Objection: Does it bother you that your beliefs contradict proven science and that as science progresses theres less and less room for your god? Every time someone thinks god is responsible for something, science shows that god wasnt needed to explain it. Youre fighting a losing battle that science and naturalism will always win. Response: By pitting God against science as if they were explanatory alternatives, youre committing a terrible category mistake. Properly understood, God and science are complementary explanations, not alternatives. When you think of God as only living in the gaps of our knowledge and being squeezed out as knowledge closes those gaps, youre only thinking of a caricature. It would be like arguing that as you come to better understand the internal combustion engine, you have less and less reason for belief in the existence of its inventors. But obviously that would be fallacious -- understanding the physics of the mechanism does nothing to make us think there were never any engineers who created it. Of course, there have been times when events were incorrectly attributed to God or the gods, but what does that prove? Does it show that nothing can ever be correctly attributed to God? Of course not. In any case, deep theological reflection has been more careful. The serious, scholarly arguments in natural theology have stood the test of time, and their strength has only been bolstered by advances in science. For example, recent scientific discoveries have shown that our universe is fine-tuned with a precision that literally defies comprehension, a fact which strongly confirms the design hypothesis, as it is fantastically more plausible on theism than atheism. As for naturalism winning, Im not sure you realize what that would really mean. The fact is that atheistic naturalism, if true, undermines the reliability of our cognitive faculties such that we could never trust them to give us real insights or true beliefs. Thus if naturalism is true, we cannot know it to be true. Only if theism is true can rational inference be valid. As C.S. Lewis put it, Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought. Therefore, I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. The argument from reason destroys every argument you could make, for if youre right that atheism is true, then it follows that there are no valid rational arguments -- and that inclues the arguments for atheism. For more on this, we recommend the work of Alvin Plantinga, C.S. Lewis, and J.P. Moreland. An introduction to Plantingas formulation of the argument can be found here: goo.gl/a0caJA
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 05:55:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015