Tuesday 1 February 2011

how to argue against the theist claim that "god gives scientists their knowledge and ideas"

my theist pharm rep friend says:
claim 1
> Chemical Engineers are using the scientific method to develop the drugs I sell, but I do believe the intelligence and ideas they are given come from God.

then he tries to downplay science ("god" in his previous statement):
claim 2
> Science is a constantly changing set of theories. What is "known and true" today, may be different in ten years, and then change back ten years later.

-------

"skunk puppet" makes a good response to the first claim:
mankind's steps in science and medicine been so slow and painstaking with advances usually opposed and blocked by religious leaders (e.g., Galileo).

"Jon" responds to the first claim as well:
Which scientists does god give ideas to? Just the ones whose findings support your religion or all of them?

where i then add:
"god" did not inspire nazi doctors to perform human torture experiments on jews during WW2 so that we could learn what they learned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

"
Contemporary knowledge concerning the manner in which the human body reacts to freezing is based almost exclusively on these Nazi experiments.
"

and my response to the second claim is this:
eventually things in science stick, otherwise we wouldnt have airplanes making transatlantic flights or supercomputers or satellites if theories were constantly changing and flip-flopping like you suggest.

in conclusion, when put together, these two poor, theistic claims/arguments contradict themselves:
* god gives science its knowledge
* science is wishywashy and cant be trusted because its truths change all the time and change from true to false and then back to true

and there's not much more to the argument when you look at science's *knowledge* about how long homo sapiens have lived: at least 100,000 years

compared to the old testament's claim of about 6-7000 years.

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