RE: The seeming impossibility of a successful argument for Christianity
December 18, 2012 at 2:25 am
(This post was last modified: December 18, 2012 at 2:27 am by Undeceived.)
(December 17, 2012 at 10:15 pm)SpecUVdust Wrote: Please pay attention closely. I argue that ANY theists alive today are merely clinging or adding to an imagined fantasy realm with a focal point on the supernatural and a "reality" other than this(the only) one. SCIENCE on the other hand, exists here, always has, AND WE CAN SEE THIS. Science provides shitloads of proof that god doesn't exist and theists say " I don't believe it." Ok, if you don't, why not gather up all the " intelligent" theists, build a fucking laboratory, and study the shit yourselves!!! Maybe youll prove scientists wrong! Why wouldn't you wanna do that? Because you know the scientists are correct?In Eastern culture, before Christianity, man looked to gods such as Ra and Poseidon as explanation for observable processes. Animism maintained that every natural physical entity possessed a spiritual essence. The world was chaotic and thought not to be capable of being understood by humans. The pre-Socratics replaced the idea of an "enchanted universe" with that of a "disenchanted" cosmos. They are the reason Western man developed a belief in a unified, ordered and accessible-to-human-reason universe. However, the pre-Socratics' focused less on the regularities of nature and more on the tendencies of human nature. Christianity reinvigorated the idea of an ordered cosmos by envisioning the universe as following laws that embody the rationality of God the creator. God is sacred and made the universe, and the universe operates lawfully in accordance with divine reason. At the same time Christianity held that the universe itself is not sacred. For Christians the sun is not an object of worship, but merely a great lamp. The Christian universe is ordered and yet disenchanted. Moreover, Christianity teaches that man was made in the "likeness" of God. This means that there was a spark of the divine reason in man, setting him apart from other things and giving him the special power of apprehending them. Science as we know it today was founded between the 13th and 14th centuries through a dispute between two kinds of religious dogma. The first kind held that scholastic debate, operating according to the strict principles of deductive reason, was the best way to discover God's hand in the universe. The other held that inductive experience, including the use of experiments to "interrogate nature," was the preferred approach. Science benefited from both, using experiments and then criticism/argumentation to establish their significance. The scientific method was born. All this because Christians had faith in an orderly universe--a view we can never prove yet continue to take for granted. Science stands on the foundation of Western thought, which Christianity built. There is no evidence God does not exist, SpecUVdust, because science starts with the same presumptions western theism has held for eternity. Can you "prove" your epistemology, SpecUVdust? Are you able to confidently say your knowledge is the only knowledge a human being is capable of possessing?
If we are undoubtedly wrong, then you could prove it once and for all with a little science, couldn't you??


