Oh? That sounds like the claim of an uneducated person. People at university don’t talk that way. The more they learn, the more they know how much they don’t know. They realize the foolishness of any one-dimensional measure because even a topic such as evolution goes in so many different directions. The uneducated person isn’t even aware and so they make such boasts on the basis of the most foolish ideas of what can measure such knowledge. What is yours? The number of Richard Dawkins books you have read? LOL
You know… it is becoming clear that you have a terrible habit of classifying people based only on the fact they disagree with you about something (jumping to absurd conclusions about whether than can be a scientist, have a masters degree in physics and now how much they know about a subject). How can you be so foolish? The more people know and the more they have been trained in the use skepticism the more they are likely to find disagreements with you on all sorts of issues and details. I would hope (though this is rapidly diminishing) that is not according to the even more foolish basis of treating discussions like this as some sort of team sport, where everyone on the opposing team must be assumed to be lacking in whatever virtue you can manage to think of.
How amusing. I describe myself in the same way. I wonder what you think that means.
The explanation of Rational Wiki on methodological naturalism is quite an eye-opener. It seems to be popular claim by creationists and the “Discovery Institute” these days. Nonsensical rhetoric, of course, and enough to probably make both of us wonder if we should avoid the label. But a more seasoned response is simply to realize that all such labels need some clarification as to what we mean by them.
When I use this term for myself I mean that will look for the explanations of things in terms of fixed laws and principles rather than dumping things into the black box of the unknowable will of some being like God. This is to be distinguished from philosophical or metaphysical naturalism where we simply assume that causal connections to beings like God (gods, demons, or spirits) simply do not exist. For a theist it means they think even God prefers to operate in a rational way according to fixed rules and principles rather than by changing whims and arbitrary dictates.
In my experience, most atheists have been more intelligent…
But unfortunately, the average intelligence and education of atheists has been dropping as it becomes more popular. As the crowd moves in a particular direction, that direction becomes more and more a herd mentality.
Indeed and I have used them in the work of scientific inquiry rather than just the work of an actuary. I put a great deal of reliance in mathematical models. For example I was recently explaining to MarkD…
LOL head shaking 