The Last Super-stition. A Refutation of New Atheism.

Posted: October 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: God and Science, New Atheism, Want to read | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

The central contention of the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention.

But as Edward Feser argues in The Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order: on the one hand, the classical “teleological” vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as mass or electric charge; and the modern “mechanical” vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion. The modern “mechanical” picture has never been established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation of science.

Not only is this modern philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably false. For the “mechanical” conception of the natural world, when worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called “scientific worldview” championed by the New Atheists thus inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the bargain it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as well.

God’s truth, believers are nicer

Posted: September 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Articles, Church, New Atheism | Tags: , | Leave a comment

“I’m getting ready to duck, but don’t shoot the messenger. The results are in. Religious people are nicer. Or so says Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard. Putnam is no lightweight—he’s been described by the London Sunday Times as the most “influential academic in the world today.” Nor is he a religious believer.

Most well known for Bowling Alone, the book that made the notion of ‘social capital’ a key indicator of the health of a society, Putnam, along with co-author David Campbell (a Mormon), has waded into the debate about religion in the public square, with his latest offering, American Grace – how religion unites and divides us. The book emerges out of two massive and comprehensive surveys conducted into religion and public life in America. Much of what they write will make for spirited dinner party discussions and on-line brawls.

But the most conspicuously controversial finding in this book is the point delivered most emphatically—that religious people make better citizens and neighbours! They write, “… for the most part, the evidence we review suggests that religiously observant Americans are more civic, and in some respects simply ‘nicer’”. I had my own reasons for understanding why someone might be sceptical of such claims, but was intrigued enough to read on.

Putnam and Campbell report that on every measurable scale, religious Americans are better volunteers, more generous financial givers, more altruistic and more involved in civic life, than their secular counterparts. Religious people are better neighbours, more community minded, more likely to volunteer (and not just for faith-based activities). They are more likely to give blood, to give money to a homeless person, to provide financial aid to family or friends, to offer a seat to a stranger and to spend time with someone who is “a bit down”. They are more often taking part in local civic and political life and pushing for reform. The list goes on, and it’s a long list.”

SNIP

“We all know that the religious landscape is very different in Australia, but what information we do have suggests similar results would be found here. A 2004 report by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Research and Philanthropy in Australia, for example, found that people who said they were religious were more likely to volunteer, and to volunteer for more hours, than those who said they were not. The report found the effect was more pronounced for those who attended church or other religious services frequently. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests the same.”

SNIP

“But this research is in stark contrast to claims in recent years by prominent authors like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris that imply the opposite. After reading their works, you’d swear that religion made you immediately abandon rationality to become an inward looking extremist, more bigoted, more selfish and most interested in infecting the community with something sinister. What Putnam’s book does at the very least is to bring a bit of balance into the conversation.

A sobering note for believers is that Putnam’s and Campbell’s study reveals that the content of a person’s belief isn’t what matters so much as their level of involvement in a religious community. An atheist who comes to church to support her partner will rate as well as any believer on these scores. On the other hand, a devout believer not involved in a religious community, will do as poorly as any secular person on the score of good neighbourliness.”

Read the full article at:  https://publicchristianity.org/library/gods-truth-believers-are-nicer

Rabbi Adam Jacobs: A Rational Argument for the Existence of the Human Soul

Posted: August 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Apologetics, God and Science | Tags: | Leave a comment

Rabbi Adam Jacobs: A Rational Argument for the Existence of the Human Soul.

“Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious.” (Dr. Jerry Fodor, Professor of philosophy and cognitive science)

“The problem of consciousness tends to embarrass biologists. Taking it to be an aspect of living things, they feel they should know about it and be able to tell physicists about it, whereas they have nothing relevant to say.” (Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize winning biologist)

“Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all.” (Dr. Nick Herbert, Physicist)”

“No one seriously suggests that protons, quarks or chemical compounds possess innate awareness. Why then do they suggest that the products of these foundational materials will suddenly leap into self-cognizance? Is this a truly rational position to hold? Exactly how many electrons does it take for them to become “aware” of themselves? Cells do not wonder about themselves, molecules have no identity and a machine — no matter how sophisticated — is imbecilic (without its programmer).

If our decision-making faculty was indeed an illusion of the brain it should be impossible to physically affect the brain through our own willful decisions and yet research has demonstrated that the “I” can and does alter brain activity through the agency of free will as described by Canadian neuroscientist Dr. Mario Beauregard:

“Jeffrey Schwartz … a UCLA neuropsychiatrist, treats obsessive-compulsive disorder — by getting patients to reprogram their brains. Evidence of the mind’s control over the brain is actually captured in these studies. There is such a thing as mind over matter. We do have will power, consciousness, and emotions, and combined with a sense of purpose and meaning, we can effect change.”

Why then should we not consider the possibility — the one that satisfies our deepest, most powerful and intuitive sense — that the “I” that we all experience is the human soul? And that the reason that science has not discovered its whereabouts is not that it doesn’t exist, but rather that it is not part of physical reality as we know it and as such is undetectable and unmeasurable by material means. It is certainly understandable that for those who believe that material reality is the only reality this would be an unwelcome notion. Nonetheless, I submit that in absence of any compelling alternative and with the obviousness of the reality of our self-awareness so manifestly apparent — it is the rational conclusion to draw.”

Atheist Delusions: Materialism

Posted: July 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: New Atheism | Tags: | 5 Comments

There is, after all, nothing inherently reasonable in the conviction that all of reality is simply an accidental confluence of physical causes, without any transcendent source or end.

Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than almost any other. In general, the unalterably convinced materialist is a kind of childishly complacent fundamentalist, so fervently, unreflectively, and rapturously committed to the materialist vision of reality that if he or she should encounter any problem  – logical or experiential  –  that might call its premises into question, or even merely encounter a  limit beyond which those premises lose their explanatory power, he or she is simply unable to recognise it

Richard Dawkins is a perfect example; he does not hesitate, for instance, to claim that “natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our existence”. 1 But this is a silly assertion anad merely reveals that Dawkins does not understand the words he is using.

The question of existence does not concern how it is that the present arrangement of the world came about, from causes already internal to the world, but how it is that anything (including any cause) can exist at all.

This question Darwin and Wallace never addressed, nor were ever so hopelessly confused as to think they had. It is a question that no theoretical or experimental science could ever anser, for it is qualitatively different from the kind of questions that the physical sciences are competent to address.

Even in if theoretical physics should one day discover the most basic laws upon which the fabric of space and time is woven, or evolutionary biology the most elementary phylogenic forms of terrestrial life, or paleontology an utterly seamless genealogy of every species, still we shall not have hereby drawn one inch nearer to a solution of the mystery of existence.

No matter how fundamental or simple the level reached by the scientist – protoplasm, amino acids, molecules, subatomic particles, quantum events, unified physical laws, a primordial singularity, mere logical possibilities – existence is something else altogether. Even the simplest of things, and even the most basic of principles must first of all be , and nothing within the universe of contingent things ( nor even the universe itself, even it were somehow “eternal”) can be intelligibly conceived of as the source or explanation of its own being.

Pg 103 . Atheist Delusions.