact, the goal of science is not to prove things, but to disprove things. Every scientific process has the specific purpose of trying to find flaws in our theories. This forms the whole basis of our understanding.