In this interview/testimony we look at issues connected with evangelism, apologetics, St Peters, church growth, Scotland, Australia…I very much enjoyed meeting Dominic and look forward to preaching at his church on April 29th….
You can also see it on Vimeo (below).
Ah, the humility!
Matt Dillahanty? Not even a minor concession, David?
To paraphrase Reg, “apart from Rationality, Cosmology, Historicity, Morality and Inconsistency, those atheists don’t know what they’re talking about”.
You got one of the five right….atheists are inconsistent. But rational? Cosmology – why are most cosmologists theists? History has nothing to say about atheism? And as for morality – where do atheists think it comes from? Does it even exist in an atheist universe….still I guess one out of five ain’t bad.
No David, theism fails close scrutiny in each of the categories. Also, on what basis do you claim most cosmologists are are theists? Maybe armchair types with your level of knowledge, but certainly not professional scientists.
On what basis do you claim to know that professional cosmologists are theists? Are you just making it up according to your prejudices? Thats what you usually do. Bottom line is that amongst professional scientists around 40% are theists. The least likely to be in order are biologists, geologists, chemists, physicists, and then cosmologists.
I can direct you to a National Association of Scientists survey that has a 72% figure. No doubt you found the best you could but it’s still a pitiful attempt to justify your brazen nonsense.
Would be interested in that – I assume it is world wide and not just the West?
Adopting a less adversarial tone, Sean Carrol wrote an essay entitled “Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists”. It is a nuanced and thoughtful piece and addresses many of the issues you raise with Hawkins rather provocative thoughts. I can let you have a copy if you can’t find it online.
Jon,
Carrol’s conference paper is here:
https://preposterousuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/nd-paper.pdf
The title is meant to be provocative and there was (almost) no need for him to substantiate the title’s claim. I have no wish to argue whether or not there are more theists among cosmologists than he thinks but — to use John Lennox’s apt expression — the god he doesn’t believe in, I don’t believe in either.
Carrol actually mentions the god-of-the-gaps idea in the course of his very well written paper but in at least three places he crucially implies that all theism is god-of-the-gaps theism.
‘theism insists on the need for a conscious God who somehow rises above those patterns’ p. 2
‘It should be clear how these considerations relate to the choice between materialism
and theism. These two worldviews offer different notions of what form a comprehensive
decription will take. Acting as scientists, it is our task to judge whether it seems more
likely that the simplest possible comprehensive theory which is compatible with what we
already know about the universe will turn out to be strictly materialistic, or will require the introduction of a deity.’ p.7
‘Thus, one cannot argue that we require the initial state of the universe to be
specified by the conscious act of a deity, or that the universe came into existence as the
result of a single creative act.’ p. 10
Entertaining, but in the end, just a conference paper which takes pot shots at the tip of an iceberg.
Yours,
John/.