He offers assorted notes…
In a compiled video of 50 elite scientists, no scientific evidence was ever presented for atheism but their arguments were philosophical and theological, i.e. ‘their typical arguments are rather common and shallow – god of the gaps and the existence of evil.’
Elite Scientists Don’t Have Elite Reasons for Being Atheists:
(November 8, 2016) Excerpt: Dr. Jonathan Pararejasingham has compiled a video of elite scientists and scholars to make the connection between atheism and science. Unfortunately for Pararejasingham, once you get past the self-identification of these scholars as non-believers, there is simply very little there to justify the belief in atheism….
What I found was 50 elite scientists expressing their personal opinions, but none had some powerful argument or evidence to justify their opinions. In fact, most did not even cite a reason for thinking atheism was true….
The few that did try to justify their atheism commonly appealed to God of the Gaps arguments (there is no need for God, therefore God does not exist) and the Argument from Evil (our bad world could not have come from an All Loving, All Powerful God). In other words, it is just as I thought it would be. Yes, most elite scientists and scholars are atheists. But their reasons for being atheists and agnostics are varied and often personal. And their typical arguments are rather common and shallow – god of the gaps and the existence of evil. It would seem clear that their expertise and elite status is simply not a causal factor behind their atheism.
Finally, it is also clear the militant atheism of Dawkins is a distinct minority view among these scholars.
See also Stephen Meyer on the “God of the Gaps”:
Ironically, although Theists are often accused of making ‘God of the Gaps’ style arguments, the fact of the matter is that, as science has progressed, it is the Atheist himself who has had to retreat further and further into ‘Materialism/Naturalism of Gaps’ style arguments. i.e. into “Science will figure a materialistic answer out to that mystery some day” style argument.
To clearly illustrate the ‘materialism of the gaps’ style argument that the materialistic/atheistic philosophy makes, the materialistic and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several contradictory predictions about what type of scientific evidence we will find.
These contradictory predictions, and the evidence we have found by modern science, can be tested against one another to see if either materialism or Theism is true. This following video goes over the major predictions of each philosophy compared to the other:As you can see from the preceding video, 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, contrary to what popular media portrays, very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation.
As to the argument from evil, that argument is self refuting. Little do most atheists realize that the existence of evil itself necessitates the existence of Good. i.e. you cannot disprove God by pointing to evil, because for evil to even exist in reality then good must exist in the first place. i.e. Evil is merely a departure from the way things ‘ought’ to be and thus evil cannot exist independently without an objectively good moral standard to judge by.
All an atheist does when he points to evil in this world is to point out the fact that this world is not perfectly good. Yet Christians never claimed that this world was perfectly good. i.e. by pointing to evil (the absence of good), the atheist actually ends up affirming the foundational Christian belief that we currently live in a fallen world. i.e. The argument from evil is actually an argument FOR Christianity not an argument against it!
If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists: Peter Kreeft – Prager University (vid):
If there is a God, why is there so much evil? How could any God that cares about right and wrong allow so much bad to happen? And if there is no God, who then determines what is right and what is wrong? The answers to these questions, as Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft explains, go to the heart of ethics, morality and how we know what it means to be a decent person.
Note: His comments on evolution as a source of morality are interesting:
And now…
