Dear Editor:
Jerry Coyne's recent editorial bashing religion and claiming it is incompatible with science was a plethora of baseless assertions and misrepresentations of both science and Christianity. Faith in the Bible involves believing in the invisible, but not in believing the impossible. The Apostle Paul gave historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ and debated the philosophers of his age, even in Athens Europe --such as Kepler, Farrady, and Galileo--were Christians or at least theists who believed that God created an orderly world worthy of study. Why a godless world of brute facts, chance, and fortuitous nature laws would be knowable at all is something that atheism cannot explain. Lastly, the areas of biology and physics have provided evidence for a Creator. The universe as a whole is fine-tuned for life, thus requiring a designer. Aspects of biology, such as the information in DNA, cannot be rationally explained by nonpersonal, purely material, and undirected processes. On this, see Stephen Meyer, The Signature in the Cell. Coyne is very good at caricature and ridicule, but quite bad at persuasive argument.
Douglas Groothuis
Thanks for the correction, makes much more sense now. I'm not sure why I originally thought the 'not' should be in the different location, a myriad of reasons I am sure.
ReplyDeleteDr. Groothuis,
ReplyDeleteI wonder how well someone like Mr. Coyne would fair
against a presuppositional apologetic offense?
I realize that you may have some concerns regarding
presuppositional apologetics but I think they would
be great for stifling a peddler of pseudo-science
such as Mr. Coyne. The man must be shown that
his worldview presupposes and requires the Christian
worldview in order to be true.
However, I would not advise a merely Van Tillian approach.
At times his heart did not show. I would think of something
more along the lines of Dr. Schaeffer or Dr. Ray Comfort's
approach where the heart and mind are confronted.
The beauty of their approach is that Revelation and Reason
both preached. But Reason is seen to be, in the words of Luther,
ministerial rather than magisterial. Reason is to be used to understand
and administer the Gospel and Christian worldview. It is not a hammer
to destroy worldviews.
Professor Groothius,
ReplyDeleteYou have asserted that knowledge that Jesus was not resurrected would be sufficient to dissuade you from Christianity. If you are willing to perform a modest amount of research, I am confident you will come to exactly that conclusion.
Since your blog only accepts brief comments, and since even a cursory introduction of the topic demands a certain degree of explication, I have posted my suggestions for further investigation to Professor Coyne's blog. You may read it here:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/peregrinations-kentucky/#comment-52319
Cheers,
b&