Practical Consequences (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, November 02, 2009, 13:57 (5499 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt: [...] if you don't accept the claim that God exists, based on the fact that there is no scientific evidence for it, then you don't really have any other choice BUT to accept chance.-There seems to be a general reluctance, both on this forum and elsewhere, to accept the possibility that someone might not believe in God and might not believe in chance either. If I could accept either explanation, I would no longer be an agnostic! Most of your post follows on from this strange blind spot.-You write: "faith in science is by no means an attempt at "gap-filling"." You have ignored the context of my remark (perhaps I should have said "her" atheist faith). Greta Christian's article is an attack on religion and the "God-of-the-gaps". She is clearly convinced science will prove that life and the mechanisms for evolution came about by chance plus as yet unknown natural laws, and consciousness will turn out to be "entirely biological". There is no evidence for this belief, and there is no precedent by which to judge its likelihood (see the various assumptions she makes about how a designer ought to design life, and how evolution would be expected to work). Hers is therefore gap-filling faith. I'm not attacking science, or even faith in science ... I'm attacking the assumptions of atheists like Greta Christian who try to use science in order to do the very thing they accuse believers of. -You write: "if you agree that there is no scientific evidence for God, and you accept naturalism, how is her position one of faith?" I do not accept naturalism/chance. I do not accept either theory (design v. chance). I'm an agnostic. See above for the nature of GC's faith. I would also point out that in the (so far) unique context of life in this tiny corner of the universe, scientific evidence is not necessarily the only form of evidence, since it presupposes the materialistic conclusion that the world is exclusively physical. I am not prepared to ignore, for instance, mystic or "paranormal" experiences.-Finally, you write: "To me the question is one of believing or not believing, and there is no middle-ground here." Of course there is middle ground. It's called agnosticism.