Re: [asa] Lawrence Krauss Defends New Atheism

Nice find, Mike. And I was wondering if something like this was going on -
that commenter's summary of Miller's response makes vastly more sense. If
it's accurate, Krauss' (misleading) description doesn't speak well of him.

I enjoy Larry Moran immediately following up with testily wondering why
Miller didn't just answer the question, as if that wasn't just explained.

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com> wrote:

> A helpful update about Miller. Someone wrote:
>
>
> "Incidentally, I was at the panel where Krauss confronted his fellow
> panelists about the virgin birth, and Miller had an interesting answer.
> Miller said he could just say it’s a mystery, in which case he’d be open to
> attack for not being scientific. Alternately, he could discuss the prospects
> for parthenogenesis in mammals, in which case, Krauss could turn and say
> “see, you don’t think it’s a miracle.”
>
> So, no, it wasn’t an explicit defense of Catholicism, but it’s not like
> Miller and Consalmagno (sp?) were flustered or stumped by the question.
> Miller simply recognized that there’s no way for a believer to answer an
> atheist in a way that will satisfy them. Which, ultimately, was just
> restating the problem."
>
>
> http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/26/the-great-accommodationism-debate/#comment-23729
>
>
>
>
>
> I think Miller is correct to highlight the "heads I win, tails you lose"
> game that Krauss was playing.
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com>
> *To:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Friday, June 26, 2009 10:43 AM
> *Subject:* [asa] Lawrence Krauss Defends New Atheism
>
> Excerpt From God and Science Don't Mix by Lawrence Krauss:
>
> Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some
> relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from
> there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of
> most of the world's organized religions. As Sam Harris recently wrote in a
> letter responding to the Nature editorial that called him an "atheist
> absolutist," a "reconciliation between science and Christianity would mean
> squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of
> probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age
> convictions."
>
> When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent
> miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with
> basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely
> meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to
> the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of
> Catholic theology.
>
> Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards
> to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
> Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding
> the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the
> proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of
> the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus.
>
> So while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means
> irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God,
> and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are
> incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature.
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597314928257169.html
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Jul 1 18:20:27 2009