I've followed these exchanges for about a month now and have found them interesting AND entertaining. You guys have done a good job of answering the fool according to his folly. I have often wondered if they actually paid attention in all these theology classes they allegedly sat in. The most recent point on Barth being a Calvinist was utter nonsense. Barth's doctrine of revelation/scripture is anything but! I have one other comment to make.
Shouldn't this battle be fought on epistemological grounds? ie. Should you not force their hands to show why their positions amount to something that is "true" rather than something that is just their opinion? In other words, make them account for how they know the things they assert? Their use of induction (which is formally fallacious) to establish their "truth" claims should be challenged. (Perhaps you have as I can't say I've read every thread).
One of their fellow atheists who now knows the folly of his unbelief said:
"All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: "If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true." This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: 'If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing.' If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based." -Bertrand Russell
Empirical apologetics can never prove anything; including the Christian God. Our starting point must necessarily be revelation, the axiom of Christianity.
Here's another quote from Karl Popper which highlights the impossibility of the atheist making a rational argument:
"Although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. In science there is no 'knowledge,' in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. Einstein declared that his theory was false he said that it would be a better approximation to the truth than Newton's, but he gave reasons why he would not, even if all predictions came out right, regard it as a true theory."
Einstein realized the limits of science, why can't they?
I've followed these exchanges for about a month now and have found them interesting AND entertaining. You guys have done a good job of answering the fool according to his folly. I have often wondered if they actually paid attention in all these theology classes they allegedly sat in. The most recent point on Barth being a Calvinist was utter nonsense. Barth's doctrine of revelation/scripture is anything but! I have one other comment to make.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't this battle be fought on epistemological grounds? ie. Should you not force their hands to show why their positions amount to something that is "true" rather than something that is just their opinion? In other words, make them account for how they know the things they assert? Their use of induction (which is formally fallacious) to establish their "truth" claims should be challenged. (Perhaps you have as I can't say I've read every thread).
One of their fellow atheists who now knows the folly of his unbelief said:
"All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: "If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true." This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: 'If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing.' If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based." -Bertrand Russell
Empirical apologetics can never prove anything; including the Christian God. Our starting point must necessarily be revelation, the axiom of Christianity.
Here's another quote from Karl Popper which highlights the impossibility of the atheist making a rational argument:
"Although in science we do our best to find the truth, we are conscious of the fact that we can never be sure whether we have got it. In science there is no 'knowledge,' in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. Einstein declared that his theory was false he said that it would be a better approximation to the truth than Newton's, but he gave reasons why he would not, even if all predictions came out right, regard it as a true theory."
Einstein realized the limits of science, why can't they?
Darrin,
ReplyDeleteA matter of choice, opinion, preference and faith.