This is not a Der Trihs pitting.
It’s a self pitting by lurking guest over his inability to write coherently.
I will choose a path that’s clear. I will choose free will.
Not really. I’m always surprised at how many people chime in to support him in these Pit threads.
The funny thing is, he’s exactly like GW Bush or some fundamentalist in that he starts with the conclusion he wants and then makes up any facts he needs to support it. If facts arise that contradict his claims, he will ignore them or hand-wave them away.
Or, as Blake suggests, he will just flee. He’s a fact-fleer.
I should hope so. Wearing vegetables is so last year.
But fruit is back in style.
Carmen Miranda is making a comeback.
Hey, one man’s evidence…
This.
There are smart people. And there are smart people who believe in god. But the belief is idiotic. It has no support, no evidence, no justification. One can be smart in physics but stupid in carpentry, so one can be a great scientists but still be an idiot for believing in god.
Is exactly that: one man’s evidence. Unless he can share that evidence, and I can reproduce it, it’s not evidence.
Not only that, if you’re going to appeal to authority, you do best not to just cherry pick the authorities who agree with you. Anyone can find someone smart who agrees with any crazy position. It’s a favorite tactic of climate change deniers–they find the one or two climate scientist left who still doubt global warming and pretend that they balance out or even trump the 99% of climate scientists who agree that it’s happening.
If you think that being an astrophysicist gives you some insight into theology, fine—I think there’s a case for thinking that. But the fact is that scientists, including astrophysicists are less likely, not more likely, to believe in God than the general public, and the more advanced the scientist (measured by things like journal citations, academic fellowship memberships, etc.) the more unlikely they are to believe.
Even if you did manage to find a couple of exceptions (and lurking guest has not) it wouldn’t make your case. After all, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking were both atheists. Are you smarter than Einstein and Hawking? Well are you, huh?
SH is still alive.
As of post 32, the number is zero. I’ll chime in as a liberal atheist who disowns him. I think he’s insane, and that’s not a figure of speech.
Oh shit! I knew that, and I didn’t mean to imply he isn’t!
Of course, “Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are both atheists” wouldn’t be right either. Isn’t past tense acceptable in this situation?
I disagree. People can see the same thing, but think entirely different things. What someone with faith views as evidence of a higher power, someone without faith can see as simple cooincidence. This does not automatically make either point of view stupid in of themselves. Illogical, possibly, but not simply stupid. Especially if one accepts the illogic of their beliefs to begin with.
Afterall, faith is hardly built on logic. If you could prove faith, that would kind of defeat the purpose. Faith is built on believing in something without having it spelled out for you in every way. Yes, this is illogical. But hey, so is climbing a mountain.
For more on the conflict between logic /reason and emotion/intuition, see Kirk v. Spock, 1701 N.C.C. (2293).
I’ll defend him in this case because he’s not being pitted for being insane or angry or bigoted or irrational, but for having the gall to disagree with John Polkinghorne and John Lennox on the existence of God. Well John Polkinghorne and John Lennox are wrong about God and Der Trihs is right, and the argument that John Polkinghorne and John Lennox are experts who can’t possibly be wrong or disagreed with is stupid.
The same goes true for Steven Hawking and Albert Einstein, I assume?
“The list of atheist scientists includes Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.”
Check out the sister thread. Or other Pittings.
Well yeah. Der is a sci-fi buff with some armchair science exposure.
Cite for Einstein? (Not that it proves anything besides one man’s beliefs.)