ProTheism

For whatever reason, some people are ‘hell bent’ on creating this false tension between what they call “religion” and science. Take this video for example:

Here is my observation:

• From the outset, the speaker already disclosed his “dislike” of all religions. One can only guess where his conclusions follow.

• The speaker never defines what he means by “religion.” He seems to want to muddle up all religions into one class of bogus beliefs. This, however, is problematic, since diverse religions approach science differently.

• The speaker asserts that science and religion are not compatible. What are his reasons, you ask? See bellow:

• The speaker states that the problem is that “People don’t understand what science is.” He goes on to enlighten us of what science “really” is (and all this time I thought I knew!). The speaker states: “The point of science is really that we can never know absolute truth.” A couple problems (a) This is a self refuting statement. Is it absolutely true that science is really that we can never know absolute truth? (b) That’s not what science intends to do. To the contrary, science helps us to understand reality and how things work in the world, and the universe. Moreover, science rests on the presupposition that there is truth and that their conclusions are reliable.

• The speaker states that we can never say that “This is correct.” However, he is stating that he is correct is concluding that science and religion are irreconcilable. Thus, his whole polemic on the incompatibility of science and religion falls apart based on his denial on truth. In making his point about us not being able to state “this is correct”; then we can’t state it’s correct that science and religion are incompatible. In making his point, he refutes himself.

• He does make a good point about science consistently correcting itself. However, we don’t have to worry about how gravity may all be wrong. Just because some theories are later corrected, it doesn’t follow that all scientific theories are wrong or will change. To the contrary, science is becoming more precise, even though it’s still self correcting today. Many of the today’s theories are reaffirming yesterday’s hypotheses, rather than overturning them. Though, there are several today, that may be corrected in the future.

• Following his polemic, he goes on to state that science can disprove religion conclusively (go figure), but the religious people will believe anyway! So as we see, first he asserts that (a) science shows us we can’t know truth (b) science is constantly changing and we can’t be sure about everything; however, when it comes to religion, (c) he says that science can show it to be “conclusively” wrong. I will give him the Twinkie defense if he wants it.

• His conclusion: Science and Religion are incompatible because Religion holds that there are absolutes truths vs, Science which demonstrates that there is no absolute truth. And that is the absolute truth! Again, this is self refuting. Nevertheless, it was interesting.

• On the last note, I want to state that there is no controversy of Science vs. Religion (that’s and ‘apples vs. oranges’ scenario). This is a false dilemma. If there is a conflict, it’s Science vs. Science. When it comes to Christianity, the Bible teaches how to get to the heavens, but not how the heavens go (Galileo). There is often a sub-par conflict artificially fashioned between the Bible and Science, but if there is any tension, it’s between science and theology. There is a big difference.

One thing the guy has going for himself is some cool hair and an accent to go with it. Nevertheless, he needs to ascertain what he is stating without chopping his own head off.

Labels: Apologetics, Atheism