(April 22, 2014 at 9:13 am)Metalogos Wrote: Yes, you are right in a way by restating my challenge for an alternative answer the way you have although I didn't and probably wouldn't use the word god in such a question.I am using it as a catch-all term for any sort of guiding force or intellect in the context of this discussion.
Quote:I have nothing to hide so I don't get your reasoning for calling me dishonest when I attempt to take a theist approach to the question of origin.I mean that the approach itself is dishonest, in that it expects us to accept a default position that has no evidence for it.
Quote:I do beg to differ with you though when you say that "god was never the answer" after gaining more scientific, more rational explanations because there are any number of scientist or scholars of past and present who did not discard their theistic views even after gaining new and perhaps improved knowledge and understanding of the many intricate workings of the universe.True, but their work did not produce any explanations that included god. We have come to understand many things that we once ascribed to god(s) due to a lack of understanding, in such diverse fields as weather and climate, health and sickness, genetics, chemistry, and so on. None of the settled explanations included the supernatural.
That so many have held to religious faith in the face of that fact is impressive and frightening. Less so as we learn more and more about the human mind and psyche, but still somewhat distressing to me.
"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