http://newcreationperson.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/why-must-there-be-an-un-caused-cause/
If there’s some unanswered question, or if there still isn’t a scientific consensus about something, then that means either the problem will be solved eventually or the problem will never be solved. But even if a problem goes unsolved forever, that doesn’t mean there’s no natural explanation. It’s not an excuse to invoke magic. And that’s what every god ever invented really is, just another word for magic. Scientists don’t invoke magic.
What I’m mostly interested in when theists invoke their god to solve problems that have already been thoroughly explained by science, for example the history of life. I noticed you have links to anti-science organizations like Answers in Genesis (as if a religious myth can answer anything) and Institute for Creation Research (as if magic can be researched).
I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you’re either an evolution denier, or you pretend to accept evolution but you think a god’s magic wand is one of evolution’s mechanisms. Either way, if I’m right, you are denying a basic scientific fact, which is the fact that all life shares a common ancestor, and every species, both living and extinct, developed thanks to natural processes only, and a magical god didn’t have anything to do with it.
Only 14% of Americans agree with this statement: People developed from ancient apes and god had no part in this process. But virtually 100% of biologists agree with it. Who is correct? The 86% of Americans who know nothing about biology, or all the world’s biologists?
What biologists have that theists don’t have is evidence, tons of it, overwhelming and extremely powerful evidence from molecular biology, genetics, and many other branches of science.
My point is the god hypothesis is not necessary. There will always be gaps in human knowledge to hide a god, but what’s the point of doing that when something as complicated as the development of new species has been shown to be a completely natural process.
Theists who accept evolution (even though they pollute it with magic) like to invoke a god to explain the development of the first simple living cells almost four billion years ago. They are wasting their time. Scientists have many explanations for how life got a foothold on earth. Since this event was so long ago, scientists may never know which explanation is correct, or if there’s some other natural explanation, but no scientist working on this problem pretends the explanation is supernatural.
Three important quotes:
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
– Charles Darwin
If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator.
– Jerry Coyne
Science is a philosophy of discovery, intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
"This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
ReplyDelete-Isaac Newton
"If the omniscient author of nature knew that the study of his works tends to make men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would not have given them so many invitations to study and contemplate Nature."
-Robert Boyle
Were these men idiots?
Mr. Larimer, you asked a good question.
ReplyDeleteRobert Boyle I never heard of, but based on the quote you gave me I would have to say he's an idiot.
I can't say that about Newton who was perhaps the most brilliant scientist ever. Newton did have an unfortunate problem and that was the quote you provided. Newton was able to figure out how the earth could stay in its orbit around the sun, even when considering the earth's moon, but when he considered the orbits of the other planets and how they would affect the orbit of the earth around the sun, he gave up. He was brilliant. He could have solved the problem. But he gave up and he wrote "This most beautiful system (The Universe) could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
A century later another scientist solved Newton's problem without the god hypothesis.
Invoking god = invoking magic = giving up.
Fortunately 21st century scientists don't that. They would never invoke a god for anything. Religious scientists are rare, but even they would never invoke a magical god to solve a scientific problem.
Invoking a god is a philosophy of ignorance.
"If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator."
– Jerry Coyne
Please read The Perimeter of Ignorance.
Or you could read it in my next post because it's important enough for me to copy and paste (also known as stealing) the whole thing.
By the way Mr. Larimer, you're the first person to write a comment for this new blog. Many thanks for bothering to do that, especially since your question was important.