Latest 10 Nano-Blog Apologetics Snippets…Plantinga and Ruse on Methodological Naturalism and Science Definitions…

I forgot I had commented here, but I do appreciate your replies and ideas and the politeness of dialogue here.

I’ll re-read this all now and think about you’ve said, but won’t reply further as I’m sure you all have better things to do and the moment has passed.

cheers

Malcolm

”It would be quite easy to prove young earth creationism scientifically, as the eminent J. B. S. Haldane stated, all you would need is to find a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian.”

No that would simply show that rabbits existed in the Cambrian period. Some theory would be needed to explain this and according to methodological naturalism, the only theories which would be permitted are those that postulate a purely naturalistic explanation.

Was their interpretation incorrect or was the scripture incorrect?

There interpretation was correct. Psalm 93 is does not teach the cosmological thesis that the world is fixed. Its clear from the context that the word “does not move” is being used metaphorically, the way we do when we say a person “is not moved” by counter arguments etc, this is evident from the way the same language is used in the next line. Moreover references to the “seas” lifting up their voices, a few lines latter are clearly metaphorical, this is further reinforced by the fact that the Genre involved is a poem or song. Language like this in poems is typically metaphorical.

”In your view can scripture be incorrect or is it the true word of an infallible god?”

I think that what God teaches in scripture is true, this does not commit me to claiming that Psalm 93, a poem or song about God’s majesty and glory is intended to teach cosmology. Nor does it commit me to saying humans never misread, misinterpret or make mistake about what is taught.

The idea that there is an infallible interpreter of scripture is a catholic doctrine and its limited to certain contexts.

”Yes, arguements, but no evidence!”

This is a false contrast, arguments by definition are conclusions inferred from premises, and hence involve an appeal to evidence. You may disagree with these arguments but claiming they do not exist or that no one has provided any evidence is simply false.

”I’m sorry what exactly is an external world?”

Morals are a set of social rules that are developed by the society they belong to, your morals may be much different from those of an African tribe, this does not make them any more or less true!

No cultural relativism of this sort is deeply flawed see my posts on relativism for an example.

But if your going to fallacious line one can easily show that the claim “God exists” is true, after all some societies believe this and the fact that some communities of freethinkers do not believe this does not make this claim untrue.

Reliable cognitive facilites can be scientifically proven within the guidelines of our laws and societal norms…A scientist will analyze a criminal and decide scientifically if their cognitive facilities are reliable enough for them to stand trial.

Such a scientific proof would be circular, the scientist will have to rely on his cognitive faculties to engage in such proof, he will use his senses for example, use his reason to make inferences from these observations etc, and hence he will have to presuppose that his cognitive faculties such things as his senses his reason etc are reliable from the outset.

Good point, the only problem is that most fundamental religious people will not admit when their religion is wrong so this is kind of a moot point.

Well we were not talking about whether fundamental religious people (assuming your generalization is correct) are dogmatic we were talking about whether theology is self correcting or revisable in the way you said science was.

But for the record, the historical record shows that creationists ( I assume thats what you mean by fundamental christians) have repeatedly revised there theories in light of new evidence, moreover Larry Laudan notes ” Numerous historians and philosophers of science (e.g., Kuhn, Mitroff, Feyerabend, and Lakatos) have documented the existence of a certain degree of dogmatism about core commitments in scientific research and have argued that such dogmatism plays a constructive role in promoting the aims of science.” so generalizations like this are not always as accurate as they appear, though I am sure in an audience of people imbibed with certain sterotypes they are effective.
.-= My last blog-post ..Hadouken Punch =-.

This might be worth its own post for discussion at some stage. While a couple of theologians may have said as such prior to Hutton and Lyall, the vast majority did not. A several thousand year old earth was easily the most common position.
.-= My last blog-post ..Adjusting multi-site and single site temperature data =-.

A literal interpretation of Genesis, hasn’t been disproven, it has been challenged. Note this challenge is in the realm of historical science so itself can be challenged by historical claims such as eye-witnesses.

And a billion year old earth has been challenged by other scientific data that suggest a much shorter duration for earth.
.-= My last blog-post ..Adjusting multi-site and single site temperature data =-.

I think Matt has answered this quite clearly in previous post.

Not all Christians hold this view, but then again it is ridiculous to think that all Christians agree on every topics.

You mean this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit ?

What’s so contradictory about it? There are evidence and hypothesis, all of which not widely accepted by current scientific community because of naturalism and materialism biased.

And you could Google it up yourself, there are countless resources on the net.