Once walking on the campus of UC Irvine, I heard another individual - a graduate student perhaps - telling another individual that Stenger had shown the "god-concept" was a failure. I paused for a moment to consider whether I should inquire what the god-concept was and what Stenger's argument was. After no more than a moment's reflection, I continued on the wiser path to my original destination.
Just one comment on Stenger's piece. Stenger writes, "Of course Galileo and Newton were Christians. Their only other choice was to be burned at the stake. Atheism did not appear openly until the French Enlightenment a century later. That light was produced by the mind, not the flames engulfing a heretic."
It takes a special mixture of ignorance and hubris to make statements like that. Stenger is so partisan to a child-like narrative of the history of science that he cannot grant that Galileo, Newton, and others (e.g., Copernicus, Kepler, etc.) might have actually been *motivated* by their religious convictions. The entire idea that we could understand an intelligible universe, created by a rational being who produced laws with the utmost care, is appealed to numerous times by these authors. What alternative explanation is hidden in their texts, or, say, in letters to the Royal Society?
Why was it more prudent for me to continue to my original destination? Because trying to convince an atheist with convictions more religious, more zealous, and more faith-driven than my own cannot be won over by reason. Quite ironic for the proselytizers of "reason", I think.
Once walking on the campus of UC Irvine, I heard another individual - a graduate student perhaps - telling another individual that Stenger had shown the "god-concept" was a failure. I paused for a moment to consider whether I should inquire what the god-concept was and what Stenger's argument was. After no more than a moment's reflection, I continued on the wiser path to my original destination.
ReplyDeleteJust one comment on Stenger's piece. Stenger writes, "Of course Galileo and Newton were Christians. Their only other choice was to be burned at the stake. Atheism did not appear openly until the French Enlightenment a century later. That light was produced by the mind, not the flames engulfing a heretic."
It takes a special mixture of ignorance and hubris to make statements like that. Stenger is so partisan to a child-like narrative of the history of science that he cannot grant that Galileo, Newton, and others (e.g., Copernicus, Kepler, etc.) might have actually been *motivated* by their religious convictions. The entire idea that we could understand an intelligible universe, created by a rational being who produced laws with the utmost care, is appealed to numerous times by these authors. What alternative explanation is hidden in their texts, or, say, in letters to the Royal Society?
Why was it more prudent for me to continue to my original destination? Because trying to convince an atheist with convictions more religious, more zealous, and more faith-driven than my own cannot be won over by reason. Quite ironic for the proselytizers of "reason", I think.