1. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #211977 by babelfish on July 16, 2008 at 12:42 pm

Joe,

you seem to have plenty of time for writing. Why not take the time to answer al-rawandi's simple question?

Here it goes again:

Dr. Naik mistranslated the Arabic word wajada. Why;

1) He lied

2) He doesn't know Arabic very well

Which one, please answer.

Thank you.

2. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50545 by babelfish on June 18, 2007 at 5:30 pm

Contrasted to that, from naturalism's point of view things do not look as pretty: According to naturalism the physical world is objectively real and science has something to say about it.

So, according to idealistic theism, claims that dogs talk and that the earth orbits the sun are on equal footing; they do not correspond to an objective reality, but are experiences caused in our minds directly by the hand of goD. It is not even possible to distinguish between them on the basis of how many "normal adults" subscribe to these claims, because that would presuppose that there is an objective reality in which normal adults can be counted. There's no point in counting if it's all in your head anyway, is there?

3. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #50353 by babelfish on June 17, 2007 at 5:32 am

Two points in reply to Dianelos:

1. Your whole argument is based on the ASSUMPTION that ethical propositions can be objectively true. Of course this is incompatible with naturalism, as you correctly point out. There are two ways to deal with this problem. First, you can evaluate the relative support for your assumption vs. naturalism (that's easy, since your assumption is based on nothing but your gut feeling - and I bet it's not even a common gut feeling among people who have thought about these things). Second, you could declare your assumption a dogma that is not to be doubted, in which case you will excuse me for not taking you seriously.

2. As to the claim that science has nothing to say about reality, I'd like to quote John Krebs (as quoted in Dawkins' River out of Eden):

'Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work.'

4. God is not responsible for war and suffering

Comment #48848 by babelfish on June 9, 2007 at 7:24 am

My personal contender for the most absurd statement in the above article is this:

Similarly, only scientific proof that a man's religious affiliation predicts his behaviour, a hypothesis long ago rejected by psychologists, would make religion an obviously poisonous thing.

In other words, psychologists allegedly have proven (references, please!) that religious affiliations have no effect whatsoever on a person's behaviour. If this was true, surely there would be nothing to discuss about (discussing itself being a form of behaviour).