Why Did God Wait to Create the Universe?

I can’t accept your attempt to equate our biases. I think you see what you want to see and I see what the data warrant.

1 Like

5 posts were split to a new topic: Making the Case for Human Rights Empirically

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Making the Case for Human Rights Empirically

I won’t try to speak for @Michael_Callen but I didn’t understand him as equating your biases. Instead, he said:

Perhaps you object to the characterization of your having a “model of faith”. Though other terminology might be more mutually agreeable, we all have models based on our respective sets of presuppositions. (After all, nobody functions free of presuppositions. For example, some people presume that empiricism is the only valid basis for one’s opinions and biases. Yet, that is nothing but a presupposition—and one that most philosophers, both theists and atheists, would reject. For example, the foundations of science-and-empiricism itself lie outside of science and empiricism. Indeed, the foundations of logic itself lie outside of science and empiricism.)

Granted, that is your position. And lots of people holding very different positions on a wide range of topics make the very same statement. (Indeed, I recently had an anti-evolution Christian make the very same statement when he learned that I affirm evolutionary biology. To him, I see what I want to see while he sees what the data warrants. He told me so.)

4 Likes

Yes, I object to the “faith” bit. I hold to empiricism not through faith but because it seems to work and it’s necessary to science. If empiricism is not a valid assumption, science doesn’t work. But empirically (!) it does seem to work. It may be that empiricism can’t haul itself up by its bootstraps, but it sure does seem like it does. Faith does not seem relevant.

But he’s wrong, isn’t he? On that we can agree. I would argue that his position can objectively be seen to be wrong, if only because he can’t construct an explanation of the world’s data that fits his assumptions, while you can (at least within the realm of evolution vs. creation; or at least I could).

Incidentally, Michael, elsewhere, seems to be claiming the converse of what he said above. He’s saying not that we see the world through our biases but that what we see in the world is compatible with both our models of it. I would claim that if you look closely that isn’t true.

1 Like