From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Correcting Creationists
Date: 12 Oct 92 20:42:43 GMT
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada

In article <exukjb.303.718721548@exu.ericsson.se> exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell) writes:
>In article <73086@apple.Apple.COM> mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) writes:
>>From: mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)
>>Subject: Re: Correcting Creationists
>>Date: 5 Oct 92 16:49:42 GMT
>
>>In article <Lou1RB1w165w@bluemoon.rn.com> darist@bluemoon.rn.com (david stroop) writes:
>>>>From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
>>>>Message-ID: <1992Oct01.084647.24107@bmerh85.bnr.ca>
>>> 
>>>>Science is telling us that we're insignificant.  Religion
>>>>tells us that we're not. 
>
>It might even be said, with some truth, that some religions, including
>Christianity, have doctrines which may be interpreted, and which actually
>have been interpreted, as implying that human beings were not so 
>very significant at all. Consider "human depravity" interpretations of
>the Original Sin dogma by Calvin et all. Consider the absolute gulf which
>divides the Divine from all other non-divine indiividuals, including
>man. The very idea of a supernatural, superhuman being who towers 
>not relatively but infintely over human intelligences, would seem to me at
>least to have far greater consequences for the "significance" of man
>than would something like a naturalist or secularist view, in which there
>is no such superior being which to compare him in value.

Show me a theist who doesn't think that the universe was built for
people, and then we'll talk.

>>>Science tells *atheists* that they're insignificant.  Science 
>>>tells theists how wondrously God created the universe.  This also 
>>>tells theists how significant *people* are because it was all done 
>>>for them.  The theist wonders why the atheist wants to save a
>>>species (man) that he believes is so insignificant.
>
>This point has merit but probably not as much merit as you might think. There
>is simply no way of knowing, even relying the Bible, how central man is to
>God's activity in the entire universe apart from this Earth.

Read Genesis.  And read it keeping in mind the psycholical impact that
it is likely to have on its readers.  Now read a book on cosmology
and evolution, say Carl Sagan's _Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors_.
See the difference?  Genesis has got you thinking of the whole
picture upside down and backwards.

>>If you posit a philosophy (call it 'Anti-theism') that requires
>>rejecting any view of the world in which a god turns up, then
>>that philosophy 'puts a cap on' knowledge in the way that you
>>describe. However, Anti-theism is by no means subscribed to by
>>all atheists. Many are people who simply have yet to see any
>>good reason to believe that this or that religion's account
>>of existence as proceeding from some god or other is accurate.
>>The challenge from such atheists to theists is: 'produce a
>>convincing reason for me to believe you're right.' In absence of
>>such a reason, the atheist remains atheist.
>
>This is a good point and is well taken.  Extreme atheism, what you
>have called 'anti-theism', does seem to smack of obscurantism.

I don't think you'll find an atheist who, if presented with a well
formed definition for a god, and evidence for same, would refuse to
believe that this thing exists.  So, your extreme atheism position
is a strawman.  But I do think that is important to kill that parasitic
God meme in the same way that most of us have managed to kill the
Zeus meme, until such time as there is new evidence.  If that makes
me an anti-theist, then I suppose that I am also an anti-Zeusist.
Are you one of those obscurantist anti-Zeusists as well Ken?

>//////////////////////////////////////
>/* Kenny  *   Welcome to Mind Wars! */
>//////////////////////////////////////

You mean that, don't you?
--
Doug Graham          Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they
dgraham@bnr.ca       are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being
My own opinions.     smart.    --Kurt Vonnegut from _The Sirens of Titan_