[Vision2020] Collision Comment

[Tom Hansen]

BIG thanks for the column and the link, Wayne.

The following are just a small percentage of comments appended to the
Huffington Post column . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-hitchens/collision-is-religion-abs_b_326673.html

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Response by xulos

Pastor Wilson's arguments seem nothing other than confusing and
obfuscating, focusing on an often obscure and frankly difficult to
understand criticism of atheism rather than a positive statement of the
strength of his own beliefs.

As the one positing faith in something that cannot be materially
demonstrated, Pastor Wilson should state the basis of that faith. For a
Christian it is that Jesus was god tunred man, whose message and purpose
were laid out to humanity almost 2,000 years ago in the form of four
biographies and a group of divinely inspired letters.

The validity of Wilson's viewpoint stands or falls not on the refutation
of another world view, but on this straightforward laying out of the basis
for his faith. If this is insufficient to convince someone to share that
faith, then the validity of that faith must needs be called into question.

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Response by noozone

Imagine my shock upon discovering that I think Douglas Wilson's Christian
belief is the result of the chemicals in his brain just happening to be
arranged that way. Silly me, I though it was because he was born into a
predominately Christian culture.

Someone needs to open his can of soda; the pressure of the fizzing is
compressing his sense of reason.

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Response by BrightAK

In a sense we ARE just fizzing bottles of soda, but we fizz in intricate
and special ways, and it is this, the intricacy and specificity that give
us meaning. Wilson's flippant tone certainly makes this sound silly, but
isn't the real wonder in how on earth such fizzing could give rise to
amazing things like earthworms, bats, beetles and humans? How the seething
froth of atoms works together to give us meaning, beauty, love, pain, and
all the rest?

At the very least, think about it.

One last comment, Pastor Wilson tries to disarm nontheists by showing how
silly materialism is. he certainly made some view look silly, but it is
not recognizable to a serious rational materialis­t-humanist­. He's
painted for us what we like to call a 'straw man' and of course it is
easily pushed down. Pastor Wilson has either a seriously flawed idea of
the reductionist project (although perhaps he can't be blamed, many people
- even scientists - do), or he is being grossly disingenuous with what the
reductionist project really entails. The 'reductive' part of the
reductionist project is only the first half (if that) and the easy half to
boot. NO ONE will be satisfied once we've reduced the universe to strings
(or whatever else might take their place), what comes next is the
reconstruction of the world, understanding how simple parts build upon one
another to create meaning, beauty, complexity, and (dare I say it)
morality. It even seems that by certain measures we've turned the corner,
real-time models of neural columns (the segments that comprise the brain)
are close to being modeled, genetics has proved some predictive power, and
social sciences are crudely beginning to model emergent moral behaviors.

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Thanks again, Wayne.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown