RE: Provine Ridicules TE's

Bill Hamilton (hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com)
Wed, 04 Mar 1998 13:35:11 -0500

John Rylander wrote (re Will Provine's arguments about God)
>
>Wouldn't his argument just be two-fold, namely:
>
>(1) If we can naturally/naturalistically explain everything, God is
>therefore superfluous, and so by Occam's razor, should be eliminated from
>our thinking. (He may even go for the less plausible, more aggressive,
>scientistic version: (1') if it's even -conceivable- that we can
>naturally/naturalistically explain everything, ....)
>
>and
>
>(2) An all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God would never use the crude,
>inefficient, natural evil/pain-producing evolutionary means to achieve his
>ends. If "a god worth having" were real, something like Creation Science
>would indeed be the case. (The old-fashioned but ever-popular problem of
>[natural] evil.)
>
I imagine his arguments do indeed go something like that. From my theistic
perspective, arguments like that sound like, "If God doesn't turn out to be
what _I_ think He should be, then He obviously isn't worth having." As a
Christian, I would say something quite different: had He turned out to be
what I thought He should be before I responded to His calling, heaven help
my enemies! _They_ certainly would have concluded He wasn't worth having.
Providentially, he is far better to others than I would have been.

Perhaps my posts have seemed too critical of Will. I am genuinely
interested in discussing how he supports his arguments -- even though I
know we're probably going to disagree. At least there's a possibility we
can achieve a better level of mutual understanding than we had before.
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Bill Hamilton
Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems
GM R&D Center
Warren, MI