(April 4, 2014 at 4:35 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(April 4, 2014 at 4:19 pm)tor Wrote: The question is why can't same old arguments just die already.
It's like theists read the same book "Arguments for theism" written by the same author. There is absolutely NOTHING new.
Why would there be anything new?
Think about it: religion by itself is stagnant. Everything is written down in books that need to accrue some age and credulous followers before they become divine text, so nobody is writing any new content for religions that exist now. Everything the followers feel they need to know is in those holy books.
Religions are carried along by society; secular progress is the reason religions change at all. Until some new scientific, moral or social progression is made from the outside, religions have nothing new to fit their god into, since they don't make anything of their own. Look down the line: every major theistic argument or apologetic has been made in response to- either a denial of, or an insidious robbery of credit for- a piece of secular progress. Intelligent design only exists because evolution does, the argument from design exists because of various naturalistic discoveries that makes design unnecessary at different resolutions, the cosmological argument only picked up steam because the big bang can be misinterpreted as a "beginning" of the universe...
There's nothing new in religious arguments because religions don't do new. You just have to wait for the next big scientific discovery or social change before you'll see a new theistic argument. First denial- that's where you'll get your arguments- then acceptance, and then credit robbery.
Well kalam was invented 500 years ago or so.
So there was at least SOMETHING new 500 years ago. In science there is constantly something new. Theory of relativity for instance was discovered some 100 years ago. Puancare conjecture in math was solved in 1982.
But in theology there is absolutely nothing. Seems like they run out of ideas some 400 years ago.
