Comment (85)
Email
Print
del.icio.us
Technorati
diggWhy are they throwing brickbats at God?
A campaign by eminent atheist Richard Dawkins to discredit religion makes little sense, says a Canadian ethicist.
Richard Dawkins has done more than all religious people together to put God on the current public agenda. He is on a highly publicised, international campaign to convince the world that "religion is the root of all evil". I think he’s seriously misguided, at best, and that his campaign is dangerous. Here are just a few of the reasons I think that.
Terry Eagleton, an eminent literary scholar, reviewing Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, in the London Review of Books, says that Dawkins’ writing on theology and philosophy is equivalent to someone writing on science whose sole familiarity with science is The Book of British Birds. That’s also an apt description of Dawkins’ limited discussion of ethics in his book. His ethical analysis is simplistic and unsophisticated.
Dawkins confuses religion and the use of religion – I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt intellectually and assume he does so deliberately -- in order to promote his thesis that religion is evil. Religion itself is not evil – just as science is not evil – but it can be used for evil purposes, just as science can.
Using religion to convince the 9/11 terrorists to commit mass murder by knocking down the World Trade Towers was a profoundly evil use of religion. Using airplanes to carry out that evil was a profoundly evil use of aeronautical science. However, Dawkins looks only at the evil uses of religion – never the good it effects -- and only the good uses of science – never the harms it does. A balanced ethical approach requires us to recognise both the goods and harms of both religion and science, and to try to stop the evil uses and to promote the good ones of each.
We should stop automatically associating having liberal values with being open minded and having conservative values with being closed minded – liberal people can be very close minded (as we can see with some uses of political correctness) and conservative people open minded.
The primary "way of knowing" in science is reason and reason is fundamental to the scientific method that produces scientific knowledge. Dawkins’ mistake is that he sees reason (and probably science) as the only valid way of human knowing and, consequently, as the only appropriate tool to explore non-scientific questions, such as profound ethical issues.
We have multiple ways of human knowing in addition to reason, all of which are essential to ethics. They include history (human memory) -- this is beautifully encapsulated in aboriginal people’s practice in making ethical decisions of looking back seven generations. Imagination and creativity – looking forward seven generations to try to assess the ethical acceptability of the impact of what we plan to do on future generations. Intuition -- especially moral intuition. Common sense. Experiential knowledge – including what we can know, as the gym teachers tell us, by listening to our bodies. And "examined" emotions, to name just some.
I believe that, in combination, these other ways of knowing constitute our primary decision making mechanism (what we describe as our "gut reaction") and that reason is an immensely important, but secondary in terms of its use, verification mechanism of those decisions. We use reason to make sure our gut reactions are on track, whether ethically, legally, spiritually, emotionally or in some other relevant way.
Indeed, research published in the last three weeks in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals backs this up. In an article entitled, "The Moral Brain", researchers reported that people with the reasoning parts of their brains intact, but who had damage to the emotional centres, could not make good ethical decisions.
Basic presumptions are of great importance in decision making, although often they are unidentified. They allocate the burden of proof. When there is equal doubt about an issue the basic presumption prevails. Richard Dawkins’ basic presumption is that there is no God and, therefore, that those who believe there is must prove it. But the equally valid basic presumption is that there is a God and those who don’t believe that must prove it. Because both are tenable basic presumptions, both must be accommodated in a secular society. In contrast, and, ironically, where Dawkins and religious fundamentalists are ad idem, is that each wants to impose their choice between these basic presumptions on everyone else. Where they differ is only with respect to their choice of basic presumption, which are, of course, of opposite content.
In short Dawkins – who is a fundamentalist atheist (atheism is a secular religion) and religious fundamentalists are similar in an important respect: They take an either/or approach to everything: my beliefs or yours; religion or science; reason or Faith; and so on. They then seek to reconcile what they see as the conflicts between the two elements that make up each of these pairings, by dropping one or the other of them. Dawkins’ call for the elimination of religion demonstrates such a choice on his part. But it is an extremely dangerous proposal and likely to escalate the culture clashes and "religious wars" we are seeing.
I propose that what we need to do is search for a shared ethics that can accommodate as many people of goodwill as possible. We will never find a universal ethics and we will never be able to accommodate fanatics at either end of the spectrum of human beliefs, but we can articulate and develop an approach that will accommodate many more people in a big ethical tent than is presently the case.
To achieve that will require us to change in some ways. Instead of starting from and focussing on our differences, we should start from where we agree. Starting from agreement and then moving to our disagreements, as we must, sets a different overall ethical tone than starting from disagreement.
We should stop automatically associating having liberal values with being open minded and having conservative values with being closed minded – liberal people can be very close minded (as we can see with some uses of political correctness) and conservative people open minded.
We also have to stop assuming that all change in values is progress and to be welcomed, and re-value wise ethical restraint. That can require having the courage to say "no" -- which often takes more courage than saying "yes".
Dawkins’ approach of wanting to eliminate religion is also dangerous because it is an impossible goal. Probably the vast majority of people will not accept that religion should be eliminated and conflict will be exacerbated as a result. In short, in ethics and searching for values (a task which encompasses religion), impossible goals are not neutral; they cause harm. In contrast finding as much shared ethics as we can is a realisable goal and likely to reduce conflict This is not a "gently, gently" approach as Dawkins described it. It is a principled, pragmatic, ethical one.
The correct question is not whether religion can be used for evil purposes – it can. And the correct response to religion being used in evil ways is not to eliminate religion as Dawkins proposes. The correct question is: How can we best reduce, to the minimum possible, the likelihood that religion will be used for evil purposes and prevent its evil use? As an aside, as a person working on how to prevent bioterrorism, I’d add that this is the same question we are rightly asking in relation to science.
I believe that spirituality is innate to being human -- possibly new epigenetic research will show us in the future that the capacity for spirituality has a genetic base, although spirituality, itself, is not just a genetic phenomenon. Religion is one way – but not the only way -- people experience their spirituality and it’s very important they have access to that experience.
The search for meaning and the desire to belong to something larger than ourselves – the longing for transcendence – is of the essence of being human. And humans have also always searched for morality. Religion is one way – but I agree with Dawkins there are other ways -- that over vast periods of time, across all kinds of societies and cultures, humans have sought meaning, belonging and morality. Who knows, might Richard Dawkins and I agree on that, even though we strongly disagree about the role and value of religion in our contemporary societies?
Margaret Somerville is founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University in Montreal. Her latest book is The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit.
Victor,
you said,
“Tim—would you then say that it is normative for primates to insert their penises into anuses? Or that there is an evolutionary advantage to choosing a genetic dead-end strategy?”
As Jeffrey, has already said it is quite normal for all sorts of animals, including primates, to have sex with members of their same sex. If you want to understand why, do some research. There are various theories which try to find an evolutionary advantage or at least little or no disadvantage for families with ‘gay’ genes which occasionally activate. - but im totally convinced that there is such a thing as a gay gene. Perhaps homosexuality is simply a byproduct of genetically determined ‘horniness’ - in instinct that isn’t very discriminating - after all, may men like to have anal sex with women, and all men masturbate, these things arnt going do much for gene survival either.
You also said,
“PTT asked you a simple question — where is your rationally compelling “ought”? I’ll add to his question — if your existence is not premised on a rational basis, i.e. you are a by-product of a cosmic accident, then why should we take any of your arguments seriously?”
If rationality is just the product of genes with gives us a survival advantage by giving us the ability to understand the how the world works, then your not going to have any choice but to understand the world via you rationality. So if you decide not to take me seriously it not because your brain has ceased to work rationally, but because other non-rational motivations have overwhelmed your rational faculty.
One such non-rational motivation might be an instinct to be believe (even in the face of contradictory reason) in the things which we are told by those in authority (parents, priests) - which is a motivation that enables us to learn important lessons like ‘dont go near the edge of the cliff or dont swim in a river with crocs’ without having to understand why (Dawkins).
If you will read my post you will see that I propose moral sentiments to be non-rational motivations. But as I said this does not mean that the motivation to behave morally ceases to exist when we realize that they arnt rational.
Finally, you can list off all the scientists who are Christians that you want. But I challenge you to find one scientific reason why I (or you) ‘ought’ to believe in God.
Tim
On the delusion of non-overlapping magisteria (e.g. in ethics):
http://www.uagrad.org/Alumnus/Winter03/Pacholczyk.html
<excerpt>
When Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a Catholic priest and neuroscientist, was a boy growing up in Tucson, there were plenty of scientists coming around the house. His father, Andrzej, was a professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona, and he and his colleagues routinely engaged in animated conversations on the history and philosophy of science. Most fascinating to young Tad, though, were the astronomer priests from the Vatican Observatory affiliated with the university.
...
Pacholczyk… earned two degrees in advanced theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome… But before becoming a priest at the age of 34, he’d already done a postdoc at Harvard in neuroscience, and he picked up a Ph.D. in the same subject at Yale in just three-and-a-half years. And then there are his four undergraduate degrees — in molecular and cellular biology, in chemistry, in biochemistry, and in philosophy
</excerpt>
His articles online: http://www.ncbcenter.org/makingsense.asp
To ALL the commentors here:
I recently directed a comment to Jeffrey in which I said:
“...I am not asking you to accept the Catholic moral code nor challenging you to convince me of yours: I don’t think we yet have enough common language on what makes a moral code rationally compelling to have a meaningful discussion on the topic (perhaps one day we will)...”
This lack of a common language seems evident across the theist/atheist divide that characterizes the comments on this article. I don’t think this should put a damper on the exchanges. However, recognizing the common language problem may make it easier to assume that perhaps the frame of reference of that individual “across the divide” is so different than mine that it may be hard for them to see the “evident good sense” of what I am saying and that it is even possible that they too are well intentioned seekers of the truth.
I am not asking for people to buy that ridiculous notion of “everybody’s right”. This is a question of “the truth!” But I am suggesting that attributing as much as we can to the common language issue can enable us to cut the PERSON quite a lot of slack, no matter how wrong we might think their ideas may be.
Just a thought…
Jeffrey Olson wrote: “if you were to tell me that you are genuinely Straight, Gay or Lesbian, I would have to accept this as fact. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
Hmm. Isn’t this presumption that sincerity = truth called… faith?
Recall Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat:
http://www.oliversacks.com/hat.htm
Harry Frankfurt observed in “The Importance of What We Care About”:
“As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we can not know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”
Prior to DSM-IV, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. It was revised because of pressure from gay activists, see
http://tinyurl.com/2bgx7e
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Provide a refutation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then I will regard atheism as something other than Brownian motion.
To Victor Panlilio, and TIM
Victor - You really seem stuck… (?)
Face it, Scientists have witnessed a lot of “weird” things in their observations of animals.
Let me explain: I’ll use bulls as an example. While it isn’t normal for most bulls to be attracted in a same sex way, it does happen, and it is genuine. In fact a small percentage of almost every type of mammal wind up in a similar situation. it has been observed in other classes of animal too; including birds.
So here is the point: It happens in nature every day. Last time I checked we were part of “nature”.
p.s. Victor, Of course there are catholic scientists. I beleive there is a catholic in every field existing in science. There are even Catholic Homosexuals, so whats your point? And thats not anecdotal
I seriously wonder if you can be reasoned with.
Keep up the good work TIM
Hello Jeffrey,
You have claimed several times in this discussion to be an ex-Anglican priest ("ten years in the trenches”, etc.) You have also written in one of your posts that Hitler “used a twisted form of Aryan(As in “Arius” from the council of Nicea) philosophy as well.” This is a double error: not only the term “Aryan” has nothing to do with Arius but the latter was in fact CONDEMNED by the Council of Nicea, hence his position does not represent Catholicism by any stretch of imagination. As a “former Anglican priest” shoudn’t you be aware of these basic facts?
Sincerely,
Mariusz Wesolowski
Jeffrey wrote: “Checking your facts before you discriminate is a MORAL AND ETHICAL THING TO DO!”
Oh, I agree. But why is it moral and ethical, and in reference to what?
When we say, “I weigh x kilos” we do so based on measurement. How do we know if the measurement is accurate? Despite our everyday empiricism, we take it on faith that the measuring device is calibrated against some reference standard. In fact, without this standard, the calibration is rubbish, and our claim to “weigh x kilos” is misleading.
You still haven’t answered my questions: is it normative for primates to insert their penises into anuses? How does same-sex attraction provide any kind of evolutionary advantage for the individual organism if, as Dawkins likes to claim, genes are selfish? SSA leads to a genetic dead-end. Atheism leads to a logical dead-end. You can quote all the psychology and sociology you want, but unless you can refute the Second Law of Thermodynamics as well as mathematically repudiate Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, you likely won’t persuade me that atheism is more rationally compelling than theism, and you should consider that I started my journey from “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Tim wrote: “perhaps you can tell me another reason why i should believe in God; just give me one rationally compelling “ought”
Without a rational Be-ing as the basis for every form of be-ing there is, whatever an atheist utters is the product of the random collisions of (pick whichever level of subatomic phenomena you wish) and should be regarded accordingly. For the mathematically inclined, the Second Law of Thermodynamics or Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems provide persuasive arguments for a rational Be-ing as the ground of all reality. Perhaps even you, Tim, might care to demonstrate for us how your “rationality” arises from Brownian motion, and how this does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
But first, a “simpler” matter: the date and time assigned by computers to our postings appear to be based on the Gregorian calendar. As per Inter gravissimas, 10 days were subtracted in 1582. If you would care to explain how it is that our days are counted by the timekeeping of a theistic Body in an otherwise Godless universe, I might entertain your attempt to refute the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
As G.K. Chesterton put it: without God, there would be no atheists.
Tim claimed: “Science requires evidence and justification of any proposed hypotheses. Moreover, it always allows for new evidence and thus better or even opposing theories. Science is thus a living construction which allows for growth and correction. There is always going to be a clear contradiction between the findings of these two ‘constructions’ if they are applied in the same realm (which they must be if you have faith in anything but a deistic God).”
Oh, really?
Fr. Stanley Jaki wrote in “The Origin of Science”
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html
<excerpt>
To the popular mind, science is completely inimical to religion: science embraces facts and evidence while religion professes blind faith. Like many simplistic popular notions, this view is mistaken. Modern science is not only compatible with Christianity, it in fact finds its origins in Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible is a science textbook that contains raw scientific truths, as some evangelical Christians would have us believe. The Christian faith contains deeper truths — truths with philosophical consequences that make conceivable the mind’s exploration of nature: man’s place in God’s creation, who God is and how he freely created a cosmos.
In Christ and Science (p. 23), Jaki gives four reasons for modern science’s unique birth in Christian Western Europe:
1. “Once more the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms.”
2. “The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures.”
3. “Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man’s rationality as somehow sharing in God’s own rationality and in man’s condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man’s reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm.”
4. “At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard against the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix.”
</excerpt>
Who is Fr. Stanley Jaki?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Jaki
<excerpt>
The Reverend Father Professor Stanley L. Jaki OSB (b. Győr, Hungary 1924) is a Benedictine priest and Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey since 1975. He is a leading thinker in philosophy of science, theology and on issues where the two disciplines meet and diverge. After completing undergraduate training in philosophy, theology and mathematics, Father Jaki did graduate work in theology and physics and holds doctorates in theology from the Pontifical Institute in Rome (1950), and in physics from Fordham University (1958). He also did post-doctoral research in Philosophy of Science at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Princeton University and Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. After post-doctoral research, Father Jaki was Gifford Lecturer at Edinburgh University(1974–76), Fremantle Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford(1977), Hoyt Fellow at Yale University(1980) and Farmington Institute Lecturer at Oxford University(1988-1989). He was awarded the Templeton Prize for furthering understanding of science and religion in 1987.
</excerpt>
Non-overlapping magisteria? Yeah, right.
Dear Moderator,
Why did you edit my posts and remove the links to the positive atheism website and the other philosophy website? I didn’t mind that you did it as long as the playing feild was level. Then you allowed other persons posting to this thread to have weblinks like the one directed to http://www.beyondGay.com
http://www.beyondgay.com is an offensive website in which people regulary bash the lifestyle of others based on thier own perceptions of what drove them to have same sex relationships.
In my former life as an Anglican Priest (at the same church mentioned in my earlier posts)I was asked to provide clerical oversight to those who were attending a group called “Living Waters”. What I saw there was an attempt to use scripture to show the people way to how they can change thier orientation, from homosexual to straight, from promiscuous to monogamous, etc.
The first thing that I noticed was that no account was mode for those who orientation was genuinely Gay or Lesbian. Keep in mind that in recent studies in sweden they have shown how the brains of genuinely gay or lesbian people reacts differently in same sex situations.
There were those who dropped out of the living waters group because they had realised that their orientation was genuinely Gay or Lesbian. They were told that their orientation was sinful, and were left to languish in the guilt that the comment would have left with them.
I cannot account for anyone else’s orientation, nor should I try. But if you were to tell me that you are genuinely Straight, Gay or Lesbian, I would have to accept this as fact. Why wouldn’t I beleive you?
IF this were the case, and if I told you that you are going to hell because of it, I would be guilty of religious bigotry. Mostly because I have diminished you as a person and have ignored your own personal integrity.
This, amongst other points, is Dawkins thesis: Those who pridefully claim to know the mind of God, are more than willing to impose their interpretation on the lives others living in their societies.
The God delusion enables all sorts of strange behaviour, and encourages the demonization of minorities, and those who have other beleifs systems.
Jeff Olsson
Tim airily proclaimed: “Well this conversation is consistently hitting new lows.”
Silvername,
and anybody else who is foolish enough to believe that God is necessary for morality, please read my previous post (Thursday, 7 June 2007 at 3:17 pm).
Victor Panlilio,
saying that ‘SSA can lead to sinful thoughts and acts’ is about as good an argument against SSA as saying that we shouldn’t dig up the garden because that would displace the fairies.
---------
Tim—would you then say that it is normative for primates to insert their penises into anuses? Or that there is an evolutionary advantage to choosing a genetic dead-end strategy? Or that computationally it is desirable for processes to terminate abnormally?
PTT asked you a simple question — where is your rationally compelling “ought”? I’ll add to his question — if your existence is not premised on a rational basis, i.e. you are a by-product of a cosmic accident, then why should we take any of your arguments seriously?
You’re holding forth about what science is — I just had dinner last night with my friend Richard, a theoretical physicist and mathematician and one of the most fervent Catholics I know. My sister-in-law has a PhD in molecular biology (she studied at Cornell) and manages a large DNA sequencing lab. My sister, who studied at Duke, has Master’s degrees in computer science and mathematics. Her husband is on the Medicine teaching faculty at Johns Hopkins (postdoc in neonatology). According to your “reasoning” these people ought to be atheists, yet the exact opposite is true. Anecdotal evidence, but still…
Suggested reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
If we study the history of science, we see that it is the presumption of rationality—i.e. the universe is intelligible to rational minds—that underpins scientific inquiry. Without this, it stretches my (admittedly feeble) imagination to accord to the utterances of atheists anything more than Brownian motion.
And that wouldn’t be hitting a “new low,” it would “just be.”
To all who commented on my previous post what I actually said was:
“All of the doctors whose names are listed in the article ignore the position of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the plethora of studies that show the same sex attraction is a normal permutation of mamalian, and human sexuality.”
Point 1: By this I mean that it is normal for mammals to display same sex attraction.(In EVERY way..sorry but it’s true) This isn’t just my OPINION, it is well established scientific fact explained in numerous scientific journals. It is based on millions of hours of field obeservation.
The opinion that it is not a valid life “choice” is based on “faith” in a book called the Bible.
please note:
The method of faith is a variant of the method of authority in which people have an unquestioning trust in the authority figure and, therefore accept the information without doubt or challenge.
Point 2: No matter how you dress it up, once you declare another person’s lifestyle as “not valid”, you set the stage for discrimination against them. We see this form of demonization against Christians all over the middle east. People quote “other” holy texts and then proceed to build up a case against the Christians, much of which is purely a fabrication. Straw Men are built, charicatures of what Christians really beleive and do, are made and the next thing you know they have burned down another church, bombed another meeting, or run another family out of town.
This is exactly what is happening here, only it is the Christians who seem to have started another “War against the Homosexuals”.
I am not Gay, nor can I ever imagine being so,(Happily Married 24 years), but I will not listen without comment to those who twist the truth, who run only on faith, as they run down other people.
I meant it when I said that the time has come for an end to religious based bigotry! No matter what you beleive, you need to make sure it passes the test of good science (hard fact) before you foist it on someone else. Checking your facts before you discrimminate is a MORAL AND ETHICAL THING TO DO!
I am well aware of the lobbying that goes on in Canada and the United States. Religious organisations put a lot of effort into getting various levels of Government to make policies that fit with their beleifs. (and thats fine)
Sadly it has resulted in long term discriminatory practices against those whose “lifestyles” you declare “not valid”.
Dawkins makes this point quite well in his book, I really suggest you should read it! Once you get past the offence of Dawkins being an atheist, you’ll find he makes a lot of sense.
ptt,
If you want a rationally compelling ‘ought’ in morality its quite possible you will never find it. A lot of our moral attitudes are based upon moral sentiments which evolved for natural reasons (and you cannot get ought from is).
But, just because our ‘oughts’ are not rational, does not mean that our moral sentiments will vanish. Our deepest moral sentiments are quite likely to be genetically determined. This means you will have them whether you believe that they have a rational objective basis or not. In other words, the world does not come crumbling down when you give up belief in God.
With this, your most persistent reason for belief in God, dealt with, perhaps you can tell me another reason why i should believe in God; just give me one rationally compelling “ought”.
Tim,
I’m still waiting that one rationally compelling “ought”.
PTT
Well this conversation is consistently hitting new lows.
Silvername,
and anybody else who is foolish enough to believe that God is necessary for morality, please read my previous post (Thursday, 7 June 2007 at 3:17 pm).
Victor Panlilio,
saying that ‘SSA can lead to sinful thoughts and acts’ is about as good an argument against SSA as saying that we shouldn’t dig up the garden because that would displace the fairies.
you also said, ‘there is no contradiction between “faith” and “science” as many would like think.’
Faith requires one to believe in an unnecessary hypothesis without any evidence for that hypothesis. Thus it is a dead construction without any objective basis for growth or correction.
Science requires evidence and justification of any proposed hypotheses. Moreover, it always allows for new evidence and thus better or even opposing theories. Science is thus a living construction which allows for growth and correction.
There is always going to be a clear contradiction between the findings of these two ‘constructions’ if they are applied in the same realm (which they must be if you have faith in anything but a deistic God).
Pinky Rodriguez,
re. your first comment yes we should study philosophy, but not only the ancient philosophers and medieval theologians; modern philosophy has critiqued and moved on from Aquinas. Kant, who did try to defend belief in God, disposed of Aquinas long ago.
re. your second comment, i take it you have not met many children from non-theist families.
Finally Yedge,
your comment doesn’t even deserve a reply.
I find it disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that theists never provide any new or particularly challenging arguments against atheism. These discussions always seem to finish with the same ending; ‘well I cannot prove God exists’, says the theist (tho what he means is that he cannot even provided good reason for his faith), ‘but I guess thats why its called faith’. What a disappointing and foolish way to end a discussion, but i fear it is inevitable for this, and just about every other discussion between theists (who are unable to question their beliefs) and atheists (most of whom are the result of questioning their beliefs).
Tim
Page 3 of 6 : « First < 1 2 3 4 5 > Last »