Ange1o DePa1ma wrote:

"Vince Hart" wrote in message
ups.com...

Mark Houlsby wrote:
Vince Hart wrote:

Mark Houlsby wrote:

all this is hogwash.

For all I know, you may agree that it is.

I do agree although I may not have said so explicitly. I don't think
that you can prove the existence of God by a law of causation to which
God is not subject.

That is what I suspected. It's consistent with an earlier theological
argument with which the two of us were involved, too.

At times in my life, I have considered myself to be a religious person.
As a result, I am sympathetic to the belief in God. On the other
hand, I like to consider myself intellectually honest as well. That
tends to make me impatient with the intellectual sleight of hand that
apologists favor.

My problem with Dawkins is his militancy. Science has not begun to scratch
the surface of the origins of things. To say everything started with the big
bang is simply to beg the question of where all this stuff, or that
primordial speck of big-bang matter, originated from.

This is a valid point. A rather large part of the problem is that it is
very nearly impossible for any scientist to secure funding for research
into *any* theory to rival the "Big Bang".

Dawkins can't answer
that question any better than could the hairiest prehistoric brute.

Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, not an astrophysicist. Do you
expect Vladimir Kramnik to be a world-class hockey player?

While
it's certainly true that we know nothing of the being we have come to call
God, at some point his existence becomes necessary to bridge the gap between
nothing and something.

No, that's a non-sequitur. It doesn't become necessary. What happens is
that a point is reached beyond which there is no *rational*
explanation.

I can poke fun at religions as well as the next guy.
Saints flying through the air, prophets and miracles, resurrections and
transubstantiation are fair game. Science can prove that people can't fly or
rise from the dead. But it can't explain where everything came from, and
gains nothing by labeling as an idiot everyone who suspects there might be
an intelligent origin, or originator.

Science most certainly *doesn't* do that. Rather, it provokes
*investigation* with the intention of making us less ignorant.

To this end, maybe you should read the book: "Intelligent Thought",
edited by John Brockman...(I take the liberty of assuming, from what
you have written above, that you have not yet done this).

http://tinyurl.com/y77dlj