pointless debates?
newsweek recently invited rick warren and sam harris to sit down for a "chat" about the existence (or lack thereof) of God. harris is an author and currently working on a ph.d in neuroscience, and is decidedly atheist. warren is, of course, a Christian pastor. naturally, the debate was done in the context of harris talking as a scientist... (you cannot prove scientifically that God exists) and warren talking as a pastor and Christian (it's all about faith). in that regard, the debate seemed pretty useless to me. however, what warren had to say (for the most part) should debunk a lot of the claims of his critics that he's nothing more than a self-promoting marketing guru and not a true follower of Christ.
the comments that followed the article were far more interesting, i thought. one thing i did note was that most of mr. harris' fellow atheists seemed to either be angry and/or condescending (in the interest of fair and balanced, there was also one or two Christian commenters who were pretty heavy-handed and judgmental, even of other Christians).
while doing some checking on mr. harris' background, i followed a wikipedia footnote to this exchange, described as a "blogalogue," on beliefnet.com between harris and "Christian" blogger andrew sullivan. once again, while it was rather interesting to follow the exchange between the two, it was pretty obvious that neither of these guys was going to change the others' mind about anything. additionally, mr. sullivan is a gay catholic, hardly what anyone would consider to be representative of the majority of Christians. his claim to fame seems to be that he looks down upon fundamentalist Christians (actually fundamentalist anythings) as much as he does atheists.
so.. what good, if any, do you think comes out of these types of dialogs? do you believe that any die-hard on one side of an issue is going to persuade his or her die-hard counterpart with well-crafted arguments? to me, especially when you're talking about things taken on faith vs. things that must be proven by science, ne'er the twain shall meet, short of divine intervention.
whatcha think??
the comments that followed the article were far more interesting, i thought. one thing i did note was that most of mr. harris' fellow atheists seemed to either be angry and/or condescending (in the interest of fair and balanced, there was also one or two Christian commenters who were pretty heavy-handed and judgmental, even of other Christians).
while doing some checking on mr. harris' background, i followed a wikipedia footnote to this exchange, described as a "blogalogue," on beliefnet.com between harris and "Christian" blogger andrew sullivan. once again, while it was rather interesting to follow the exchange between the two, it was pretty obvious that neither of these guys was going to change the others' mind about anything. additionally, mr. sullivan is a gay catholic, hardly what anyone would consider to be representative of the majority of Christians. his claim to fame seems to be that he looks down upon fundamentalist Christians (actually fundamentalist anythings) as much as he does atheists.
so.. what good, if any, do you think comes out of these types of dialogs? do you believe that any die-hard on one side of an issue is going to persuade his or her die-hard counterpart with well-crafted arguments? to me, especially when you're talking about things taken on faith vs. things that must be proven by science, ne'er the twain shall meet, short of divine intervention.
whatcha think??
posted by dean at 12:30 AM
1 Comments:
Sorry...I might be coming in quite late on this post. My initial response is that the very nature of a debate which centers upon proving God scientifically is flawed and pointless from the get-go. Scientific inquiry is not, itself, in a position to be able to experiment or make claims about God in any way. Arguments for God's existence may begin in an arena called "philosophy of science," a field which defines what science is and what are its limits. Mostly, debates about God are intended to do nothing but be instructive tools in evaluating the limits of logical argument. For instance, the ontological argument for God's existence is logically "valid," but since the argument refers to the idea of "conceiving something in the mind," it gets bogged down in arguments about whether mental conceptions count (i.e. translate into reality the way St. Anselm felt they did when he first proposed the argument). In short, debates about God always seem to end in confusing definitional issues about the function of language...which I take as futher proof that (as Derrida said) language only "defers" truth and meaning...so we will never be able to express the fullness of truth in language. When we debate, then, we are mainly doing so to appease our own conscience...not really to "convince" people to believe in God, but to fail at re-convincing ourselves once again, which, in turn, revivifies ones faith (or destroys it). Such are the limitations of life.
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