201 comments

• Comment Link Tuesday, 11 December 2012 03:24 posted by Magda Stenzel

  Until Science can explain to me how the very first molecule of existence, even before the Big Bang, came to be, I will believe in God.

• Comment Link Monday, 10 December 2012 19:57 posted by Harris R

  Airport kid, the statements "Science is incompetent to refute God!"
  and "Science increasingly points to a God!" are not contradictory statements anymore than "Science is incompetent to refute life in other planets" and "Science increasingly points to life in other planets." They are certainly not obvious contradictions. Science cannot refute what we may find in the future but it can increasingly point to it.

• Comment Link Monday, 10 December 2012 19:01 posted by Lily

  ...has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
  
  ...because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
  
  ...God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the wold to confound the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence.
  
  ...Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
  
  Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
  
  But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because the are spiritually discerned. from 1 Corinthians chapters 1 & 2
  
  Knock and it shall be opened to you; seek and you shall find...

• Comment Link Monday, 10 December 2012 04:06 posted by Robert S

  We like monkeys and apes may have evolved from the lemur as found in archaeological digs in Germany. Religion on the other hand was and is man made as found in archaeological digs in the middle east.

• Comment Link Monday, 10 December 2012 02:21 posted by Harris R

  Krauss claims that the universe is deterministic. If this is so then the words he speaks and the things he believes are determined by the laws of nature and has nothing to do with truth. This is a fundamental self-referential problem with atheism.

• Comment Link Sunday, 09 December 2012 23:03 posted by airportkid

  "Science is incompentent to refute God!" says Dr. Hutchinson.
  "Science increasingly points to a God!" says Mr. D'Souza.
  Well, if science is competent to indicate God exists, it's certainly competent to indicate God doesn't exist. Science is either competent or it isn't, Hutchinson and D'Souza have unwittingly directly contradicted each other - and it's too bad Shermer and Krauss did not point out this obvious contradiction.

• Comment Link Sunday, 09 December 2012 16:26 posted by Don Stierman

  Science does not refute God, but it does refute some particular human interpretations of God. Fundamentalists limit God to thinking and acting very much like a man, a model rejected by Jesus Christ.

• Comment Link Sunday, 09 December 2012 09:16 posted by markrkrebs

  I enjoyed this a lot. I really liked the attempt (both sides) to argue substance instead of technicalities, when there was every chance of falling in that trap. (Technically, I feel the proposition was doomed to lose, and that Krauss failed to even make a case. That doesn't mean he wasn't compelling!) So maybe science can't refute god but his "turf" has been shrinking monotonically since the big competition began.
  
  These were the arguments I noted. Any see others they want to note?
  a) big tent (welcoming other religions (didn't use to))
  b) Non Falsifiable
  c) God put those dino bones there Last Thursday.
  d) Hawking's God with a Match (started the big bang)
  e) This hole fits me staggeringly well!" said the puddle. (Anthropic)
  
  Last I felt Dinesh's open statement was poor, basically retreating all the way to "God is nature (& science explores his majesty)" That's a form of God with a Match, non participatory and not different from science in any relevant way. Otherwise, it seemed to have been argued very honestly by both sides, which I liked a lot. Great show.

• Comment Link Saturday, 08 December 2012 19:41 posted by Eric

  No matter what all religious types no matter their "faith" one cannot expect them to be logical when it comes to evolution or in matters of science. No matter what...

• Comment Link Saturday, 08 December 2012 17:53 posted by Alex

  This opposition between reason and everything else I think is fundamentally spurious. I think this idea that there's love on the one hand and cool rationality of science, which is all clatter and clockwork, and soulless; this is a false dichotomy. And it's a dichotomy that's pervasive in the culture. I can't tell you how many times someone says "Scientifically prove to me that you love your wife". As though that was just the knockdown argument of all time against reason and faith. There's nothing irrational in principle about love. It is rational to value love, it is rational to try to recognize that it is one of our most cherished experiences and try to live a life that maximizes it. Understanding love at the level of the brain is not going to deflate its importance for us. The fact that we can understand the molecular constituents of chocolate doesn't make us not want to eat chocolate. These are different scales of interaction with the world. So it's not a matter of only being coldly calculating in our approach to life but where we have to call a spade a spade is gratuitous claim about uncertainty, invisible realities, and the moral structure to the universe. About a god who so hates homosexuality that he will whip up tsunamis in defense of chaste heterosexual people. This is a vision of life that is animating millions and millions of our neighbors and we have been cowed in to not criticize it.