Wednesday, May 06, 2009

"pointers to God"

Collins says belief is ultimately a matter of faith—that God's existence can't, in the end, be proved by science. And yet he sees plenty of "pointers to God," natural phenomena that imply the existence of a biblical God. Here are Collins's "pointers":

  • There is something instead of nothing.
  • The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, which make simple and beautiful laws.
  • The Big Bang: out of nothingness, the universe came into being. That cries out for explanation, since we have not observed nature to create itself . . . it causes us to postulate a creator, and the creator must be outside of time or you haven't solved the problem.
  • The precise tuning of the physical constants in the universe. If gravity was a little weaker, things would all start flying a part. You can see a creator in these constants. Francis Collins


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

it is always amusing to come across a Christian who is trying to prove a deist's god to be true.

the question is do they know what r they really for? often in the process of debating the non-religious a christian would skip from side to side like Squealer in animal farm n switch between the ideological positions.

a god believing scientist's "god" can be very different from the "god" of an apologist and the pope's "god" and the fair-weathered christain's "god" in terms of definition.

there are many types of ultimate creators, there are agnostics who take a non-personal one like a deist's god as possible though unknowable n verification to be irrelevant.

so what does that irrelevant possibility prove? once 2 of my friends debate on the nature of their beliefs, one is a muslim and the other one is an agnostic, after a lengthy exchange, since the muslim friend would reject arguments from science, n the agnostic would reject argument from islamic scripture, both agree to fall back on a platform which is meaningful to both parties.

n so it's goes, my muslim friend issued the final challenge: "do u concede that at least a non-personal ultimate creator's existence's possibllity is not zero"

agnositc friend: "of cos, i accept that, so do u accept that too?"

muslim friend: "of cos"

both conclude: " we are not so different after all, or is it?"

Anonymous said...

this set of arguments can be used by a deist to argue for their deist god.

but for a catholic it is too weak.

for example a muslim can use the same argument to counter claim your catholic god, n have no answer.

in that scenario, u'll fall back on YOUR precious scriptures n they fall back on their precious scriptures, n it will be endless mud slinging that follows.

see how useless those arguments are to u now cartwright?

the Church of the flying Unicorn can use the same set of arguments to "prove" their god to a greater effect that your faith.

if u need to prove a catholic god, PROVE it.

don't go around trying to prove a deist's god or a taoist's god.

besides those argument suffer from their own logical problems anyway.

Anonymous said...

further more for a man of his stature, Collins offers some really dodgy justifications built on shaky logic:

[when he witnessed patients who were near death but who were deeply comforted by their religious faith]

what kind of justification is this? an appeal to emotion?

i have also witness drug addicts being very deeply comforted by consuming opium, perhaps we should encourage masses of ppl to take up that habit since it is so comforting.