Supposedly he also attacks other atheists to try and prevent “one falsehood to replace another”
Collins should have cited one of the various cosmologists who call multiverse concepts not “theory” but metaphysics. Your nemesis here is demonstrating either ignorance – failure to be aware that there are cosmologists who agree with Collins – or deception.
That just shows he’s never taken a logic course, or basic science for that matter.
What is this dweeb’s PhD in, anyway?
Which is incorrect. “No true Scotsman” requires a moveable definition of a Scotsman; there is a solid definition of Christianity.
Pires is obviously not a literary scholar. He’s ignoring a lot of what was plain to a first-century audience.
But enough of that – I have better things to do than consider what strike me as sophomoric at best.
The “expertise” you need is to recognize that the scriptures are ancient literature and not a single effort to make them talk science is legitimate in the first place, whether its from atheists or YEC.
I’m going to recommend these:
They should help get your eyes back on the text and show why listening to such rabble-rousers as this “angry Spanish guy” is a waste of your time.
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Heh – yeah, I basically echo that. If I encountered him in person, I would likely just tell him two things:
- He’s treating the Bible like it’s supposed to be modern literature, which it isn’t, and until he bothers to study what it really is he’s just flapping his lips (or fingers, on the web).
- He should look at the evidence for the Resurrection, since that’s where it all focuses.
The equation is simple, and it smacks me over the head regularly when my brain starts to play games:
Jesus rose from the dead.
Jesus trusted the text.
This is sufficient to tell us to trust the text – not what we think it is, but what it is.
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Thank you for the in-depth analysis! I vastly appreciate this.
To do what Genesis 1 does:
All the statements of science rely on one thing alone: YHW-Elohim is Creator of all, and all was made by Him for His purposes, and if it isn’t serving His purposes, turn away! You don’t have to win battles against chaos; He mastered that at the start and He hasn’t lost control of it – it’s in His hands.
Just image Him!
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For starters he’s playing a quote-mining game, taking quotes that serve his purpose without really bothering to understand what the authors are talking about. For example, there are lots of people who when they “understood the full Darwinian explanation” saw in that a signpost to a Designer who deals not in individual ‘products’ but in elegant systems (guys like that made up most of our informal university “intelligent design” club, former atheists who due to studying evolution became theists [and often Christians]). Then there’s his caricature of history:
" The history of Christianity shows that it survives by absorbing scientific knowledge only when it can no longer combat it, as happened with the lightning rod (pararaios)." He totally skips the fact that it was love of their Creator that drove many, many scientists to seek to understand Creation.
ALso:
" Collins clearly commits a Special Pleading Fallacy (Petição Especial). He accepts the scientific observation (the constants are adjusted, discovered by physicists) but rejects the scientific consequence (the possibility of parallel universes)"
He ignores the physicists who point out that parallel universes are nothing more than a mathematical fancy resulting from playing “What if…?” and aren’t scientific consequences at all.
And:
" This idea of a universal sense of good and evil is false. It is a Judeo-Christian vision that was imposed upon cultures through colonization."
That shows me his familiarity with anthropology and sociology is thin at best.
I really want to know what his claimed credentials are, because by the evidence they have little to do with anything he’s actually pontificating about.
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Thank you again! I hope to one day have the spiritual expertise you have.
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Good Lord… the Lombrosian in me wishes I had never seen this document (for I had hoped Lombroso was wrong). 
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Thank you guys so much for the help! I think I’m working through it but it also raised another question in the process. What am I to make of actual experts who don’t believe? This guy had mentioned Dawkins, who said that evolution made a Creator unnecessary and that miracles violated the laws that God himself made. Even Einstein believed in an odd version of a god! Any advice?
This Jorge guy, and others, would make it seem as though there is no more room for a Creator (also, he says that science has tested and refuted God). Any truth to that?
I gotta ask: how do you guys deal with your religious anxiety, and not knowing if what you think is the truth? Or that you intuitively know that, somewhere in the world, someone is using the same facts as you to justify their own ideas and you have no one (or so you think) to back you up?
I like to be intellectually consistent. That means doubting my doubts and doubting radical skepticism.
Vinnie
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Ok. Thank you
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And it’s useful to question the basis of your certainties too. And be chill with metaphysical uncertainty.
Most of life’s perpetual, metaphysical questions have not and may not ever be resolved. But, one can find some benefit looking at the questions and considering how the questions can be framed. I long ago gave up the naive notion that philosophy will resolve many of the ‘great questions’, but it might help us resolve more clearly, what it is exactly that we’re asking.
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Naive? I think a lot of things are naive.
The purpose/ends/telos/final causality of the intellect is to seek truth. The purpose/ends/telos/final causality of truth is to inform the will so we are able to choose the good and to know God. I’d say it’s entirely naive to presume the rational intellect cannot deduce God’s existence through metaphysical arguments and logical deductions. In fact, I’d identify that with atheism. I have zero-sympathy for self-defeating, modern relativism.
That modern philosophers (since Hume) can’t bridge the is/ought divide or even justify induction is a fire of their own making. It is their own fault they cannot tell us anything meaningful. Rejecting teleology has methodologically led to nihilism. It is naive to think that is a meaningful solution to anything. That Christian organizations have embraced a mechanistic image of God (“occasional deism”) and/or have reduced God to a marvel superhero or Mesopotamian deity is also a fire of their own making. That they cannot explain the problem of evil and have so much trouble with atheism is their own fault.
Vinnie
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And not only methodologically…
- Good luck with that! I encountered a fellow on-line back in 2002 who was, IMO, the most astute fellow I’ve ever met bar none. He could, with rare exception, tell a person such as me exactly what I was asking, even when I couldn’t, and then he’d answer the question. More often than not, the mainstream relativists wouldn’t like his answers, but only the more reasonable ones would acknowledge that he had figured out what was being asked. I have searched in vain for his like.
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I appreciate the optimism and the work developed by many philosophers. And yet such questions persist and remain actively debated in philosophy today, suggesting the problem is neither easy nor solved. Some things are easier to achieve consensus with, like the Earth not being flat. Other areas, like the a nature of God and the problem of evil have not been closed and have not achieved a consensus.
Yep. The key to addressing questions often starts with understanding the premises. It the ‘wait, step back a moment and rethink this’ work.
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It’s far greater than that, the problem. Because in the eyes of the general population the existence of God is treated like a mere and “absurd” leap of faith by the majority of believers and as a childish and intellectually and morally bankrupt fairy tale by the atheists.
We really live in the age of the “death of God”
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