Study: science vs. religion attitudes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, August 05, 2019, 17:21 (1728 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I agree that you need extraordinary evidence to justify extraordinary claims such as mirror universes. You also need extraordinary evidence to justify extraordinary claims such as an unknown, eternal, sourceless, super-intelligent, immaterial mind that creates at least one universe which includes life, reproduction, multicellular organisms and consciousness. Since we do not have and, in my view, are unlikely ever to have “the full suite of evidence”, those who believe in any of these theories can only base their beliefs on faith and not on science.

DAVID: And I firmly believe ID literature convincingly proves that a mind is re required/necessary to create the designs we see.

dhw: Your firm belief (or “faith”) is no firmer than Dawkins’ firm belief (or “faith”) that science will one day prove your God to be a delusion. Neither of you has “the full suite of evidence” for your “extraordinary claims”.

DAVID: Don't argue with me. Read the ID literature and then debate me.

dhw: You know perfectly well that I have accepted the logic of ID, which prevents me from embracing atheism, and you know perfectly well that I have accepted the logic of atheism, which is that you don’t solve one mystery by creating an even greater one (that of an unknown, hidden, in-control, superintelligent mind which has simply always and inexplicably been there).

DAVID: I know you are trapped on your picket fence. Logic should tell you the designs require a planning mind. Therefore it must exist.

dhw: Logic tells me that intelligence requires a source, and it is as difficult for me to believe in random chance being the generator as it is to believe in a super-intelligence simply being there without a generator. My third option, billions of individual “panpsychist” intelligences, is equally difficult to believe in.

Still trapped.