(March 24, 2013 at 5:52 pm)jstrodel Wrote: At the same time, the atheist is someone who is quick to ridicule the much more modest use of the argument from authority,
Most atheists just ridicule the belief in something that the believer cannot prove exists, even though he considers it the most important thing in his life. Ridicule of anything that springs from that is just natural, really.
"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