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

I don't think Dawkins' militancy holds a candle to that of religious
zealots who believe that the God who has communicated to them through a
magic book wants them to make war on those whose God communicated to
them through a different magic book.

Nor do I think that Dawkins would consider anyone an idiot for thinking
that their might be an intelligent designer. I do think he considers
to be idiots those people who want creationism taught along with (if
not instead of) evolution in public school science classes.

Once upon a time, science did not have an explanation for mental
illness, so people attributed it to demon possession. The fact that
science does not provide a satisfying explanation for some phenomenon
currently does not mean that it is incapable of ever explaining it, or
that a supernatural explanation is necessary or preferable.