I hope everyone will forgive me for constantly using the same arguments and graphics I have used in prior postings, but...Advocate wrote: ↑Sun Aug 30, 2020 6:34 pmThat's a complete misunderstanding of everything about epistemology.seeds wrote: ↑Sun Aug 30, 2020 5:56 pmIf you want to view a level of “faith” that would put to shame the most devout Christian, Muslim, or Jew, then look no further than the faith that the scientific community has in the creative powers of gravity and thermodynamics, and how those two blind and mindless processes were somehow able to grasp the fabric of reality and shape it into a context of order that defies our comprehension.
Now I totally agree that much of the nonsense that the religions put-forth should be disregarded.
However, to replace it with the even greater nonsense that the manifestation of the universe is a product of chance, is foolish beyond measure.
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Gravity is a theory in the scientific sense - a story that best explains the available evidence. Even if it is wrong, it's still right "for all intents and purposes" with the information currently available to us, and there's no standard of certainty possible that is any greater. It's a Fact in any way the word fact matters. Faith is Always belief without justification. The instant there's justification, it's not faith any longer, it's reason, with the corresponding values of evidence that entails. And as previously shown, the things scientists "believe" is the polar opposite of faith in every respect.
...okay, so where is the “justification” in thinking that the blind and mindless meanderings of, again, gravity and thermodynamics could not only cause disparate (post Big Bang) quantum particles to coalesce into forming the perfect source of light and bio-driving energy (the sun)...
...but also the unfathomably stable setting** (the earth) from which life and consciousness could then effloresce from the very fabric of its being?
**(a setting, mind you, that “chance” also managed to equip with every possible prerequisite ingredient necessary to facilitate our awakening into existence.)
Nonsense!
Again, as I stated earlier, scientists (materialists) have every bit as much “faith” in the creative powers of their own invisible “god”...
(a god who goes by many names such as Randomness, Serendipity, Chance, Mother Nature, etc.)
...as do theists have in their invisible God.
The only difference is that despite the childish depictions of what the theists think their invisible God might be like, it is at least presumed to be in possession of intelligence and creative intentions, as opposed to something with the IQ of a bag of hammers.
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