(July 7, 2014 at 10:16 am)rasetsu Wrote: I don't believe the mysterious ways speaks to his motivation so much as it suggests that he has a justification for his acts which would be acceptable if known.That's how I always understood it, that there was some information or knowledge that we lacked. Once we have that knowledge, we would see things differently and understand why god did certain things. It's the believer's version of "we don't know." Perhaps atheists need to throw the "science of the gaps" fallacy at theists who use 'mysterious ways'?
I also think it gets used to try and cover for actions that would otherwise be seen as objectively wrong by a theist, though that gets covered under "god has the right" or "god's morals aren't our morals" or a similar approach.
"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
