I used to admire Rodney Hide. His blog was the first political blog that I spent quite a bit of time on when I first ventured into the NZ online political scene. It must have been around 2003. Anyway, I thought he was pretty clued on at the time. Now I can only shake my head at reading this sort of thing:
I consider myself to be a Conservative, yet I do not believe the world was made in 4004BC, and not by "a" supernatural being, but by Being Himself, and that it may or may not have taken Him six days to do it, though days are somewhat irrelevant to Him as He is outside of time as he made time exist.
I think the defining characteristic of Conservative critics might very well be petty mindedness and an inability to see the big picture.
Related link: Rodney Hide: Sign up, ye gullible and trusting ~ The NZ Herald
I am left wondering if the conspiracy theorists have found a welcoming home with the new Conservative Party. Certainly Craig was anxious not to offend those who believe that governments are mass dosing us, that 9/11 was a government job, and that Nasa staged the moon landings in Nevada.
Of course, it could be that Craig genuinely believes such nonsense possible. After all, conspiracy theories have the same amount of supporting evidence as the idea that a supernatural being made the earth and all its creatures in six days in 4004BC and now oversees human affairs.
The defining characteristic of the Conservatives may well be gullibility.
I consider myself to be a Conservative, yet I do not believe the world was made in 4004BC, and not by "a" supernatural being, but by Being Himself, and that it may or may not have taken Him six days to do it, though days are somewhat irrelevant to Him as He is outside of time as he made time exist.
I think the defining characteristic of Conservative critics might very well be petty mindedness and an inability to see the big picture.
Related link: Rodney Hide: Sign up, ye gullible and trusting ~ The NZ Herald
I consider myself to be a Conservative, yet I do not believe the world was made in 4004BC, and not by "a" supernatural being, but by Being Himself, and that it may or may not have taken Him six days to do it, though days are somewhat irrelevant to Him as He is outside of time as he made time exist.
ReplyDeleteBy nature, any god such as the one in whom you believe, must be supernatural as he/she/it is not a part of the natural world.
How do you know time is irrelevant to god? If irrelevant, why did he make so much of it? And why isn't it constant?
You know nothing of god, you simply make stuff up or believe the stuff made up by others. There is not a shred of empirical evidence for gods.
Luckily God doesn't require empirical evidence to your standard to exist. Of course, if you expect empirical evidence to be found in the natural world, and in the next breath accept the proposition God is supernatural - outside of this natural world, you might have your own answer.
ReplyDeleteA thousand years ago, you may have also declared gamma rays don't exist because there was no evidence for them that you could see.
"That you could see" being the operative words.
There is an interesting phenomenon with atheists. They believe that since there is no empirical evidence for Deity, there can therefore be no Deity. Yet, the majority of atheists abandon this position with regard to alien life. Even Dawkins admitted that aliens could have began life here on Earth without even a single shred of evidence. Are they just as ridiculous as they claim Christians are? They claim that Christians are gullible fools who "know nothing of god, you simply make stuff up or believe the stuff made up by others."
ReplyDeleteUsing their own rubric, one could say that they know nothing of aliens and simply make things up concerning aliens or believe the stuff that others made up about aliens. I dare say that one could go as far as saying that they are very similar to the tin foil hat wearing crowd who throw alien "I want to believe" parties at Roswell. I also note the tired, old habit of resorting to ad hominem when one does not have an intellectual leg to stand on.
As far as empiricism is concerned, what of the scientists that believe in God? Are they gullible fools and liars as well? Would Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Sir Isaac Newton, and Robert Boyle, to name a few prominent scientists, all be fools as well? If I am not mistaken, there are a great many scientists (to the tune of 30,000+) who base their life's work on empiricism . Yet if one uses the rubric of the atheist, one must arrive at that conclusion. Without the scientists who believed in God as the Supreme Architect of the universe, we would be hundreds of years behind technologically than we find ourselves today. Is it possible that these people had knowledge that could not have derived via the senses? I believe that they did.
Further, I know of no argument that empiricism is the sole means of gaining knowledge as defined by Plato, i.e. that in order to know something it must be a true, justified belief. Atheists prefer to see the world as Hume did, in that nothing enters the mind that does not first touch the senses. But the obvious counter to Hume is Mathematics. One cannot arrive at certain laws of Mathematics, but through the process of cognition. One can further argue that we know that we know because our technology which is based upon these principles actually works. Socrates proved that point masterfully over two thousand years ago when he was arguing for a priori knowledge and found it in a slave.
If empiricism is not perfect, as demonstrated by Socrates, then why do atheists always insist that without empiricism one can not know anything? It is a demonstrably false assertion if one remains intellectually honest and open. It is because that if one does indeed admit that one can know something in the objective sense, then the atheist position becomes much more difficult to maintain secondary to the admitted erosion of their arguments concerning empiricism. In short, if they are wrong on that score then how do they know that they are right about the existence of God? Therefore, all that is left is the last refuge of the desperate mind: Ad Hominem.
Albert Einstein was neither christian or jew. At the most, he was a deist.
ReplyDeleteSir Isaac Newton may have been a devout christian, but he was also an alchemist, thus proving that he could make valuable scientific discoveries whilst also being deluded.
Boyle was also an alchemist.
Seems your argument is in need of transmutation.
Plank, like Einstein, was a deist.
All William Stout said was "As far as empiricism is concerned, what of the scientists that believe in God?"
ReplyDeleteYour comment is irrelevant, and you ignore the substantial points made in the above comments to dwell on trivia.
Comment VERY relevant. Stout is trying to claim scientists as being "on his team". I showed that he is wrong in two cases, and that both Newton and Boyle were, to quote Stout, fools when it came to their belief in alchemy. If they were fools in alchemy, they were no doubt also fools about religion.
ReplyDeleteYour comment is the usual B grade trash you resort to when the argument doesn't follow your desired path.
There is one major difference between science and religion - science is self correcting, religion is incapable of correction.