(March 24, 2013 at 4:33 pm)jstrodel Wrote: You don't even understand what the shallow arguments are.Sure I do. Here's an example of one:
jstrodel Wrote:What percentage of great scientists, philosophers, writers, historians, men who are responsible for the learning of societies have been Christian in the last 500 years?Appeal to authority. Shallow. How much evidence have those men produced to prove that god exists? Zero.
jstrodel Wrote:You don't even know what the arguments are for God's existence.Everyone does, it's not like they're a secret, or that they aren't being made constantly in these forums. I spent almost 30 years making those same arguments. They're shallow. Arguments are not evidence. Arguments are not proof.
The six-year-old argues for the existence of the Tooth Fairy because his tooth is no longer under his pillow, having been replaced by a shiny new quarter (or these days by a $20 bill, I suppose). That is his argument, and he actually has evidence. Yet you sneer at that poor young child for having a better case for his imaginary benefactor than you are able to make for yours.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould