Science Talk

Jason Spaceman · Guest

From the article:
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Leading atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam
Harris are convinced they have refuted the traditional idea that the
chains of causation in the universe imply the existence of a creator.
In his book The God Delusion, Dawkins concedes that the universe is
fantastically complex and gives every indication of design. Even so,
Dawkins notes that we cannot infer a creator because such a creator
would have to be at least as complex as the universe that he has
supposedly designed. Therefore Dawkins concludes that “the theist’s
answer has utterly failed” because it has only pushed the problem back
by one level. “If God created the universe,” Sam Harris writes in his
book Letter to a Christian Nation, “what created God?”

Both Dawkins and Harris are very proud of this argument. Harris
triumphantly notes that to say the universe must have been created by
God “poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress.” Why, in other
words, does the chain of causation have to stop with God? Why can’t it
go on forever? Harris argues that the Christian answer simply won’t do
because “to say that God by definition is uncreated simply begs the
question.” Dawkins haughtily concludes that “I see no alternative but
to dismiss” the theistic argument. These debunkers of religion think
they have, with scientific precision, exposed a thousand years of
metaphysical reasoning as irrational. Take that, Aquinas!

In my forthcoming book What’s So Great About Christianity, out from
Regnery in October, I take on the arguments of the atheists. Here
let’s revisit the traditional Christian argument for a creator in the
form that Aquinas presented it. Aquinas begins with two principles
that are today at the heart of all scientific reasoning. He argues
that every effect requires a cause, and that nothing in the world is
the cause of its own existence.

Whenever you encounter A, it has to be caused by some other B. But
then B has to be accounted for, and let us say it is caused by C. This
tracing of causes, Aquinas says, cannot continue indefinitely, because
if it did then nothing would have come into existence. Therefore there
must be an original cause that is responsible for the chain of
causation in the first place. To this first cause he gives the name
God.
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Read it at
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/06/11/an_athiest_conundrum_who_made_god?page=full&comments=true
or http://tinyurl.com/339khu

J. Spaceman

Guest

On Jun 11, 11:38 pm, Jason Spaceman
<notrea...@jspaceman.homelinux.org> wrote:

Desertphile · Guest

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:38:59 -0400, Jason Spaceman
<notreally@jspaceman.homelinux.org> wrote:

John Wilkins · Guest

Ferrous Patella <mail125797@pop.net> wrote: