fredag 8. februar 2008

Science and Religion

For those interested, here is a link to an interesting debate on Victor Reppert's site, about an argument propagated by John Loftus (a former Christian and now one of the most active anti-Christian "debunkers" on the net) about the size of the universe as speaking against Christianity.

I mean the stuff e.g. Thomas Chalmers debugged in the early 1800's (A series of discourses on the Christian revelation viewed in connection with the modern astronomy (1817)) and C.S. Lewis about fifty years ago (The Discarded Image - An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature). Not really new arguments, nor very good. A bit telling to use them, one might say.

Still, evaluating such a debate is sometimes difficult. However, as John from time to time is building and strenghtening his case by myths, it is easy to conclude that science sometimes really is threatened by faith. In this case John's.

One particularly telling allegation from his side is that

Christianity slowed the progress of science down or tried to stop it dead in its tracks every single hard-earned step of the way.

The question then is how long Loftus's variant of atheism will slow the progress of the Historical Sciences.

Anyone interested might do worse than check this article on some aspects of it. Or, if you are Norwegian inclined, my two chapters in the book "Tro og vitenskap - Sammenheng eller Sammenstøt" ("Faith and Science - Connection or Conflict?".

As a mostly finished chapter on the size of the universe, the aliens debate and Christianity, was dropped from my recent book on Dawkins and the New Atheists (again in Norwegian, alas (especially for my bank account)), it may surface somewhere later this year.

2 kommentarer:

Arnfinn Pettersen sa...

Ah, the fine art of surfacing. Please let it!

Bjørn Are sa...

The fine art, indeed. Another chapter dropped was about silly Christian apologetics.

A bit less finished than the alien angle (some of that surfaced BTW in a certain Nephilim article), still rather fun.

Anyhow, further enquiries on, and surfacing of, these matters must first be directed to my bank account.