The Great Atheist Straw Man: Science
Posted: October 4, 2011 Filed under: Atheism, Islam 13 Comments »If any of you have been following the modern day Atheist-Theist discourse you would find that many atheists have adopted an approach in which they try to explain everything away by the use of science. Now there is nothing wrong in using science during debates and discussions, but what the atheist is doing is trying to establish that they are a people of science, and their opponents (the theists) are people who are in opposition to science. For example last year I held a public debate with an atheist speaker and throughout the debate all he did was bring up science, it was almost as if we were listening to a science lecture in school or university! Now this is what I call the great atheist straw man, the great atheist tactic to put a wool over the eyes of their audience, as well an attempt in trying to deceive the audience. The reason I say this is because the atheist has set up a false premise, that is that their theist opponent is a rejectionist of science, and that the theist stands up against science. This off course is anything but the truth, we as theists do not reject science or the scientific findings, if anything you will find that we theists often point to science as evidence!
During my debate I even had to tell my opponent that all of his scientific points established nothing against theism or disproving the existence of God, I had to tell my opponent that I didn’t reject the science he was discussing, and this obviously left him dumbfounded because his entire tactic was to use science, and yet I am saying hold up a minute, I am not against the science, I agree with your science, so what exactly are you trying to prove? He off course had no way out of this mess, so he just continued to talk about science and ignore the statements I was making, that I was NOT against the science.
In fact as a Muslim theist I need to give these atheists a history lesson, if these atheists had looked into history they would know that the Muslims had a golden age, which lasted for centuries (longer than the current advanced period of the west), and during this golden age Muslims were very much into the scientific method and into scientific field and findings. Muslims excelled in major areas such as Chemistry, utilizing the scientific method of experimenting and testing, on top of this Muslims excelled in the fields of astronomy, and physics and in practically all the fields of major sciences! So one has to wonder whom these atheists are trying to talk to when they want to act like it’s them who are the people of science? Off course the atheist is talking to nobody, all he is doing is constructing a great straw man, a myth, and then he proceeds to try and take down the myth he just made up, that theists are supposedly opposed to science.
If anything it is atheists who reject the science since it is they who stubbornly reject the scientific consensus and findings that clearly state the universe had a beginning.
haha, My stepfather and I had (it seems) this same debate. Science does not disprove a creator.
No, but science disproves many religious dogma (no Adam and Eve, no Noah’s flood, no virgin birth, etc). If one’s only argument for believing in a religion is that science can’t disprove the existence of its deity, then consider that science can’t disprove the existence of Zeus, Thor, Jupiter, Ram, Ahura Mazda, the Keebler elves, Santa Claus… ad nauseum.
Actually, there are things written in the Quran that science has only recently discovered. The Quran goes into detail about the growth of the feutus in the womb. It also mentions the fact that salt and sweet water don’t mix. All reveiled to mankind by Allah before human beings even wondered why.
Science does not seek to prove or disprove any magical entity that you want to believe in. But just because science can’t disprove it, doesn’t automatically mean that it exists. Absence of proof is not proof of existence. Science can’t disprove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Thor, Zeus, Shiva, or any number of mythological gods don’t exist either. But I bet none of you believe that those gods are real. So why do you believe your god is real?
@Marijke: That’s bullshit. All scientific “facts” in the Quran are either so vague that you can interpret them a thousand ways or were already known at the time (even going so far back as the ancient Greeks). The growth of the fetus in the Quran is nowhere nearly as detailed as we know today with modern science. If you really believe that bullshit, then tell me why the Quran says that semen comes from your stomach and doesn’t specifically mention the reproductive system? Why does the Quran also say that the Sun goes into a lake at night? What kind of science is that?
I’m so sick of hearing this unscientific bullshit.
Hi Ex Muslim (if this is who you really are),
Maybe you should have taken some more time to read and understand Quran. It is very clear how a feutus grows, there are websites where you can compare the graphics of the little worm mentioned in the Quran and the actual feutus. On top of that, I think it could very well be scientifically proven that people who don’t have proper arguments starts using offensive language.
Hi Marijke,
Maybe you should stop reading websites from deluded Muslims and instead employ your critical thinking skills. You act like the Quran is a scientific book, and then mention the extensive use of metaphors in the Quran. That’s not really helpful, nor does it make the Quran a scientific book. That right there should indicate the extent of its vagueness.
Also, maybe you should have a closer look at the Quran. I don’t know why you used the term “little worm” when the Quran never makes that comparison. In fact, it actually uses the terms alaqa (“clinging substance” or “clot”), and nutfah (“liquid” or “sperm-drop”). Hmm… it’s funny that the all-knowing god of the Quran mentions “liquid” or “sperm-drop” (which any adult male knows comes out of his penis) but never mentions the egg (something a male has never seen)!
Funnily enough, the Quran then talks about how this liquid comes from between the loins and the ribs. This is factually untrue because semen is produced in the testicles, which are nowhere near the ribs. So the almighty god of the Quran got this scientific fact wrong. Moreover, the Quran never mentions the egg, fertilization, zygotes, DNA, chromosomes, or any number of details that we now know through modern science. So are you sure YOU’VE read your Quran?
By the way, how old are you? Are you a child that’s offended by my use of “bullshit”? Is your only argument against me that I have a potty mouth? Grow the hell up.
Sammi you have clearly stated that you reject human evolution and common ancestry. . So how can you claim that you “didn’t reject the science he was discussing,” when I discussed these very concepts that you clearly reject.
Your own words:
“I just reject the theory that we are related to animals and share common ancestors etc, and during the debate, you really didn’t bring up much to affirm these points.”
In fact I did bring up evidence for these claims. Watch the video between 9 min and 13 mins in and you will see. If you would like some more evidence , I suggest you read the comparative human/chimps genome sequence analysis performed by an international consortium of many of the worlds top genomics institutes.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html
From their introduction:
“More than a century ago Darwin and Huxley posited that humans share recent common ancestors with the African great apes. Modern molecular studies have spectacularly confirmed this prediction and have refined the relationships, showing that the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and bonobo (Pan paniscus or pygmy chimpanzee) are our closest living evolutionary relatives”
So I suggest you either accept these findings or provide some references in similarly prestigious journals that overturn them or admit in fact you don’t accept the science that was presented.
Dear Phil,
Bro, seriously, get a life and stop hanging around ‘Farscape’ conventions.
Waving journals around like they are some kind of Ecumenical High Council on truth is just sad. No one is going to decide the truth based on the authority of evangelical materialist publications like Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist and other magazines that make up the masturbatory literature of people who merely replace one source of ultimate authority (‘organised religion’) with another (‘scientific consensus’).
You know full well that Neo Classical Darwinism is questioned by many (atheist) scientists and that the so called evo – devo theory has very little in common with descent by modification by simple natural selection acting on random mutation. You know this but you will not admit it because the latest version of the truth IS now the truth as far as people of your persuasion are concerned, Which is why your science is like your truth; RELATIVE, or you wouldn’t spend so much time mining the evidence from ERV’s and such to shore up your pre-convinced ideas about common descent. You know that the prior evidence from paleantology etc is not up to the job but you will never admit it, just like an Evangelical Christian defending his Gospel.
By the way, have you ever been published in any of these journals that you so venerate. Perhaps not. But there’s always hope eh? Maybe in the future.
I get the distinct impression that like many you are used to interacting with scientifically naive theists and this has made you overestimate your own scientific literacy, which is probably largely gleaned from popular science publications that tend to agree with the world view you hold dear. Nothing wrong with that of course, but please don’t give others a hard time by challenging them to show you from sources you hold dear where it says this or that. It’s like a Christian saying tell us from his ‘authorized’ texts where it says that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Or some ‘similarly prestigious source’. Reviewed by his ‘peers’.
I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, but please at least believe in YOURSELF and make up your own mind (which you don’t believe in as distinct from ‘brain’ I bet), instead of following around scientific authority like an autograph hunter at a Comic – Con.
phil, during our debate you hardly touched on darwinian evolution, you raised 1 point, and i asked for further clarification on the matter, at the end of the day evolution was hardly brought up. now as for evolution, I don’t reject evolution, i do believe that species have evolved and adapted over time, i have no problem whatsoever with this.
i also have no problem in accepting the science that humans and animals also share a lot of similar genes, i.e. genetic make up, this also makes perfect sense, as we share the same habitat and environment, so naturally we would expect to share similar genetic features that allow us to function and survive in this environment, which is why for instance if we wound alien life on a different planet, we would expect their genetic make up to be completely different to ours as they lived in a different environment to ours.
and to another point, darwinian evolution does not disprove the existence of God, so the straw man remains, many darwinian evolutionists as you know are theists. so i’m sorry phil but you and other atheists as yourself have to move on, science is not the achilles heel of God nor theists, it doesn’t make us lose our faith in the least, so you need a better argument.
Sami, thanks for your respectful reply. First off, what we are talking about is common hereditary between humans and chimps. Do you deny I presented this in the debate? Do you or do you not deny this piece of science? Hence contradicting you claim that you accepted the science I presented.
I have never claimed that Darwninian evolution disproved god. In fact it is not my position that god has been disproved. That is not the position of most atheists I know. The position I stated very clearly in the debate was that a lack of belief in god was appropriate due to a lack of evidence. What Darwinian evolution does is to undermine the argument from design.
An argument you have used to demonstrate gods existence. Hence it is not a straw man, you use this argument and the science of evolution and common hereditary undermines it.
I remember you brought up a point about a gene that we share with chimps, and i wanted further clarification on whether you were arguing for common ancestor, because you didn’t make it clear, you simply brought up the point of same gene etc so I just wanted further clarification about the point so I could tackle it, but we never deeply went into that topic.
Evolution does not refute design, you very well know a theist can (and many do) say that evolution is in fact God’s design! That he is running the process of evolution, from A to Z.
Oh and Ex – Muslim,
Try to use your own examples instead of borrowing stuff like the Spaghetti Monster from other writers. It wasn’t funny when Bobby Henderson used it and it hasn’t gotten any funnier with age.
Also, it’s a bit much to expect the Quraan to introduce a new scientific vocabulary and concepts to people who had no context for them (and may not do in the future if our knowledge and civilisation is compromised). And why stop at Biology? Perhaps the Quraan should have taught everyone triple award science to GCSE level! Nay, at least ‘A’ – Level. It should have been as long and as incomprehensible as a dozen science textbooks so that it faded into obscurity by being read about as often as a high school science textbooks (i.e never).
Why should we have to find out any of this science stuff out for ourselves?!?! It’s outrageous, God should have taught us Genetics from the ground up! What kind of evil deity expects us to think for ourselves?!!
I’m not gonna bother refuting your scientific inaccuracy of the Quraan claims because just like your jokes you plagiarised them from someone else’s websites and have not bothered to look up the Arabic usages of the words. It says nothing about sperm being made in the stomach, look up the embryological origin of the testes,or weather the female sex cell is mentioned (it’s even mentioned in the Hadith, as is recessive inheritance) and it doesn’t say that the sun literally goes into a lake and…
Actually, instead of me trying to explain all of this stuff which you should know, perhaps you should try reading the Quraan again, except this time while not high on crack. It might make more sense to you then! Or maybe not.
We do agree on one thing though. What is all this squeamishness about a simple word like ‘bullshit’? These people are really childish! Why, I’ll use it myself! Your logic is BULLSHIT! See what’s wrong with that!
Actually ignore everything I just said. You’re right, Islam is all nonsense!
After all, we don’t want a dumb ass like you becoming an ‘Ex – Retard’ and going Muslim again and making our lives even harder than they are! Stay dumb bro!
Sami , I specifically stated in my opening statement that the fusion of Chimp Chromsome 2a and 2b was evidence of common ancestry. You might want to read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)
or watch the debate again and see what I said at 11m15 -12m43
I explored the implications of this chromosome fusion using the exact words “If humans and chimps share a common ancestor” what we would expect to find and then showed that is had indeed been found. What could be clearer?
The argument I made is not really to do with human having similar genes , it is to do with the location of the centromeres and telomeres which as the Nature article stated showed evidence of ancestral fusion site.
I asked you specifically if you could show us any serious journal articles that concluded the opposite and Ill ask that again, can you? If not I think the claim that you accept science is not correct. This is how science works. . Researchers present their findings in the journals and conference articles and if another researchers wants to dispute those findings they must go through the same level of scrutiny. This has happened for the human/chimp common ancestry hypothesis and its been “Spectacularly confirmed” according to the data published in the literature by the leading genomic research consortiums in the leading journals.
I also asked you why humans and chimps share the same non functional genes. You never gave an answer. Same genes, same designer might work for functional genes , but why for pseudo genes?This may help you:
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/psb.ball.html