1. Lewis Wolpert and William Lane Craig on Religion

Comment #78628 by thowes26 on October 14, 2007 at 12:19 am

Yeah my angry rant didn't add much to rational discussion, and I apologize. Whats your definition of faith? You don't assume all faith is blind, do you? My first post was overly-simplistic, I'll admit. Dr. Craig was trying to show something very simple with the brain in vat comment, that some things we believe are held in faith, regardless of who we are. One of my biggest arguments against Dawkins is his ignorance about the nature of what faith is. I'll agree with him that blind-faith with no evidence is foolish, but thats not the sort of faith reasonable people hold to. Naked reason will take you to where Descartes got when he said, "Cogito ergo sum," but even if one wanted to stay away from faith and hold belief in only their own existence, than they would be holding that conviction as an act of faith. You can't remove yourself from faith, though you can call it whatever you want and thats all a Christian means by faith. I'll agree there's no scientific evidence for God's existence, but I don't think its a scientific question, its a philosophical question and I'm curious what the reasoning is that it has to be a scientific question... If you want me to defend the Teleological argument, it'll go way beyond the scope of this discussion board, I guess I was simply stating that its not a dead argument by any means. Though I agree that the Teleological argument as a deductive proof has been refuted. Do you think the question of God's existence is a philosophical matter, or a scientific matter? I was reading some of the posts above ours and some people felt that it had to be proved by science and I have to disagree. If you agree that it does, I'd like to hear your reasoning. I apologize for my earlier rant to everyone in this discussion board, something I read up there really got me the wrong way, but thats no excuse.

2. Lewis Wolpert and William Lane Craig on Religion

Comment #78531 by thowes26 on October 13, 2007 at 1:25 pm

I wish an atheist with half a brain would come in to settle this ridicliousness. I suppose if you're an atheist with half a brain, you wouldn't be on Richard Dawkins' site, as the good atheist philosopher Michael Ruse said, "The God Delusion made me feel ashamed to be an atheist." The "Brain in Vat" argument is not being used as a proof, its being used to show the necessity for faith. All of modern foundationalism comes about because of a need for "faith," though since the enlightenment it hasn't really been called that in secular circles. Dr. Craig doesn't believe he's a brain in a vat, but he admits that he holds to that truth with faith. He isn't trying to argue that you don't need evidence, he's arguing you can know things by other means than science. If you hold to scientism, you hold to it in "faith," because scientism itself is self-refuting, because you can't use science to show that things can only be known by science. Don't be misled to say all philosophical arguments for God's existence have been formerly refuted, because the jury is still out. I don't know how many times I've heard bad atheists say things like "Hume refuted that," well no Hume didn't refute that, but his argument may have been persuasive. The teleological argument in its inductive form has not been refuted, but with all probabalistic arguments, it needs to be weighed with other evidence. The argument from contingency is a strong argument, but it cannot wrestle you into a belief of God. I'm not trying to argue you out of atheism, but simply into rational discussion. Its really difficult to have rational discussions with fundamentalists, wither they be atheist or theist fundamentalists.