How to argue against a particular delusion.
Hello everyone,
A friend of mine is a pretty die-hard Christian (shock horror, both of his parents are missionaries/vicars) and he often posts little sayings of some kind or another on Facebook, which I usually ignore. However, today he posted something that really irritated me for some reason:
"The more I look at science, the more in awe of God I become."
And just to make that worse, one of his Christian friends commented "Boom" as if he had made some kind of infallible argument. Somehow, I feel as though nothing I say will make any difference because they must be incredibly deluded already to believe that God just "invented" science. Basically, this is the guy who thinks he's a "modern and intelligent" Christian by saying that things like Noah's Ark are "just stories and aren't meant to be taken seriously by Christians". But if that is true, then why take ANY of the Bible seriously and where does he draw the line between stories and (what he believes is) the truth?
In the past I asked him and his friend where the evidence was. He claimed science (yes, seriously) helped prove Christianity and that Christianity was about "opening yourself" to it and believing, and then you "feel God" or whatever. How do you argue with someone like that??
What do you all say to religious people (not necessarily just Christians) who claim that science is just an invention of God? Is there a specific way to argue with someone who twists everything to awkwardly suit modern day thinking?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on -
And your hyperbole and demeaning diatribes show a lack of concise thought which you disguise as exasperation. Who's the grown-up in the room?
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Permalink Reply by Marc on -
Ok. Richard admit it. You are actually Ray Comfort. This is getting painful to watch. Do you read the first half of sentences regarding scientific material and then get tired, bored, or confused and then stop to read a few bible passages to re-energize, and forget where you left off?
Your interpretation of genetic mutation is refuted in a genetics 101 course. There are harmful and beneficial mutations. Shared common ancestry is not the same as humans/cows coming from apes/horses. It's the way grammar school kids understand evolution and genetics not adults.
Do they have even a community college within 50 miles of you? I suggest you investigate. Heck, investigate something, anything beyond what a sympathetic website has to say.
Either that or you are really Unseen or someone else and we are being expertly catfished. -
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
"If we are going to teach “creation science” as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."
-- Judith Hayes -- -
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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RE: "you can't prove He doesn't" - it's not our job to "prove he doesn't," you're making the assertion, it's your job to prove he does. Where do you get your ideas, Richard? The Bible?
The only part of the Bible that tells us that your god created everything, are the first two chapters of Genesis, or "Bereshit," as it was called in Hebrew, "According to Moses" - but biblical scholars have established that Moses didn't even write those books, Chapter one was written by the Priestly Source, a group of Jewish priests in exile in Babylon, sometime after 522 BCE, and Chapter Two was written by a group known as the Yahwist Source, living in the Southern Kingdom of Judea, around 950 BCE, both living and writing hundreds of years after Moses, if he ever existed, took the long dirt-nap. So much for your inerrant book!
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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The "god as first cause" argument, Richard, forces the question, what created your god?
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
Ah, you did say icr! My apologies. Perhaps I will check it out some time.
The point on microevolution versus macroevolution reamins false, however. It's like claiming that frozen water can be heated to room temperature, but it is impossible for it to be heated to boiling point.
Why do you feel the need to distinguish evolution as a theory from a law? No ome here would make that mistake, nor should they need to. Theory is already an incredibly weighty term for a description of natural phenomena for which there is abundant evidentiary support.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on
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And "science can not bridge the natural to the supernatural", we are only saying that the natural points to, is indicative of, the supernatural. The watchmaker argument.
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Permalink Reply by Gregg R Thomas on -
ROFLMAO...LOL...etc.
Rich, I hope you hang around a while this is some funny shit.
Please, tell us more...but wait a sec...I gotta clean my screen...it's cover with the coffee I've been spewing out my nose everytime I read another of your posts....OK, I'm ready now. :)
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Permalink Reply by Richard Bohn on
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I am at work and typing via my cell phone, so if I jump around it is for those reasons...and no I can not be an expert on every field of science, but a general understanding shows something with complexity has a designer. Maybe I am not as intelligent as all of you collectively, or perhaps even individually, but my study of our physical world, and from personal life experience (which i am sure you are eager to discount)proves to me the reality of God. None of you can prove how the universe got here or how life started, so "Let God be true, and every man a liar." I know quoting the bible makes you hysterical, so laugh yourselves silly.
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Permalink Reply by Marc on
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Richard, you have just demonstrated the point that is trying to be made. Any monkey (to coin a phrase) can bring their knowledge to the point of 'general understanding'. General understanding ends when an individuals comprehension of concepts that are not easy to dilute ends. Then its time to do the homework.
Similarly whenever I see the phase 'common sense', I cringe. Common Sense: sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.
Q: So what happens when your simple perception is wrong Richard?
A: God -
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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on -
a general understanding shows something with complexity has a designer.
If that is true, Richard, then what designed God?
None of you can prove how the universe got here
The science of cosmology has provided overwhelming evidence that the universe originated with the Big Bang.
or how life started,
That's true. We do not know exactly how life started. This is one of the most difficult questions in science.
To cite this as a proof of God is a classic 'argument from ignorance' fallacy.
Crackpot: How did life begin?
Me: I don't know.
Crackpot: See? God did it! It's the ONLY possible explanation!
Me: Why does it have to be God? Why can't it have a natural explanation we don't understand yet?You see how that works, Richard? Earthquakes. Lightning. Stars. Seasons. Disease. Rain. Tides. Gravity. After countless scientific investigations throughout human history, not once has the supernatural ever turned out to be the explanation for ANYTHING. In all cases, once our ignorance of nature vanishes, so does God.
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