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Wow! That was exciting! Why don't we settle all this with a lovely arm-wrestle?

Gramsci wrote:Dinosaurs.

Viruses.

Done here...

Forget the dinosaurs, even. You're done just with Viruses.

no vote
a redundant question anywhere else in the world
they say they just want both sides of the story to be told
it should be done, but many other sides of the story should be told as well, like native american cosmogeny, maori, hindu, australian, everything.....dilute the christian crapola

user_name wrote:no vote
a redundant question anywhere else in the world
they say they just want both sides of the story to be told
it should be done, but many other sides of the story should be told as well, like native american cosmogeny, maori, hindu, australian, everything.....dilute the christian crapola

Exactly.

As I asked, and caused such a cafuffle about, why aren't Maori creation myths valid and Christian ones are?

It seems a little dishonest to me.

But none of the Christian/Apologist camp here will answer the question.

It seems to me that if someone is going to insist that Christianity is a
primitive belief system...despite the fact that the mere existence of the
writings of Thomas Aquinas alone provides compelling prima facie evidence to the contrary...then I am forced to ask...

what do you mean by the phrase "primitive belief system" ?

(And I'd suggest trying to avoid an answer that amounts to either
"non-scientific" or "contrary to my own beliefs")

Phil

> galanter:
>
> Your arguments are based on there being a designer. What empirical
> evidence do you have of this?

I personally don't believe there is a Uber Designer. But I can't prove it.
And neither can you.

What *can* be shown is that within the realm of science at this time there
is no compelling case for intelligent design.

But the bulk of my arguments have been trying to make two related
points.

First, that differing disciplines with differing methodologies result in world
views which are incommensurable. There is no meta-method, and there
can be no meta-method, that can with unqualified generality choose a
victor in conflicts between science and philosophy, or science and religion,
and so on.

Second, it is entirely possible and in fact common for reason to play an
important and supportive and even primary role in religious
considerations. Insulting religious people by insisting that they are
primitive and irrational is not only rude, it doesn't reflect well on the
speaker's education.

Where, in all of this, did I assume there is an Intellegent Designer out
there to make these points?

galanter wrote:It seems to me that if someone is going to insist that Christianity is a
primitive belief system...despite the fact that the mere existence of the
writings of Thomas Aquinas alone provides compelling prima facie evidence to the contrary...then I am forced to ask...

what do you mean by the phrase "primitive belief system" ?

(And I'd suggest trying to avoid an answer that amounts to either
"non-scientific" or "contrary to my own beliefs")

Phil

I'm sorry, but answer the question, don't reply with a question, it's demeaning to the both of us -well, mostly you, but I'm being a good sport-.

Why should Christianity be treated differently than any other religious belief system?

After you answer this question we can move on.

And after you've answered that you can tell me why if the Bible was wrong about every other cosmological account that is gives, why is it right about creation? Why do Christians accept certain scientific observations, that has as much or as little evidence as Evolution but are happy to ignore this? Could be because it's not mentioned in the Bible and therefore they have nothing to argue with. I'm sure if the Bible provided alternatives to Germ Theory Matty could have just as easily started Germ Theory vs God Doesn't Like You poll.

That you keep mentioning Thomas Aquinas is all very well and good, but Aquinas is a catholic theologian and wasn't really up on... well anything in the context of what we know today. The average Western 12 year old knows more about the physical universe than Aquinas ever did.

You might have noticed the Greeks also had some very clever thinkers, as did the Chinese, Indians... this is a very long list.

As for my meaning of primitive, pre-enlightenment theological and philosophical thought will do here. But primitive I do not imply "simple" thought. Aristotle was certainly not stupid, but he was wrong about what the universe is made up of.

galanter wrote: Insulting religious people by insisting that they are
primitive and irrational is not only rude, it doesn't reflect well on the
speaker's education.

You Americans are so quant with your "respect for people of faith" as if that in itself is a "good".

I have respect for what people "do" not what they claim to "be". Action is what counts in life, not some absract idea that some is due respect purely on their ability to suspend their disbelief on a higher level than your average Sci-Fi fan.

oh, and Solum if you're off in a hissy fit at least fix the stupid fucking mess you've made of the page!

>> Neither of you have answered the question why Christianity should be
>> treated any differently than any other primitive belief system?

> Two quick ones. First Christianity is not primitive. Second it is embraced by
> milliions of your fellow citizens, and we should treat each other well.

In case I haven't driven this deeply enough into the ground...

Somehow my relatively straight forward response has been misunderstood...

It seems to me that the poster is on record here as being fairly
disrespectful towards Christians. My point in pointing out that
millions of them live with us was not to argue "there are so many
of them that they can't be wrong". My point was that we all have to
live together, and not treating a huge segment of your fellow citizens
as stupid irrational primatives might be the better choice in terms of
manners and mutual co-existence.

The first point is even more direct. Christianity shouldn't be treated as an
irrational or primative belief system because it isn't irrational or primative.

i.e. Why not treat a cat like a dog? Because it isn't a dog.

I see from the almost instant responses that I'm somehow failing to
deliver the big picture. Let me try one more time.

The solution to the current "ID invades science" problem is education and understanding.

Politicians, the ID advocates, and even those more comfortable with
science, have to learn that science is a limited regime. It has a specific
set of ground rules and assumptions, and the findings of science are only
binding within those ground rules and assumptions.

It would take a longer discussion to prove, but I am convinced that the
very nature of science...the ground rules and assumptions...leave
science incapable of saying anything about God one way or the other.

And so it shouldn't be surprising, and more importantly it should be
no *threat*, if ID isn't taught in the science classroom. ID ultimately
posits something like God (each candidate designer must, by the same
arguments, have a higher designer, and at some point you get the prime
mover designer) and so it's no big deal if science doesn't embrace it.
ID, true or false, is beyond the grasp of science.

Similarly, if we can limit ourselves for now to Christianity, it too is a
limited regime in the sense that empiricism, the very thing that powers
science, is a second rate source of wisdom when compared with
something like divine revelation, the holy ghost, and so on.

To contend that science has somehow disproven or undermined (in a
rational not social sense) Christianity is to misunderstand both. That kind
of statement itself is outside the bounds of science.

The problem comes when one side claims that their regime trumps the
other. If there was a better public understanding of this, that it is
impossible for one discipline to somehow subsume the other, then maybe
maybe maybe the ID folks would stay out of the science classroom, and
the science folks would concede that *as scientists* they really can't say
anything at all about God.

And that's grounds for a truce.