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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (124249)	7/9/2005 1:24:04 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794408

Most scientists believe in both God and Darwinian evolution. They are not incompatible at the level of physical reality, that which can be observed using our ordinary senses and that which can be demonstrated in scientific laboratories. Arguments about what took place before the Big Bang (or however the Universe began) are not about science, but metaphysics. [Edit: some scientists argue that there was a universe prior to the Big Bang, or that the Big Bang isn't the correct explanation, or that there are universes outside this univers. None of that is metaphysics.] Paul Johnson - really, his essay is so unscientific that it causes me to doubt even his ability to write history. But that's not a fair assessment. He is just outside his field, and thus, out of his league. [Edit: I see one blogger called his explanation a fallacious Argument from Personal Incredulity, "commonly formulated as "I don't understand how it could have happened, therefore God did it". Probably accurate. Sorry no link.]

To: skinowski who wrote (124249)	7/9/2005 2:03:05 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794408

Of all the fundamentalist groups at large in the world today, the Darwinians seem to me the most objectionable. They are just as strident and closed to argument as Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, but unlike those two groups the Darwinians enjoy intellectual respectability Paul Johnson objects to scientific naturalism, which is a fundamental methodological basis of science. That's what he mistakes as "atheism" - creationists can't distinguish between a methodological and a substantive assumption. Rejecting theology as a basis for science is not being "strident and closed to argument". If you want to learn theology, take the religion class. If you want to learn biology, take the science class. Derek