Reflectorites
This is my last post on this thread. Aplogies if it is rushed.
On Sat, 09 Dec 2000 07:32:29 -0600, Susan Brassfield Cogan wrote:
>SC>Brian Harper quotes:
>BH>[3]========
>>I marvel at the audacity with which some people presume to
>>speak of God. In giving their evidence to unbelievers,
>>usually their first chapter is to prove the existence of
>>God from the works of nature. [...] If such an argument
>>were to be presented to them, no wonder they would react
>>and say that the proofs of our religion are feeble indeed,
>>and reason and expedience tell me that nothing is more
>>likely to bring it into contempt in their sight.
>>-- Pascal <Pensees>
SC>There's a long list of IDers who need to read this. Stephen Jones,
>certainly, but Dembski first.
Pascal is talking of using the classical arguments for the
existence of God, to prove the existence of God. His point
is that the God one ends up with is only the God of the
philosophers, not the Living God revealed in the Bible.
This is an ongoing debate within Christian apologetics. Pascal's
point may be valid in an already Christian culture, where
people are either believing or disbelieving in the Christian
God. But in a pagan culture that has forgotten who the
Christian God is, it may be necessary to start from the
evdience of design in nature. This is in fact what St.
Paul did in Acts 24 in engaging the pagan philosophers
of 1st Century Athens.
This has no relevance to ID, which is only trying to prove
the existence of *design*.
But this "Freudian slip" shows why Susan is so against design.
She is afraid it might support the existence of God!
But if God does exist, refusing to consider evidence that
He exists, does not change the fact that He exists!
Thanks again to Susan for her posts on the Reflector.
Steve
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"Contemporary religious thinkers often approach the Argument from
Design with a grim determination that their churches shall not again be
made to look foolish. Recalling what happened when churchmen opposed
first Galileo and then Darwin, they insist that religion must be based not on
science but on faith. Philosophy, they announce, has demonstrated that
Design Arguments lack all force. I hope to have shown that philosophy has
demonstrated no such thing. Our universe, which these religious thinkers
believe to be created by God, does look, greatly though this may dismay
them, very much as if created by God." (Leslie J., "Universes", [1989],
Routledge: London, 1996, reprint, p.22)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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