Why I Think the New Atheists are a B*^#@y Disaster
Michael Ruse, author and philosopher of Biology at Florida State University has this to say…
… I think of myself as an agnostic on deities and ultimate meanings and that sort of thing. With respect to the main claims of Christianity – loving god, fallen nature, Jesus and atonement and salvation – I am pretty atheistic, although some doctrines like original sin seem to me to be accurate psychologically….
I am not a devout Christian, yet if anything, the things said against me are worse. Richard Dawkins, in his best selling The God Delusion, likens me to Neville Chamberlain, the pusillanimous appeaser of Hitler at Munich. Jerry Coyne reviewed one of my books (Can a Darwinian be a Christian?) using the Orwellian quote that only an intellectual could believe the nonsense I believe in. And non-stop blogger P. Z. Myers has referred to be as a “clueless gobshite.” This invective is all because, although I am not a believer, I do not think that all believers are evil or stupid, and because I do not think that science and religion have to clash. (Of course some science and religion clashes. That is the whole point of the Darwinism-Creationism debate. The matter is whether all science and religion clash, something I deny strongly.)
Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the First Amendment. But I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. As I have said elsewhere, for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the ontological argument. If we criticized gene theory with as little knowledge as Dawkins has of religion and philosophy, he would be rightly indignant. (He was just this when, thirty years ago, Mary Midgeley went after the selfish gene concept without the slightest knowledge of genetics.) Conversely, I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group.
You can read the whole article by Michael Ruse… HERE!
Ruse has also just recently released a new title that may interest you, titled… Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science
Here is the product description from Amazon…
In Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, Michael Ruse offers a new analysis of the often troubled relationship between science and religion. Arguing against both extremes – in one corner, the New Atheists; in the other, the Creationists and their offspring the Intelligent Designers – he asserts that science is undoubtedly the highest and most fruitful source of human inquiry. Yet, by its very nature and its deep reliance on metaphor, science restricts itself and is unable to answer basic, significant, and potent questions about the meaning of the universe and humankind’s place within it: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the ultimate source and foundation of morality? What is the nature of consciousness? What is the meaning of it all? Ruse shows that one can legitimately be a skeptic about all of these questions, and yet why it is open for a Christian, or member of any faith, to offer answers. Scientists, he concludes, should be proud of their achievements but modest about their scope. Christians should be confident of their mission but respectful of the successes of science.
To read this page, and check out a place to purchase this from… Go Here!
Always Informing, For the Always Reforming, From the Land of the Long White Cloud
Man of Spin
H/T: Manawatu Christian Apologetics
[...] Go here to see the original: bChristian News/b New Zealand » Blog Archive » Why I Think the New b…/b [...]
Michael Ruse wrote “I think of myself as an agnostic on deities”
So Michael Ruse can’t decide whether or not there’s a magic fairy hiding behind the clouds. I wonder if this moron made any decision about the Easter Bunny yet.
Man and Science is so great, we can create life if we wanted too! The universe just simply came about from a big chunk, exploded and then created vacuum. Capish?
Michael Ruse can cling to his “Frog to prince, fairly tale for grownups,” if he wishes. It never ceases to amuse (and amaze) me to hear evolutionists accuse Christians of believing in the miracle of creation by a Creator-God Whom they cannot see; yet evolutionists believe in multiple miracles every day that they cannot see; for example, life came from non-life, all we see (this infinitely complex, exquisitely ordered and extraordinary beautiful universe ) came from nothing, all life forms evolved from one basic kind (a biblical kind is far more than a modern specie) into a distinct (totally different) basic kind) ; yet we neither see such change in nature, in living organisms nor in the fossil record ( all life forms appear fully formed without transitional forms or intermediates and fully functional without any evidence of evolutionary development from any previous ancestors. There is not one example of a genetic mutation (as Dawkins well knows) that has increased the information in the genome of an individual or organism. Natural selection and mutations which account for adaptability and genetic variations within species (creation allows for same) always result in loss of genetic information, which means that “molecules to man, from the goo, through the zoo, to you” evolution cannot even get its engine running in the development of the first living cell, much less account for the wholesale development envisioned by the Thesis of Common Ancestry (so-called tree of life), which vertical or upward change from simple to complex requires an increase in genetic information in the genome, not a loss of information. It takes a lot more faith to believe a rational universe having an irrational beginning from nothing; in L-proteins [left-handed molecules] that defy chance formation; in the formation of DNA codes which if generated spontaneously would spell only pandemonium; in a primitive environment that would fiendishly devour any chemical presursors to life; in experiments (i.e Miller) on the origin of life that prove nothing but the need for intelligence in the beginning; a faith in a primitive ocean that would not thicken but would hopelessly dilute chemicals; in mutations and natural selection that add to a double negative for evolution; in fossils that embarrrassingly show fixety through time, regular absence from transitional forms and striking testimony to world-wide water deluge; in time which prove only to promote degraduation in the absence of mind, and in reductionism that ends up reducing the materialist arguments to zero and enforcing the need to invoke the supernatural creator.
At least Michael Ruse admits he is finite and does not have answers to the ultimate questions of the meaning of life. Christianity, the most rational of any belief system, does provide satisfactory answers to these ultimate questions through God’s divine disclosure of Himself in Jesus Christ in creation, in redemption and in His promise to come again as the Supreme Ruler and Judge of this fallen sinful world and to restore all things unto Himself.
finally managed to read through the whole blog and enjoyed it very much. Again, we see the same problem, assertions, assertions, assertions. It is staggering that even when challenged no evidence is presented (just quotes). I thought it was really funny when Admin challenged the debater to give his three best evidences for macro-evolution, and he redefined “evolution” to mean change over time!!!
Anyway, we will see what comes back to your latest comment. Keep your comments shorter. Let them rebut comment by comment (not that they will rebut the actual comment, but you know what I mean).
Mike
Biologist, Dr. Pierre Grasse, considered the greatest living scientist in France, wrote a book to “launch a frontal assault on all forms of Darwinism.” Grasse is not a religious fanatic, yet he called evolution a “pseudo-science.”
Dr. Soren Lovtrup, Professor of Zoo-physiology at the University of Umea in Sweden wrote, “I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology: for a long time now people discuss evolutionary problems in a peculiar ‘Darwinian’ vocabulary…thereby believing that they contribute to the explanation of natural events.” He went on to say, “I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.” He also said, “Evolution is ‘anti-science.’” And so it is.
And would it be possible to remind everyone that Darwin and his followers were racists who believed that blacks were closer to the alleged ape men than whites? Thomas Huxley, Henry F. Osborne, Professor Edwin Conklin and others preached white superiority – because of their evolutionary bias. The haters for a hundred years after Darwin can be tied to Darwin starting with Nietzsche (who asserted that God was dead, called for the breeding of a master race and for the annihilation of millions of misfits), followed by Hitler, Mussolini, Marx, Engels, Stalin, etc. Evolutionary teachings have resulted in soaking the soil of Europe in innocent blood. After all, evolutionists tell us that man is only a little higher than the animals rather than a little lower than the angels as the Bible teaches, so what’s a few million lives to be concerned about?
Yes, the universe was created from some big chunk (where did it come from?, which exploded, just as an explosion from a huge firecracker in a gallon of paint painted Mr. Beans’s room perfectly. One thing for sure: it creates a big laugh!
[...] Visit link: Christian News New Zealand » Blog Archive » Why I Think the New … [...]
Leave your response!
Nano-Blog News from around the world
NZ CHRISTIAN BLOGS
NZ CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES
PLACES TO VISIT