1. that teaching ID is not unconstitutional.
It seems overly broad and arbitrary to interpret the Establishment Clause to forbid the teaching of theories favorable to theism (while allowing those theories that undermine traditional faith). The First Amendment bans the "establishment" of religion, and teaching ID is not that.2. that ID is probably blasphemous because,
I really think that ID is a bad strategy for religious people. In fact, I think it verges on blasphemy. A person of faith in the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem tradition believes in a Creator Who is infinitely powerful, omniscient, and good. Faith is not based on evidence; it may even be demonstrated by its conflict with evidence: credo quia absurdum. It can therefore coexist with any scientific theory.Concluding that,
But read the whole post for details.I am by no means denying that there is an omnipotent and perfectly good deity. However, I recommend against trying to derive evidence of this deity directly from the natural record. The more we think that an intelligent architect wants things to be just the way they are in nature, the less likely it seems that this designer is moral. Tennyson asks:
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.If God is good, Tennyson says, then one must find Him not directly in nature but "Behind the veil, behind the veil."
9 comments:
I've taken a fancy to assertions of the form "Only God...." I think they're a great rhetorical invention, because at least to me they seem to defy rebuttal. "Only God could make a child," "Only God could make a chicken," "Only God could make a chicken sandwich," "Only God could be the subject of this sentence." You name it. Or no, don't actually. "Only God names things." It's the trustiest of theological rhetorical standbys, and I think it's usually if not always to assert something not literally from the Bible, so I'd have thunk you skirt or plunge into blasphemy every time you say something like that. But then our president says "God" talks to him. I think blasphemy is a risk that evangelicals other people who talk daily about "God" have learned to live with and not to fear. Ditto for the analyses of scholars.
Wait a minute! Prove to me that God made the chicken sandwich. And, if'n he did, why did he invent avian bird flu. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away?
"Only God can make a chicken sandwich....but only McDonalds can make the zesty, zippy Chipotle Chicken McGriller!"
I'm available for high paid assignments in the advertising business.....
"Prove to me that God made the chicken sandwich."
1)God is that than which no greater can be conceived.
2)It's greater to have made the chicken sandwich than not to have made the chicken sandwich.
3)Therefore God made the chicken sandwich.
Q.E.D.
Next?
That's the famous pollontological argument. I'm surprised you didn't think of it, helmut.
Ah, but MT, there's a missing premise. You must also show that McDonald's' making of the "zesty, zippy Chipotle Chicken McGriller" is different from God's having made the chicken sandwich. The missing premise is the correlation between the chicken sandwich and the feats and daring-do of the being of which no greater can be conceived. If I go to the refrigerator right now and make a chicken sandwich, on your argument, am I therefore God (albeit not McDonald's)?
Which came first, the chicken sandwich, or the egg sandwich?
Helmut, obviously we're talking about the Platonic ideal chicken sandwich, with all the Platonic ideal condiments, to go.
Dudes! What if we're all just one big zesty, zippy Chipotle Chicken McGriller floating in a godless universe?
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