Drat, just when I (O’Leary for News) complained that the new atheists had given up threatening each other with legal action, raising cain about genome mapper Francis Collins, or starting hoo-haws in elevators, this item turned up in the In Bin: Jerry Coyne in The Scientist :
But while science and religion both claim to discern what’s true, only science has a system for weeding out what’s false. In the end, that is the irreconcilable conflict between them. Science is not just a profession or a body of facts, but, more important, a set of cognitive and practical tools designed to understand brute reality while overcoming the human desire to believe what we like or what we find emotionally satisfying. The tools are many, including observation of nature, peer review and replication of results, and above all, the hegemony of doubt and criticality. The best characterization of science I know came from physicist Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”
Feynman should be the one threatening legal action. It’s hard to believe he would want his name used in the context of say, if peer review is working, why all the retractions today? What about, just for example, the Columbia prof whose widely cited paper was based on data that seem to have been made up?
Was that a case of collective self-fooling? Who knows? The main thing is, waving pom poms for “science” is no help.
Coyne goes on:
In contrast, religion has no way to adjudicate its truth claims, for those claims rest on ancient scripture, revelation, dogma, and above all, faith: belief without sufficient evidence.
Actually, “religion” has a number of ways to adjudicate its truth claims, and here is just one:
The idea that basing decisions on evidence is unique to science is also bunk. Businesses do it all the time. For that matter, most Christians, if you asked them why they describe themselves as such, would say that it is the evidence for what Jesus has done for them and others.
And they wouldn’t be necessarily wrong: Religious people tend to be happier and healthier.
Why are students going into debt for education from sources like Coyne?
Okay, now back to our real work shortly.
See also: Wow. Catholic Darwinism goes nuts. A mass for Darwin. Or is this a joke?
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Ahh Yes, always nice to hear the materialists harp on about “truth” and in the following breath admonish a belief system that cannot and does not select for truth therefore is self-defeating.
This is highly ironic in the Christian sense as these so-called “new” atheists arrogantly portray their philosophies and world views as novel and intellectual yet fail to realise their arguments are as old as Christianity itself. After all, was it not Pilate who said to Jesus “What is truth?”
As it is written – “nothing is new under the sun.”
This has always bugged me:
“faith: belief without sufficient evidence.”
Its my understanding (and I’m certainly open to correction) that the word “faith”, used in the Bible, was basically a term that referred to legally binding contracts. For example, I have “faith” that I will be paid next week. I don’t KNOW it for certain, but I have good reason to believe it. Its not belief without evidence, or even belief without sufficient evidence. Its belief based on reasoning and experience.
A
dl at 2: That is how I understand “faith” too. It has been the basis of my business for fifty years.
Of COURSE one looks for evidence. But after a certain point, it comes down to faith. Does one trust the documentary evidence? The evidence of one’s senses?
If a person really believes they can’t trust their interpretation of any of that, they ought to put their affairs in the hands of a trustee.
as to:
“But while science and religion both claim to discern what’s true, only science has a system for weeding out what’s false.”
And, despite what Coyne’s emotional attachments may be, science has weeded out his religion of atheistic naturalism:
When we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy from the scientific method, (methodological naturalism), and look at materialism and Theism side by side, Theism is shown to be the true philosophy:
As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. – In fact it is even very good at pointing us to Christianity:
Related quotes:
Verse and Music:
It’s incredible the hypocrisy and dogmatism that is being shown by these atheist/materialists . What’s even more incredible is that they believe that they can actually fool anyone into believing this garbage lol.
They must be using the old hitler adage of “if yup repeat the lie long enough they will eventually believe it ” .
It worked for hitler but it doesn’t seem to have the same staying power coming from atheists . Maybe they need a slicker spokesperson .
Fidel Castro anyone ?
Atheists get a lot of mileage out of a miscaricature of what faith means. It is often presented as believing in something even though there is no evidence. Faith can be that. We call that kind of faith “blind faith”, but the disciples did not have blind faith in Jesus. They lived with Him; they observed Him; they saw his miracles; they heard his teaching; they experienced Jesus in a way that none of us ever can in this life.
There are times when God calls us to believe in spite of the way things appear. When crossing the Jordan River, the priests had to put their foot in the raging waters trusting that God would protect them. The waters stopped and they, along with all Israel, walked over on dry land. All they had was God’s command to do that and a history of finding God to be trustworthy.
But most of the time, we are not called on to exercise blind faith. Jesus told the crowds that if His words are not enough reason for them to believe Him in John 6, then they should believe because of His works. His works were meant to back up His claims. God gives us plenty of evidence to back up what He says.
The Bible is a historical book. A quote from an article on Answers in Genesis: “Unlike many world religions, Christianity’s origins are not shrouded in an unwitnessed, mythical past.” [
https://answersingenesis.org/jesus-christ/resurrection/resurrection-no-doubt-about-it/I think this is a very important point! It can be verified! It didn’t happen in secret. No other religion is so tied to history or anywhere near as verifiable as Christianity.The resurrection is a case in point – read the above article to learn more! The disciples believed not only because of Jesus’ amazing wisdom filled authoritative teaching and wild claims, but they experienced so much and saw so much. They certainly did not have blind faith!
God gave us the Bible so we too could know what happened back then. I do believe that our faith is not based on as much evidence as their faith was because we are not able to see and experience what they did, but we still have their written record as well as their faithful sacrificial life which they lived which shows their faith was genuine. No one knowingly lives, suffers, and sacrifices their life for a lie.
We also have the added benefit of seeing how God has changed the lives of many people over the centuries. James and Paul and the disciples were simply the beginning. We have experienced that in our own lives, and we have seen God change the lives of friends and acquaintances as well. We have heard many testimonies of what God has done as well. So we know God is still changing lives today.
No, the Christian faith is not a blind faith, or at least, it doesn’t have to be because there is evidence to back up at least some of what we believe. The rest – promises about the future, heaven, etc. – we take by faith based on the trustworthiness of what we can test, experience, and verify.
When the Bible says we are saved by faith, it is not referring to a mere intellectual agreement to certain historical or theological facts, but an active trust in God to save us, a dependence on Him as opposed to our own efforts. Intellectual assent to certain truths is certainly necessary, but biblical faith is more than that. That alone is not enough. Faith is believing in Jesus, but also a trust in Jesus as opposed to self or anyone/anything else, to save us.
Thats not right. Revealed religion by definition weeds out untruth by anything in opposition to the revealed religion. the bible claims to be a witness. So it is unless someone says its lying and proves it.
A conclusion from religion has weeded out error.
by the way. Science only weeds if they do it right. its really people doing the weeding. Science is just a methodology.
Science does not weed away evolution because the weeders are not intellectually competent.
where is the science behind evolution?? WHERE???
F/N: While some do equate faith with blind unreasoning belief or trust, in fact all worldview foundations force us to address the options, (a) infinite regress [absurd], [b] question-begging circularity or [c] a finitely remote set of first plausibles that define a faith-point that is reasonable.
The last requires that the view is rooted in start-points that have stood significant comparative difficulties evaluation on factual adequacy, coherence and balanced explanatory power [neither simplistic nor an ad hoc patchwork.]
Cf, discussion here: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.....u2_bld_wvu
I further suggest that evolutionary materialist scientism — which Coyne et al obviously champion — is inherently self-referentially incoherent, self-falsifying and therefore (despite its confident manner pose) irrational. The core challenge can be put in a nutshell by citing Haldane’s longstanding challenge:
And while Coyne et al will hasten to dismiss this point, in fact it has never been adequately answered by evolutionary materialism advocates.
Further, as I recently argued here at UD, on the strength of issues of being, roots of being and linked questions of our being under the government of OUGHT, a generic ethical theism is already a reasonable worldview stance.
Going further, putting the weight of one’s soul on the foundation of the Christian gospel is also a reasonable stance, within the circle of ethical theism.
Therefore the rhetoric of Coyne et al fails, fails utterly, fails in ever so many ways, and is patently disrespectful and tendentious.
Someone with that level of education, surely, should recognise that a loaded redefinition of faith joined to superficial selectively hyperskeptical dismissals cannot be good enough.
KF
Browsing my local Barnes & Noble store science shelves … hey, there’s Jerry Coyne’s Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible … I guess when Jerry preaches his religious views, it’s “true science”, not a ‘pseudo-science’ like ID, right?
[Jerry should get very upset that his philosophical views are cataloged in science. Maybe protest B&N.]
That must be right because just down the shelf is “The God Delusion”.
If every atheist writes a religious book like these, we could have an entire collegiate science program dedicated to God.